ArticleScience advances2025
Selective use of distant stone resources by the earliest Oldowan toolmakers.
Article in Science advances, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Halibee member archaeology: Middle Stone Age environment, technology, and postmortem modifications.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- A regional-scale mobility model for the early hominin occupation of the Lower Omo Valley (Ethiopia).Scientific reports · 2026Article
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Authors and funding
16 authors.
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Abstract
The adaptive shift that favored stone tool-assisted behavior in hominins began by 3.3 million years ago. However, evidence from early archaeological sites indicates relatively short-distance stone transport dynamics similar to behaviors observed in nonhuman primates. Here we report selective raw material transport over longer distances than expected at least 2.6 million years ago. Hominins at Nyayanga, Kenya, manufactured Oldowan tools primarily from diverse nonlocal stones, pushing back the date for expanded raw material transport by over half a million years. Nonlocal cobbles were transported up to 13 kilometers for on-site reduction, resulting in assemblage patterns inconsistent with accumulations formed by repeated short-distance transport events. These findings demonstrate that early toolmakers moved stones over substantial distances, possibly in anticipation of food processing needs, representing the earliest archaeologically visible signal for the incorporation of lithic technology into landscape-scale foraging repertoires.
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