Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH), Burgos, Spain.
Centre National de Recherches Préhistoriques, Anthropologiques et Historiques (CNRPAH), Algiers, Algeria.
Science. 2018 Dec 14;362(6420):1297-1301. doi: 10.1126/science.aau0008. Epub 2018 Nov 29.
East Africa has provided the earliest known evidence for Oldowan stone artifacts and hominin-induced stone tool cutmarks dated to ~2.6 million years (Ma) ago. The ~1.8-million-year-old stone artifacts from Ain Hanech (Algeria) were considered to represent the oldest archaeological materials in North Africa. Here we report older stone artifacts and cutmarked bones excavated from two nearby deposits at Ain Boucherit estimated to ~1.9 Ma ago, and the older to ~2.4 Ma ago. Hence, the Ain Boucherit evidence shows that ancestral hominins inhabited the Mediterranean fringe in northern Africa much earlier than previously thought. The evidence strongly argues for early dispersal of stone tool manufacture and use from East Africa or a possible multiple-origin scenario of stone technology in both East and North Africa.
东非提供了最早的已知证据，证明了旧石器时代的石器和人类引起的石器切割痕迹可追溯到 260 万年前。来自阿尔及利亚艾因哈奈什的 180 万年前的石器被认为代表了北非最古老的考古材料。在这里，我们报告了在艾因布谢里特附近的两个遗址中挖掘出的更古老的石器和带有切割痕迹的骨头，这些石器和骨头的年代估计在 190 万至 240 万年前。因此，艾因布谢里特的证据表明，祖先人类在北非的地中海边缘地区的居住时间比之前认为的要早得多。这一证据强烈支持了石器制造和使用从东非早期传播的观点，或者在东非和北非可能存在石器技术的多起源情景。
