Ancient stone tools found in western Ukraine may provide the oldest known evidence of the presence of humans in Europe, according to new research.
The hewn stones, deliberately made of volcanic rock, were excavated from a quarry in Korolevo in the 1970s. Archaeologists used new methods to date the layers of sedimentary rock around the tools to more than 1m years old.
“This is the earliest evidence of any type of human in Europe that has been dated,” said Mads Faurschou Knudsen, a geophysicist at Aarhus University in Denmark and co-author of the study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
He said it is not certain which early human ancestors formed the tools, but they may have Homo erectusthe first species to walk upright and master the use of fire.
“We don’t have fossil remains, so we can’t be sure,” said Roman Garba, an archaeologist at the Czech Academy of Sciences and co-author.
The chipped stone tools were likely used to cut meat and perhaps scrape animal hides, he said.
The researchers say the tools could be as much as 1.4 million years old, but other experts say the study methodology suggests they may be just over 1 million years old, putting them in roughly the same date range as other ancient tools found in Spain was excavated.
The earliest stone tools of this type ever found were unearthed in East Africa and date to 2.8 million years ago, says Rick Potts, who directs the Smithsonian Institution’s Human Origins Program.
The Ukraine site is significant because “it is the earliest site this far north,” suggesting that the early humans who spread out of Africa with these tools were able to survive in diverse environments.
“The oldest people with this old stone tool technology could colonize anywhere from warm Iberia [Spain] to the Ukraine, where it’s very cold at least seasonally – that’s an incredible level of adaptability,” Potts said.
