A recent study reported on bone tools from Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, which had been excavated some fifty years ago. The most notable tool found was a bone point with three curved barbs and a carved tip. It was made from part of an animal’s rib. The tool was dated to an alleged 800 ka (thousand years ago). According to Bruce Bower, the previous oldest barbed bone points were dated to around 90 ka, “and were assumed to reflect a toolmaking ingenuity exclusive to Homo sapiens.” The find implicated Homo erectus as the inventor— “because stone tools previously excavated in the same Olduvai Gorge sediment resemble those that have been found at other African sites with H. erectus fossils.” This find suggests the more we learn about humans categorized as Homo erectus, the more we will realize that they were intelligent humans. Homo erectus were most likely early post-Babel humans that had migrated away. Given the difficult conditions that may have confronted these people, one should not judge them by how their technology compared to ours. Rather, we should consider how we would have coped in a similar situation.

©123rf.com/denisnata

• Bower, B. Homo erectus, not humans, may have invented the barbed bone point; sciencenews.org, 22 Oct 2020.
• Pante, M. et al., Bone tools from Beds II–IV, Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, and implications for the origins and evolution of bone technology, Journal of Human Evolution, 148, Nov 2020, 102885.