HENAN PROVINCE, CHINA—According to a Live Science report, hafted stone tools dated to as early as 160,000 years ago have been discovered in central China. More than 2,600 stone tools were uncovered at the site of Xigou, and some of them appear to have been attached to a handle or shaft, making them the oldest known composite tools in eastern Asia. Michael Petraglia of Griffith University explained that the use of a handle improved tool performance by allowing the user to increase leverage, and by providing more force for actions such as boring holes. These tools are thought to have been used to process plants. “Microscopic analysis on the edges of the stone tools indicate boring actions, used against plant material, likely wood or reeds,” he said. Team member Ben Marwick of the University of Washington added that it is not clear who made the tools, since several hominin species, including Denisovans, Homo longi, Homo juluensis, and modern humans lived in the region at the time. “Hopefully future work will recover fossil remains or DNA that will shed more light onto this interesting question,” Marwick concluded. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Nature Communications. To read more about Homo longi, go to "China's New Human Species."
