We thought about ourselves proudly for a long time that we stepped onto the stage of history with stone tools in our hands. Well, yes, but now it seems that we got these stones from others: from Australopithecines!
Homo habilis got its “handy” (habilis) attributive for a reason. Its fossils were found together with the oldest tools, the Oldowan type pebble tools since the 1960s. Then in 1996 and 1997, Ethiopian and American palaeontologists found the fossils of Australopithecus garhi in Bouri, Ethiopia. These fossils were accompanied by no less than 3000 stone tools. This resulted in two things: on one hand Homo habilis was dethroned as the first stone tool maker, on the other hand, the age of stone tools needed to be placed back even further in time, to 2.5 million years ago. It seems it won’t change again, even if Homo habilis is proven to be Australopithecus habilis as many already suspect…

Fig. 20 Reconstruction of Australopithecus garhi. Drawn by Robert Lindsay, 2011