{"id":44008,"date":"2026-04-07T17:36:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T17:36:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/?p=44008"},"modified":"2026-04-07T17:36:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T17:36:16","slug":"early-humans-were-quarrying-stone-over-200000-years-ago-research-reveals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/?p=44008","title":{"rendered":"Early humans were quarrying stone over 200,000 years ago, research reveals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<br \/><\/p>\n<div>\n<aside class=\"single__inline-module alignleft wp-block-nypost-editor-partner-article-links\">\n<\/aside>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/04\/02\/science\/archaeologists-find-evidence-of-humans-gambling-during-ice-age\/\">Early humans were quarrying stone<\/a> in southern Africa over 200,000 years ago, reveals new research.<\/p>\n<p>People quarried rocks for their tools in places they specifically sought out thousands of years earlier than previously thought, say scientists.<\/p>\n<p>An international team, led by researchers from the University of T\u00fcbingen in Germany, found that quarrying was taking place at the Jojosi site in South Africa.<\/p>\n<p>The discovery was published in the journal Nature Communications. challenges the prevailing view that Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers collected their raw materials incidentally during other activities.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Manuel Will, from the University of T\u00fcbingen, said: \u201cAt Jojosi, we found numerous traces of the quarrying of hornfels \u2013 a metamorphic shale \u2013 including blocks that were tested for their quality, flakes of various sizes, thousands of millimetre-sized pieces of production waste and hammerstones.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>Early humans were quarrying stone in southern Africa over 200,000 years ago, reveals new research. <span class=\"credit\">UoT \/ Manuel Wi \/ SWNS<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>He explained that hornfels is a fine-grained rock that was often used to produce tools in the Stone Age.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Will said: \u201cPeople worked cobbles on site here and knapped the material until they had achieved the desired shape from the rock \u2013 probably to make tools from it later.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He says the team almost exclusively found \u201cproduction waste\u201d at the site.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Will said the absence of both the end products and other traces of activity and settlement indicates that the people of Stone Age Jojosi were \u201csolely and deliberately\u201d seeking to extract the coveted raw material.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>People quarried rocks for their tools in places they specifically sought out thousands of years earlier than previously thought, say scientists. <span class=\"credit\">Gunther H. D. M\u00f6ller \/ SWNS<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>Various views of a reassembled stone artifact from the Jojosi 5 site. <span class=\"credit\">Gunther H. D. M\u00f6ller \/ SWNS<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>He says they were quarrying for tens of thousands of years, at least until 110,000 BC, as can be seen from the luminescence dating of the finds.<\/p>\n<p>Given its great age and long period of use, the researchers say Jojosi provides <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2025\/09\/26\/science\/ancient-skull-could-prove-human-species-is-a-lot-older-study\/\">new evidence about the lifestyles of early Homo sapiens<\/a>, indicating that they planned the long-term acquisition of resources much earlier than previously thought.<\/p>\n<p>The Jojosi excavation site lies in grasslands in eastern South Africa, around 85 miles from the Indian Ocean coast.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>Archaeological excavations at the Jojosi 6 site in 2024. <span class=\"credit\">UoT \/ Manuel Wi \/ SWNS<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Geological processes during the Pleistocene period formed a landscape characterised by erosional gullies, also exposing large hornfels layers.<\/p>\n<p>A team headed by Dr. Will has been studying the geology and archaeology of the landscape since 2022.<\/p>\n<p>He said: \u201cOn our very first visits, both on foot and using drones, we discovered about a dozen sites where perfectly-preserved, unweathered hornfels flakes were visible in eroded sediment \u2013 an absolute rarity for an open-air site.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"single__inline-module inline-module inline-module--newsletter aligncenter inline-module--nypostbusinessunit aligncenter wp-block-nypost-editor-newsletter\" data-source-unit=\"Inline Newsletter Module Morning Report\">\n<div class=\"inline-module__inner\">\n<div class=\"inline-module__title-wrapper\">\n<div class=\"inline-module__unsubmitted-title-wrapper\">\n<h3 class=\"inline-module__title headline headline--combo-sm-md\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tStart your day with all you need to know\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/h3>\n<p class=\"inline-module__cta\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMorning Report delivers the latest news, videos, photos and more.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><h3 class=\"inline-module__title headline headline--combo-sm-md\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\t\t\t\t\t<\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>During their excavations, the research team sieved sediment to retain even the smallest fragment.<\/p>\n<p>Gunther M\u00f6ller, a PhD student at the University of T\u00fcbingen, successfully assembled 353 of the left-behind pieces into \u2018refits\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>He said, \u201cWith these 3D puzzles, we were able to see precisely where and how material was chipped off and in what order.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>The Jojosi excavation site lies in grasslands in eastern South Africa, around 85 miles from the Indian Ocean coast. <span class=\"credit\">UoT \/ Manuel Wi \/ SWNS<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>Geological processes during the Pleistocene period formed a landscape characterised by erosional gullies, also exposing large hornfels layers. <span class=\"credit\">UoT \/ Manuel Wi \/ SWNS<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cSeveral of these puzzles together then allow us to draw conclusions about the form of the actual end product, before it was taken to another place.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Professor Karla Pollmann, president of the University of T\u00fcbingen, added: \u201cThe finds from Jojosi reveal a rare, clear view of the early roots of humanity\u2019s ability to plan.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey show that the ability to select resources deliberately and organise activities stretches across generations.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/04\/07\/science\/early-humans-were-quarrying-stone-over-200000-years-ago-research-reveals\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Early humans were quarrying stone in southern Africa over 200,000 years ago, reveals new research. People quarried rocks for their tools in places they specifically sought&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44009,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/44009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}