Ancient stone tools found in western Ukraine may be oldest in Europe - study

This is reported by AR, according to Espreso.

As noted, the chipped stones, deliberately sculpted from volcanic rock, were excavated in a quarry in Korolevo in the 1970s. Archaeologists used new methods to determine the age of the layers of sedimentary rock surrounding the tools and found that they are more than 1 million years old.

“This is the earliest evidence of any type of human in Europe that is dated,” said Mads Faurschou Knudsen, a geophysicist at Aarhus University in Denmark and co-author of the new study, adding that it is not known which of the earliest human ancestors made the tools, but it may have been Homo erectus, the first species to walk upright and master the use of fire.

“We don’t have fossil remains, so we can’t be sure,” said Roman Garba, an archaeologist at the Czech Academy of Sciences and co-author.

According to him, the chipped stone tools were probably used to cut meat and possibly scrape animal skins.

The researchers suggest that these tools could be 1.4 million years old, but other experts say that the study's methodology suggests that they could be just over 1 million years old, which puts them in roughly the same date range as other ancient tools found in Spain.

Rick Potts, who directs the Smithsonian's Human Origins Program, noted that the oldest stone tools of this type were found in East Africa and date back 2.8 million years. 

The site in Ukraine is important because it is the oldest site in the north, which shows that early humans who settled out of Africa with these tools were able to survive in a variety of environments.

“The oldest humans with this old stone tool technology were able to colonize everywhere from warm Iberia (Spain) to Ukraine, where it’s at least seasonally very cold – that’s an amazing level of adaptability,” said Potts.

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