Algeria the new 'cradle of civilization?'
Archeologists in Algeria have found stone tools and butchered animal bones from as far back as 2.4 million years ago. Humans may have started using stone tools to butcher animals far earlier — and in a different part of the world — than first thought, a team of paleoanthropologists claims.
The study reports the discovery of some 250 primitive tools and 296 animal bones from a site called Ain Boucherit — some 300 kilometers (190 miles) east of the capital, Algiers. The implements were found near to many of the fossilized bones which had cut marks that clearly indicated the site was used to butcher animals. The bones came from animals similar to crocodiles, elephants, and hippopotamuses.
The cut-marked bones represent "the oldest substantive evidence for butchery" anywhere, according to paleoanthropologist Thomas Plummer, of the City University of New York's Queens College.
The tools are too old to have been made by Homo sapiens — modern man — and no remains of other hominins have been found, so it's unclear which branch of the early human family was using the tools.
https://www.dw.com/en/algeria-the-new-cradle-of-civilization/a-46515910
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