Getting a Grip on Early Tool Use
Proto-human hands seem to have been adapted for tool use apparently before tools existed.
The earliest known use of stone tools is from 2.6 million years ago. They were made by a species of hominin known as Homo habilis. Making stone tools and using them is only possible with the capability to make a precision grip with an opposable thumb. Human hands have that capability, but not our great ape relatives.
Dr. Tracy Kivell - a Canadian scientist and Reader of Biological Anthropology at the University of Kent in England - has recently studied a fossil from the hand of Australopithecus africanus, a species that lived up to 3 million years ago and not associated with stone tool use.
The structure of the inner trabecular bone indicates that this hand was able to make such a grip, and could have made stone or other tools, one-half million years earlier than previously thought.
Related Links
- Paper in Science
- National Geographic story
- Discovery news story