Earliest Humans

So far, nearly 200 hominid fragments have been found, which should be reckoned in the broadest sense as early members of the genus Homo. The remains come from about forty individuals. Today scholars recognize the existence of two earliest Homo types. Homo rudolfensis lived 2.5 to 1.8 million years ago (Malawi, Kenya, Ethiopia) and Homo habilis 2.1 to 1.8 million years ago (Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa). Confusing for scholars and laypeople alike is the blending together of australopithecine and Homo characteristics in the two. While Homo rudolfensis (the earliest evidence for which, a 2.5 million-year-old lower jaw, was uncovered by the Hominid Corridor Research Project in 1991 in Malawi) attests a primitive set of teeth but appears already Homo line in its walking apparatus, Homo habilis with its reduced tooth roots shows progress in dentition, but in skeletal structure is more like pre-humans than humans. Evidently there was an alternative to the powerful chewing apparatus of the robust pre-humans, so that in certain climatic conditions, especially dryness, they could deal with harder food: tools.

Very ancient pebble tools were discovered in 1995 near Gona, Ethiopia, which were about 2.6 million years old. New finds on the west bank of Lake Turkana also established that already by c. 2.5 million years bp the first tool cultures had been established—contemporaneous with the emergence of the genus Homo. But the most famous stone tools have come from the Tanzanian Olduvai Gorge. So-called pebble-choppers were purposely made here by Homo habilis and later Homo erectus. Stone materials for these tools, from what is known as the Oldowan Culture, were collected from an area of two to three kilometers and later worked. Tools in the sense of implements are widely used in the animal kingdom, especially among the primates. With humans, this increasing independence from habitat indeed led to an increasing dependence on the tools they used, still a characteristic feature of our species.

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