600 axes made by unknown human ancestors found in Ethiopia

Scientists have discovered a hoard of nearly 600 obsidian hand axes that were made more than 1.2 million years ago in Ethiopia by an unknown group of hominids, a family made up of modern humans and our many extinct relatives, a new study reports.

The discovery pushes back the chronology of the use of obsidian tools to an astonishing 500,000 years ago and shows that the hominids who lived in this part of Ethiopia, known as Melka Kunture, must have been quite skilled craftsmen to work with this capricious material.

Obsidian is a volcanic glass that is formed from rapidly cooled lava, the origin of which gives this rock its typical dark color and brittle structure. Being a brittle glass with sharp edges, obsidian is a useful material for making tools and weapons, but those same qualities make it difficult to sculpt because it can easily break and cause injury.

Many human cultures have relied on obsidian for both aesthetic and functional items over the past few millennia. However, the use of this glass goes deeper into the Pleistocene epoch, a period spanning roughly 2,580,000–11,700 years, and is less common, with notable exceptions such as the obsidian hand axes found in Kenya, which are about 700,000 years old.

Now, scientists led by Margherita Moussi, an archaeologist at Sapienza University, have discovered what they call “a surge in obsidian mining over 1.2 million years ago” by hominins living along the Awash River in Ethiopia, according to a new study published in the journal Nature. Ecology and evolution. Indeed, of the 578 hand axes found by researchers at Melka Kuntura, all but three were made of obsidian.

“After deposition of obsidian cobblestones by the meandering river, hominins began to use them in new ways, producing large tools with sharp cutting edges,” say Moussy and her colleagues in the study.