Utensils: reveal the identity of the oldest producers

The first findings of manufactured goods antiques dating from 1920 in Kent, in Fordwich, in Great Britain. The dating of them has only been done recently. A collection of more than 330 axes, 251 flakes, cores and scrapers related to am found 600 thousand years is doing.

Given the style of the tools found, researchers often attribute these objects to some kind of man
primitive, theHomo heidelbergensis. To make a historical relationship, the Neanderthal arrived about 400,000 years ago. Our species, on the other hand, appeared only 40 thousand years ago.

The array of stone tools, not only from the original finds, but also from our new smaller excavations, suggests that the hominids that lived in what would become Britain did well, not just survived.

Tomos Proffitt, Paleolithic Archaeologist of the Max Planck Institute

The archaeological site where such artifacts were found, in Britain, is one of the few to shed light on
this historical period. someone human footprints and some basic tools are also adopted a
Norfolk more than 840,000 years ago. This shows short shifts in the cold northwest of Europe.

However, researchers still don’t know whether such footprints were made by Homo heidelbergensis or?
of Homo antecessor, at the time in Spain. Today’s study has one of the most ancient sediments of artifacts in Britain and is the site’s first major archaeological achievement.

The diversity of tools is fantastic. In 1920, the site produced some of the first axes ever discovered in Britain. Now, for the first time, we have found rare evidence of scraping and piercing tools at this very young age.

Alastair Key, Director of Excavations at the University of Cambridge