(ORDO NEWS) — In Ethiopia, archaeologists have discovered a huge ancient workshop, estimated to be about 1.2 million years old.
At the same time, scientists note that it was created by a “smart” group of unknown hominids, the oldest relatives of modern man.
The authors of the article write that the found ancient workshop is a real mystery. Dating has shown that its age may even exceed 1.2 million years.
That is, it was created long before the direct ancestors of modern people appeared.
However, the nature of the objects found in the workshop clearly indicates that they were created by an “intelligent” group of hominids, which the researchers call in their work an unknown group of human relatives.
The fact is that until now the record belonged to similar workshops found in France and England, whose age is about 500 thousand years. Thus, the previous record was broken more than twice.
The workshop from Ethiopia is also distinguished by the fact that it created not only stone tools, but also sharp hand axes made of volcanic glass.
And this required certain skills and knowledge, as well as the use of auxiliary tools.
Scientists note that the emergence of workshops was the key human achievement in the history of the creation of stone tools. After all, even monkeys can create primitive tools in our time.
The workshop “opens a window into the evolution of the human mind.”
In this case, evidence was found that unknown hominids more than a million years ago already knew how to methodically create stone artifacts, as well as obsidian axes.
According to the first author of the study, Margherita Musi, the workshop, which can be given the status of the oldest in the world, was found in the valley of the Awash River, not far from the place where the remains of the most ancient and famous ancestor of a man named Lucy were previously discovered.
On the territory of the workshop, scientists unearthed 575 artifacts made of obsidian.
Of particular note among the finds are more than 30 hand-held obsidian axes, the average length of which is 11.5 centimeters, and the average weight is 300 grams.
Perhaps unknown ancient people and other hominids used them for cutting, scraping, butchering and digging.
The intrigue is added by the fact that the area in which the workshop is located is rather poor in obsidian. However, the scale of production indicates that there was quite a lot of such material in the workshop itself.
It is possible that ancient people imported it from other regions, which also sheds new light on human evolution.
After all, this may mean that obsidian had not only material value for ancient people, but also had some kind of spiritual meaning.
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