George Washington University archaeologist David Braun and his colleagues recently unearthed stone tools from a 2.75 million-year-old layer of Kenyan sediment at a site called Nomorotukunan. They’re ...

We may be witnessing the moment when our ancestors first defied a hostile world, using the same tools in the same place for ...

While early human ancestors started making stone tools at least 2.6 million years ago, bone tools took much longer to appear. The earliest signs of a regular use of bone tools hadn’t shown up in the ...

Oldowan stone tools made from a variety of raw materials sourced more than six miles away from where they were found in southwestern Kenya. In southwestern Kenya more than 2.6 million years ago, ...

Long before the first sparks of civilization — or even humanity as we know it — our ancestors were already inventors. On the ancient riverbanks of Kenya’s Turkana Basin, nearly three million years ago ...

A single site was occupied over more than 300 millennia, possibly representing where our ancestors honed their ...

Have you ever found yourself in a museum’s gallery of human origins, staring at a glass case full of rocks labeled “stone tools,” muttering under your breath, “How do they know it’s not just any old ...

The Nyayanga excavation site in Kenya, in July 2025. Fossils and Oldowan tools have been excavated from the tan and reddish-brown sediments, which date to more than 2.6 million years old. T. W.

Long before cities or farms, the earliest humans were standing in a changing northern Kenyan landscape, striking stone to ...

John K. Murray does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond ...

Stone flakes made by capuchin monkeys look remarkably similar to stone tools made by early humans 2-3 million years ago, raising questions about the archaeological record.