Stone tools that are 1.4 million years old mark the migration of ancient humans in Europe
Researchers have spent years grappling with the uncertain details of archaic humans’ first entry into Europe, but stone tools created about 1.4 million years ago may offer important insight.
The tools were discovered at the Korolevo archaeological site near Ukraine’s border with Romania, and have now considered the oldest known artifacts in Europe made by ancient humans. A team of archaeologists recently dated the tools and published their findings in Nature, delivering progress on critical questions about ancient human migration.
The age of the tools supports the theory that our ancestors — possibly Homo erectus, an archaic human believed to have gone extinct at least 117,000 years ago — journeyed into Europe from the east and continued to spread west.
“Until now, there was no strong evidence for an east-to-west migration,” said Roman Garba, an archaeologist at the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague and co-lead author of the Nature paper, in Nature News. [Continue reading…]