'Lucy' used tools a million years ago

by Chamari SENANAYAKE

Our ancestors used tools to butcher meat one million years earlier than previously thought, scientists recently revealed in a discovery that will rewrite the history of mankind.

In an extraordinary find, archaeologists discovered the marks of sharp stone blades on animal's bones cast aside 3.4 million years ago. The tools were used to carve slices of meat off the bones, and most probably to smash them open to reach the nutritious marrow inside. The marks were discovered on a fossilised bone unearthed in the Afar region of Ethiopia. A squat ape-like ancestor called Australopithecus afarensis butchered the bones. The best-known member of this species is 'Lucy', who was found in Ethiopia's Awash Valley in 1974 and named after the Beatles' song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

Lucy was around 3ft 6inches and walked upright, and had ape and slightly human like features as shown in the picture constructed on its skeletal remains. Lucy is estimated to have lived around 3.2 million years ago.

The discovery of this Hominid was significant as the skeleton shows evidence of small skull capacity akin to that of apes and of bipedal upright walk akin to that of humans, providing evidence that bipedalism preceded increase in brain size in human evolution. The finding has stunned scientists who say the first use of tools is one of the pivotal moments of humanity's development. Which basically means we have to re-write the history of mankind and the crucial development points of human ancestors.

Dr Zeresenay Alemseged, from the California Academy of Sciences who found the bones in Africa, said: 'The discovery dramatically shifts the known time frame of a game-changing behaviour for our ancestors.

Tool use fundamentally altered the way our early ancestors interacted with nature, allowing them to eat new types of food and exploit new territories.' The find was made in an area called Dikika, Ethiopia, 200 yards from the site where Dr Alemseged's team discovered a 3.3 million year old ape relative of Lucy's called 'Selam' in 2000.

Dr Shannon McPherron, of the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany said: "Now, when we imagine Lucy walking around the East African landscape looking for food, with stone tools in hand to quickly pull off the flesh and break open bones, animal carcasses would have become a more attractive source of food. This type of behaviour sent us down a path that would lead to two of the defining features of our species-carnivory and tool manufacture and use."

The two butchered bones were sandwiched between two layers of volcanic soil dated to 3.24 and 3.42 million years old. One of the two bones was a piece of rib from a mammal the size of a cow. The other was a fragment leg from a goat-sized mammal. Dr Jonathan Wynn of the University of South Florida said that the bones were marked by stone tools between 3.42 and 3.24 million years ago, and that within this range the date is most likely 3.4 million years ago.

An analysis of the bones showed the marks were made before they were fossilized. However, it is impossible to tell whether Lucy's relatives were making flint and stone tools or simply picking up sharp stones from the ground.

Until now, the oldest evidence of tools came from Bouri in Ethiopia where cut-marked bones were dated to around 2.5 million years ago. The oldest known stone tools to mankind dated to the same period were found close by. And now we know we were using them since a long time before that.