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Researchers recently unearthed a set of ancient Indian stone tools including points and blades.
BEACON TRANSCRIPT – It is a commonly accepted theory that the cradle of humanity was right from the start the African continent. However, one major question scientists have been trying to answer is how humankind got out of there.
Now, scientists have recently discovered some ancient Indian stone tools that might help shed some light on the story of humanity’s beginnings.
A Fascinating Breakthrough
The researcher team at Attirampakkam in Tamil Nadu published a study in the journal Nature. According to them, they uncovered more than 7,000 ancient stone tools.
Among these, the scientists found points and scrapers, as well as advanced and sophisticated blades. They hope that, with some help from the tools, science might establish the exact moment when modern humans left Africa and settled somewhere else.
It is known that the Homo sapiens appeared in Africa around 300,000 years ago. Then, this left the African continent and eventually colonized the entire world.
Some scientists believe that there were various dispersals of humans from Africa, and not all of them were successful.
A report issued last week brought the results of a human jaw analysis. This latter showed that some humans reached Israel sometime between 177,000 and 194,000 years ago.
Now, these recently uncovered Indian stone tools were established to have been crafted between 385,000 to 172,000 years ago.
The style of the Indian stone tools resembled the one attributed to Neanderthals and maybe other species as well. As such, researchers can’t say for sure whether they belong to Homo sapiens or some other of their evolutionary cousins.
So What Do These Indian Stone Tools Mean?
For now, there is no sure answer to this question. It is indeed a great accomplishment to date these ancient Indian stone tools. However, some scientists don’t believe them to be of great help in identifying the period in which humans left Africa for India.
The problem, or one of them, lies in the fact that the group of humans who crafted these tools may have changed their style on their own. Even so, it is still a step forward in shedding some light on a yet unknown part of humanity’s history.
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