It may not seem like it at first, but there’s a big difference between the Stone Age human ancestors who crafted tools from nearby rocks, and those who trekked to find the right materials. The ability to mentally map surrounding locations—especially far away places—requires an advanced level of cognition that many now-extinct hominin species lacked. For at least one Paleolithic community located in present-day southwestern Kenya, that evolutionary leap occurred as much as 600,000 years earlier than previously believed. The new evidence is explored in a study published on August 15 in the journal Science Advances.
In the 1930s, archaeologists discovered the first Oldowan toolkit in Tanzania—a trio of stone aids including hammerstones for creating pounding tools, angular or oval shaped rocks for splitting material, and flakes that essentially functioned as proto-knives. Since then, similar finds have been located across much of the African continent, such as the Nyayanga site near the Homa Peninsula’s eastern edge of Lake Victoria.
In 2023, an international archaeological team including the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, Queens College, and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History discovered the oldest known collection of Oldowan tools and butchered hippopotamus bones dating back roughly 3 million years. Following another two years of analysis at the Nyayanga site, researchers have reached another striking conclusion: some of those tools came from rocks that don’t exist anywhere near Nyayanga.
“People often focus on the tools themselves, but the real innovation of the Oldowan may actually be the transport of resources from one place to another,” study senior author Rick Potts said in a statement. “The knowledge and intent to bring stone material to rich food sources was apparently an integral part of toolmaking behavior at the outset of the Oldowan.”
Slicing, scraping, and pounding tough plant matter and animal carcasses required rocks that were sturdy enough to handle the tasks, but also brittle enough to flake into sharp edges. However, researchers say the geology around Nyayanga simply wouldn’t have cut it—so to speak. Oldowan tools produced from these softer stones would either dull quickly or shatter, making them poor materials to use.
After conducting geochemical analyses on hundreds of stone cores and flakes found at Nyayanga, the team determined that they were crafted from volcanic and metamorphic rocks like rhyolite and quartzite. They then surveyed the regional geography, soon realizing the stone varieties could be traced to drainage basins located as far as eight miles east of the Homa Peninsula.
Archaeologists previously discovered similar rocks that hominins transported to a separate, 2-million-year-old site on the Homa Peninsula. While those were the oldest known examples of Oldowan tools, these Nyayanga kits were fashioned around 600,000 years earlier.
“It’s surprising because the Nyayanga assemblage is early in the Oldowan, and we previously thought that longer transport distances may have been related to changes that happened in our more recent evolutionary history,” explained study lead author Emma Finestone.
The latest findings further clarify the evolutionary timeline for humans, indicating that some cognitive advancements happened much earlier than initially understood. At the same time, it remains a mystery as to which hominin group made this major developmental step forward first.
“Unless you find a hominin fossil actually holding a tool, you won’t be able to say definitively which species are making which stone tool assemblages,” said Finestone. “But I think that the research at Nyayanga suggests that there is a greater diversity of hominins making early stone tools than previously thought.”
One of the strongest contenders remains Paranthropus,a close evolutionary genus to present-day humans known for their strong skulls and teeth. Researchers excavated multiple Paranthropus dental remains near both the Oldowan tools and the oldest hippo butchering location, which points strongly to them as the mystery innovators.
“Humans have always relied on tools to solve adaptive challenges,” Finestone said. “By understanding how this relationship began, we can better see our connection to it today—especially as we face new challenges in a world shaped by technology.”
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