article_snippet.sent: A set of stone flakes shaped more than 3.3 million years ago could be the world's oldest tools created by early human ancestors, according to researchers.
article_snippet.sent: The discovery could fundamentally change the current view of human evolution as - if correct - the date of the stone tools is 700,000 years older than any others found previously.
article_snippet.sent: The tools means that ancient human ancestors were creating tools hundreds of thousands of years before the appearance of the first 'man' - the start of our branch of the evolutionary tree known as Homo.
article_snippet.sent: Many experts have long believed that it was the use of stone tools by early species of Homo like Homo habilis and Homo erectus that helped set Many experts apart from other human-like species.
article_snippet.sent: 1.6 million years ago - Hand axes become the first major technological innovation .
article_snippet.sent: Scientists behind the discovery now believe ancient species known as Australopithecines - typified by the fossilised skeleton called Lucy - or Kenyanthropus made the tools.
article_snippet.sent: Professor Harmand, who was presenting her findings at the annual meeting of the Paleoanthropology Society, said: 'The artifacts were clearly knapped [created by intentional flaking] and not the result of accidental fracture of rocks.'
article_snippet.sent: This stone tool - known as an Olduvai chopper - on display at the British Museum is around 1.8 million years old was thought to be one of the earliest examples of stone that had been used by ancient human ancestors .
article_snippet.sent: A further 130 stone tools are thought to be around 1.7 million years and were used as choppers .
article_snippet.sent: This is close to the date of another piece of controversial evidence found in 2010 that suggested stone tools were used long before the appearance of the Homo species on Earth.
article_snippet.sent: Now the latest discovery is the strongest evidence yet that these early humans did have ability to make and use tools rather than being primative creatures.
article_snippet.sent: Until the latest discovery, the oldest stone tools to be discovered were in Gona, Ethiopia and were thought to have been made by early Homo species - possibly Homo habilis.
article_snippet.sent: the oldest stone tools to be discovered may have been made by relatives of 'Lucy', a female Australopithecus afarensis that lived 3.2 million years ago who is shown above in a reconstruction at the Houston Museum of Natural Science in Texas .
article_snippet.sent: As the oldest stone tools to be discovered were found close to the site where Kenyanthropus platyops was discovered - which some say was actually a species of Australopithecine - it suggests the oldest stone tools to be discovered made the oldest stone tools to be discovered.
article_snippet.sent: Professor Harmand, whose team are preparing a paper on the discovery for publication in the journal Nature, told the Paleoanthropology Society that the oldest stone tools to be discovered had been created by 'knappers with a developing understanding of the fracture properties of stone'.
article_snippet.sent: She said: 'the oldest stone tools to be discovered mark a new beginning to the known archaeological record.'
article_snippet.sent: She told the journal Nature: 'Alison Brooks, an anthropologist at George Washington University in Washington DC could not have been created by natural forces.' that the She added that technology shown in the oldest stone tools to be discovered may have actually played a major role in the emergence of our genus - Homo.
article_snippet.sent: Dr Simon Underdown, an anthropologist at Oxford Brookes University said: 'It’s important to remember that the first stone tools we can recognise as manufactured .
article_snippet.sent: objects are very unlikely to have been the first tools used. '
article_snippet.sent: Organic material like wood or bone rarely preserves in the archaeological record and the first stone tools would have looked very like lumps of broken rock (lacking the detailed patterns we see with later stone tools). '
article_snippet.sent: the research is incredibly exciting as the research pushed back the date for tool making by almost a million years which in turn means tools were being used even earlier than that.'
highlights_snippet.sent: The tools are thought to be 500,000 years older than the first Homo species .
  
highlights_snippet.sent: The tools are also 700,000 years older than other stone tools found previously .
  