500,000-year-old elephant bone tool found in England reveals advanced early human technology

pc: Study: Elephant-bone tool (NHMUK PV UNREG 4339) from intertidal deposits at the Boxgrove Waterhole Site Half a million years ago, people living in what is now southern England were doing far more than shaping stone into cutting tools. A newly analysed elephant bone from the famous Boxgrove archaeological site suggests they were carefully choosing, modifying and carrying specialised implements made from animal remains to improve their stone-working techniques. The discovery offers one of the clearest glimpses yet of how sophisticated Acheulean technology had become during the Middle Pleistocene. Rather than using whatever materials happened to be nearby, these hominins appear to have selected an unusually durable elephant bone, shaped it into a practical hammer and repeatedly used it to maintain finely crafted flint handaxes. According to the study published in Science Advances, titled “The earliest elephant-bone tool from Europe: An unexpected raw material for precision knapping of Acheulean handaxes”, this represents the earliest confirmed elephant-bone knapping hammer discovered in Europe and provides fresh evidence of long-term planning in early human technology.How the 500,...