Archaeologists in Morocco have announced the discovery of North Africa’s oldest Stone Age hand-axe manufacturing site, dating back 1.3 million years, an international team reported Wednesday.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The find pushes back by hundreds of thousands of years the start date in North Africa of the Acheulian stone tool industry associated with a key human ancestor, Homo erectus, researchers on the team told journalists in Rabat.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
It was made during excavations at a quarry on the outskirts of the country’s economic capital Casablanca.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
This “major discovery … contributes to enriching the debate on the emergence of the Acheulian in Africa,” said Abderrahim Mohib, co-director of the Franco-Moroccan “Prehistory of Casablanca” programme.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Before the find, the presence in Morocco of the Acheulian stone tool industry was thought to date back 700,000 years.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
New finds at the Thomas Quarry I site, first made famous in 1969 when a human half mandible was discovered in a cave, mean the Acheulian there is almost twice as old.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The 17-strong team behind the discovery comprised Moroccan, French and Italian researchers, and their finding is based on the study of stone tools extracted from the site.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Moroccan archaeologist Abdelouahed Ben Ncer called the news a “chronological rebound”.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
He said the beginning of the Acheulian in Morocco is now close to the South and East African start dates of 1.6 million and 1.8 million years ago respectively.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Earlier humans had made do with more primitive pebble tools, known as Oldowan after their East African type site.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Research at the Casablanca site has been carried out for decades, and has “delivered one of the richest Acheulian assemblages in Africa”, Mohib said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“It is very important because we are talking about prehistoric time, a complex period for which little data exists.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Mohib said the study also made it possible to attest to “the oldest presence in Morocco of humans” who were “variants of Homo erectus”.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
In 2017, the discovery of five fossils at Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, estimated at 300,000 years old, overturned evolutionary science when they were designated Homo sapiens.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Moroccan fossils were much older than some with similar facial characteristics excavated from Omo Kibish in Ethiopia, dating back around 195,000 years.–AFP<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Source: National News Agency<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Archaeologists in Morocco have announced the discovery of North Africa’s oldest Stone Age hand-axe manufacturing site, dating back 1.3 million years, an international team reported Wednesday.The find pushes back by hundreds of thousands of years the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n