Scientists have discovered the oldest recorded stone tool ever to be found in Turkey, revealing that humans passed through the gateway from Asia to Europe much earlier than previously thought, approximately 1.2 million years ago. 
 
 According to research published in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews, the chance find of a humanly-worked quartzite flake, in ancient deposits of the river Gediz, in western Turkey, provides a major new insight into when and how early humans dispersed out of Africa and Asia. 
 
 Researchers from Royal Holloway, University of London, together with an international team from the UK, Turkey and the Netherlands, used high-precision equipment to date the deposits of the ancient river meander, giving the first accurate timeframe for when humans occupied the area. 
 
 Professor Danielle Schreve, from the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway, said: "This discovery is critical for establishing the timing and route of early human dispersal into Europe. Our research suggests that the flake is the earliest securely-dated artefact from Turkey ever recorded and was dropped on the floodplain by an early hominin well over a million years ago." 
 
 The researchers used high-precision radioisotopic dating and palaeomagnetic measurements from lava flows, which both pre-date and post-date the meander, to establish that early humans were present in the area between approximately 1.24 million and 1.17 million years ago. Previously, the oldest hominin fossils in western Turkey were recovered in 2007 at Koçabas, but the dating of these and other stone tool finds were uncertain. 
 
 "The flake was an incredibly exciting find", Professor Schreve said. "I had been studying the sediments in the meander bend and my eye was drawn to a pinkish stone on the surface. When I turned it over for a better look, the features of a humanly-struck artefact were immediately apparent. 
 
 "By working together with geologists and dating specialists, we have been able to put a secure chronology to this find and shed new light on the behaviour of our most distant ancestors." 
 
 ### ||||| A stone tool unearthed in Anatolia may be the oldest tool from the region. The tool dates to about 1.2 million years ago. 
 
 Archaeologists working in Turkey have unearthed a 1.2-million-year-old stone tool. 
 
 The new tool, a flaked piece of quartz discovered in the town of Gediz, is the oldest reliable evidence of ancient humans living in what is now Turkey. The piece could help scientists recreate early humans' migrations from Africa. 
 
 "This discovery is critical for establishing the timing and route of early human dispersal into Europe," study author Danielle Schreve, an archaeologist at the Royal Holloway University of London, said in a statement. "Our research suggests that the flake is the earliest securely-dated artifact from Turkey ever recorded and was dropped on the floodplain by an early hominin well over a million years ago." 
 
 Ancient intelligence 
 
 Stone tools are some of the longest-lasting evidence of ancient human culture, and their workmanship can reveal much about the intelligence and lifestyle of human ancestors. The oldest stone tools are about 2.6 million years old, and the style of their workmanship is called Oldowan, after the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania where they were found, according to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. Later, about 1.7 million years ago, ancient hominins such as Homo erectus began making more sophisticated tools, such as hand axes, scrapers and flaked tools. [Denisovan Gallery: Tracing the Genetics of Human Ancestors] 
 
 Although many flaked tools have been discovered in Turkey, most were in sediments that couldn't be reliably dated. 
 
 The new finding comes after Schreve and her colleagues began taking a second look at the Gediz valley, where other artifacts had been discovered. One site where the researchers looked was a place where an ancient river twisted slightly, 
 
 "The flake was an incredibly exciting find," Schreve said. "I had been studying the sediments in the meander bend and my eye was drawn to a pinkish stone on the surface. When I turned it over for a better look, the features of a humanly-struck artifact were immediately apparent." 
 
 The team analyzed the ratio of Argon isotopes (atoms of the same element with different numbers of neutrons) in lava flows that periodically crept into the valleys of the region. They also looked at the compass orientation of the magnetic minerals within the regions' rocks. At different times in Earth's history, the poles have wandered, so the orientation of those minerals can reflect the location of the poles at the time. 
 
 By combining these two measurements, the team estimated that the stone tool they found was between 1.17 and 1.24 million years old. The only other contemporaneous evidence of Homo erectus inhabitance in the region is an ancient skull that was uncovered in Kocabaş, Turkey, whose age is uncertain. A recent study suggested the skull is between 1.1 and 1.3 million years old, although early estimates have put the fossil at just 500,000 years old, according to a March 2014 study in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters. 
 
 By providing accurate dating for hominin presence in the region, the findings could help scientists reconstruct the ancient path that early humans took from Africa. 
 
 The findings were published online in the February 2015 issue of the journal Quaternary Science Reviews. 
 
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– An early human dropped a stone tool on a floodplain in what is now Turkey about 1.2 million years ago. Today, its discovery is helping scientists pinpoint when humans began their move from Asia to Europe. The quartzite flake, described in Quaternary Science Reviews, is "the earliest securely-dated artifact from Turkey ever recorded," and its discovery pushes back the presumed date of human migration into Europe, researcher Danielle Schreve says, per EurekAlert. Her eye just happened to be "drawn to a pinkish stone on the surface" while studying a sediment deposit in an ancient river bend near Gediz. "When I turned it over for a better look, the features of a humanly-struck artifact were immediately apparent," Schreve says. Other hominin fossils were found in Turkey in 2007, but experts aren't confident about their age. Some say an ancient skull shows humans were in Turkey as far back as 1.3 million years ago, but others date it to about 500,000 years ago, LiveScience reports. In the case of the flake, researchers used high-precision radioisotopic dating on the ancient river deposit in which the artifact was found. They also used magnetic minerals within the regions' rocks to gauge the position of the magnetic poles around the time it was left. The data revealed a "secure chronology," showing humans were in the area between 1.24 million and 1.17 million years ago, experts say. (Find out why modern humans' bones are weaker than those of their ancestors.)