Paleolithic Tools

Features January 1, 2011

Plakias, Crete
(Photo courtesy Thomas Strasser)
SHARE:

A research team led by Thomas Strasser of Providence College and Eleni Panagopoulou of the Greek Ministry of Culture announced the discovery of stone tools at two sites on the island of Crete that are between 130,000 and 700,000 years old. The tools resemble those made by Homo heidelbergensis and Homo erectus, showing that one of these early human ancestors boated across at least 40 miles of open sea to reach the island, the earliest indirect evidence of seafaring. "If hominins could move around the Mediterranean before 130,000 years ago, they could cross other bodies of water as well," says team member Curtis Runnels of Boston University, who helped analyze the tools. "When similar finds on other islands are confirmed, the door will be opened to the re-evaluation of every assumption we have made about early hominin migrations."

  • Features September/October 2025

    Spirit Cave Connection

    The world’s oldest mummified person is the ancestor of Nevada’s Northern Paiute people

    Read Article
    Howard Goldbaum/allaroundnevada.com
  • Features September/October 2025

    Here Comes the Sun

    On a small Danish island 5,000 years ago, farmers crafted tokens to bring the sun out of the shadows

    Read Article
    Courtesy the National Museum of Denmark
  • Features September/October 2025

    Myth of the Golden Dragon

    Eclectic artifacts from tombs in northeastern China tell the story of a little-known dynasty

    Read Article
    Photograph courtesy Liaoning Provincial Museum, Liaoning Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, and Chaoyang County Museum
  • Features September/October 2025

    Remote Sanctuary at the Crossroads of Empire

    Ancient Bactrians invented distinct ways to worship their gods 2,300 years ago in Tajikistan

    Read Article
    Excavations of the sanctuary in the village of Torbulok in southern
    Gunvor Lindström/Excavations supported by the German Research Foundation