The Ancients - The First Toolmakers

Episode Date: April 20, 2023

Invention and innovation are two concepts that have propelled humankind forward for as long as people can remember - but who were the first, original tool makers, and what can we learn from them? Travelling back nearly 3 million years ago to the African continent, in modern Kenya, recent archaeological discoveries have altered long standing opinions about who the first tool makers were - so which hominin species deserves the title 'the first toolmakers', and just how related to them are we?In this episode Tristan welcomes the Professor Fred Spoor back to the podcast to help answer some of these questions. Together they look at some of these recent archaeological discoveries and how they change our understanding of human history. Examining, and questioning, some long-held assumptions about our distant ancestors, they journey through the mid-pliocene to help piece together this murky moment of history.The Senior Producer was Elena GuthrieThe Assistant Producer was Annie ColoeMixed & edited by Aidan LonerganFor more Ancients content, subscribe to our Ancients newsletter here. 

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's episode where we're going back deep, deep into human prehistory, we're going back more than three million years to Africa to talk about the first physical evidence that we currently have for tools and who what species of human of hominin we believe was creating these tools more than 3 million years ago. The site in question is situated next to Lake Turkana in Kenya, a site called Lemequi.

And the species that's associated with this site, first and foremost dating to this time, is one called Kenyanthropus platyops. This is a fascinating topic and so to learn more about it, I headed back to the Natural History Museum a few days ago to interview the one and only Professor Fred Spohr. That name may well ring a bell because Fred was recently on the podcast talking about early Homo, the origins of the Homo genus with species such as Homo habilis and Homo rudolfensis. And now he's back. We're going to the mid-Pliocene, more than three million years, to talk all about the first toolmakers. You will find

this absolutely fascinating. So without further ado, here's Fred. Fred, always a pleasure having you on the podcast. Yes, good to be back. Now, this time we're talking about a fascinating one. So the first toolmakers that we know of at the moment, this is a massive moment in the story of human evolution. It is, or at least it's definitely something that has always obsessed people in many respects. The story of when did humans start to make tools is a factor in the study of our evolution.

At all times, it was used in the past to define what the genus Homo was. Only if you can put a label Homo on yourself, then you are a toolmaker, which turned out to be not true at all. But I'm sure that we'll come to that. We will absolutely come to that. But first of all, let's set the scene as we always do. So more than three million years ago I've got the words in my notes mid-Pliocene Africa so what and when are we talking? When I really when we talk about the earliest stoatules that's almost a little bit back to front because of course that's also the most recent discoveries we're talking about particular one site on the western

side of Lake Turkana, not so far from where originally the Turkana boy that some people may know about is a Homo erectus skeleton, which is much younger, so that's not in time, it's not related, but geographically it's in that area. On the western side is an area called Lomekwi, and it has a history that we will undoubtedly also come to where the team that I'm associated with from the National Museums of Kenya headed by Meve Leakey, Meve and Louise Leakey, where a contemporary of Australopithecus aflorensis had been found. So this was fieldwork that was done in the late 1990s that resulted in the naming of

a new hominid Kenyanspes platyops. A French team subsequently in that area who had always worked on the west side of Lake Turkana and had found stone tools that were among the oldest which at that time meant around the 2.5 to 2.6 million year old stone tools had found those there. Similar age tools were found in Ethiopia of that same sort of age, 2.6. The French team worked there and on the tip of one of the local people who worked with them, they looked at this site, actually very close to where some of the Kenyantropos platyops fossils had been found. They found tools on the surface that are at least stones basically that

in the eye of an expert might indicate tool use or at least preparation of something similar meaning tools where shards were bashed off to create either sharp bladed shards or to use perhaps the the core that's left over after you knock the irregular pieces off, some bit that you could use as a hammer or similar. But in all cases, you manipulate the stone to create items that you can use for something. So they found those there and they started excavating. And eventually they found some of these similar things in the actual undisturbed layers underneath, earth layers, the sediments there. And that is very important because unlike fossils who after

a while start to fall apart, we actually have no clue in situations like eastern Africa how long a fossil bone is on the surface before wind and sun and rain contribute to degradation and it just becomes dust. If that's hundreds of years or thousands of years, we actually really don't know. But we know that the process happens because you can see all the stages on the surface. Stone tools are, of course, even more resilient stones of some sort. So archaeologists on the whole who often would do field work with us or in parallel with us specifically looking for tools rather than bones so stones rather than bones they would always say oh if you see we would enthusiastically say oh we saw you know we were walking here or there and we

saw beautiful what you call a hand axe those are sort of teardrop shaped beautiful things that are associated with homo erectus. Okay if it's a beautiful one then they may go and investigate and collect it but in most cases they would say oh if you just saw some things that looked like stone tools but they're on the surface without much other evidence then we're not really interested because it's we have absolutely no idea if it was all washed together or how old it is, how long has it been on the surface. So archaeologists, people who study behavior of our ancestors, including stone tool use, they are always very keen to have their finds in situ, what you call in situ, so in the

undisturbed earth layers. They excavate it and there it is, you know exactly where it comes from. Very often you can find pieces that are literally just sort of lit on the ground when they were produced and you can then after they've been excavated you can literally fit them back together again. Sometimes you can have a complete three-dimensional puzzle that all fits. All of that helps to distinguish between what is a real stone tool, something that has been manufactured for use for some purpose, and just randomly produced. Because these shards that pop off, they can also happen by accident.

A few big boulders somewhere and the elephant comes by, just to sort of really make it into a vivid image, your elephant comes by, knocks a few things side to side, stuff will splinter off and you could say oh that's. So of course those bits that break from stones can also be used as a tool still. So we have to distinguish from the very beginning when we talk about all of this sort of things between tool use and tool manufacturing. Because before we return to Lomekwi and the tools that were found that are 3.3 million years old, I don't know, you're asking the questions, but I think it might be good to have a quick sort of overview, again historical overview of how our thinking changed about all of this because that is really quite important.

Go on then, let's do the quick historical overview. Well, humans, the tool maker, has always been central and so it was humans who made tools and indeed as soon as things like Australopithecus were found and were recognized as human ancestors it was nevertheless still felt that Handyman, Homo habilis, was really the first hominin that started making stone tools. They were found in the same sites. So it's associated with the genus Homo habilis was really the first hominin that started making stone tools. They were found in the same sites. So it's associated with the genus Homo. Now, before we get to the later discoveries, that turns out that something more primitive apparently also made stone tools,

something else important happened. And that was that primatologists, people who are interested in studying primates, Jane Goodall is probably the most famous of those who, partly on suggestion of Louis Leakey, who of course had found Nutcracker Man and various other homo habilis handyman as well. He encouraged people like Jane Goodall to go and observe chimpanzees. Because if you observe the great apes, you might learn something about behavior of our ancestors, right?

Because they might be seen as a template so she went and she discovered and lots of research since discovered that chimpanzees actually also use tools that may be anything from bashing with a rock on a nut to get the nut broken open to bits of grass stem to actually fish termites out of termite holes if you stick the grass in they cling to the intruder meaning the little bit of grass stem to actually fish termites out of termite holes. If you stick the grass in, they cling to the intruder, meaning the little bit of grass. You pull them out and you have juicy termites to lick from the grass. So certain groups of chimpanzees are very good at that. And they do use all kinds of tools in that sense.

But very often with the grass, I should say, they actually make them because they take grass and then they peel off the side blades to have a stem and they use those. So in the sense that is tool making. But with any situation with rock it's very often as you just collect some boulders, some little rocks that are easy on the hand and you just bash them on a nut and the nut may crack and you can be more or less skilled with that. But you can see sort of, that was quite a shock when that was discovered and got a lot

of attention, you know, seen on TV in many cases, David Etterborough undoubtedly will have talked about that. And so suddenly we discovered that our living closest relative, the chimpanzee, was also using stone tools, so that was already quite something. Still it was seen as yeah but they're not making stone tools this is this is... The next shock in that whole context became clear when it was found in Capuchin monkeys that are New World's monkeys they are nowhere near related to us because that's a whole group that went off from Africa probably something like 25 million years ago they went off to the Americas to South America in

particular and capuchin monkeys are very clever have big brains monkey wise they have one the largest brains and they turn out to be very good and in many respects even more sophisticated than chimpanzees in the sense that they would really actively go and look for certain sources of nice stones if they would really actively go and look for certain sources of nice stones. If they would know that in the places where they would live that there are certain spots in the landscape where you can find handy hammer stones, they specifically go there, collect the stones,

and then walk a substantial distance with those stones to the food source where they want to crack nuts, for instance. That's very different from finding a nut and saying where's the nearest stone? I'm too stupid to really think hmm five kilometers from here or maybe even two kilometers from here or one kilometer from here there's a that's a good stash of stones that I can use. I pre-plan going collecting the stones coming back to the nuts and crack the nuts that is a lot of planning and capuchin monkeys do this i'm not sure if that's really known that well from from

chimpanzees even very recently it's been described that macaque species from the asia region do use stone tools use again not prepared they just use hammer. So it's much wider spread and not so unique for humans. So but nevertheless the making of stone tools, very actively planning and it becomes incredibly sophisticated at some stage, particularly when you reach Homo erectus then you and I can't simply replicate unless we do quite a bit of studying of how you do this. Can't replicate those stone tools easily. They're beautifully made and pre-planned by understanding the material. It's like sculpting, really.

So while it had been discovered that primates, and particularly then chimpanzees initially, that they also make stone tools, or use tools, grass and moss to mop up liquids and stones, older and older stone tools, manufactured stone tools became known. Initially they were thought to be maximum perhaps two million years or something, as old as handyman is and then indeed in Kenya around Lake Turkana and in Ethiopia up to 2.6 million. Different cultures are named, I'm not an archaeologist so I have to be very careful, but different cultures were named, often these cultures are then associated with

certain species, which we should be in itself quite careful with, at least I'm told by archaeologists that I should be careful with that because these stone tools, they don't come with little labels on them and saying I've been manufactured by Homo erectus or Homo habilis. But nevertheless you had a culture called the older one which was for a long time supposed to be the oldest culture, quite primitive really, you know, you knock a few bits off and then you have a hammer stone and you have some sharp blades that you could use to scrape meat from bones, whether you scavenge a carcass or you hunt for an animal. It helps you with skinning and it helps you with doing things.

And that evolved eventually in something called the Acheulean, that is typically Homo erectus related, much more sophisticated, beautiful. And it goes on and on into the more modern time. So 2.6 being about the latest, when at the time when this French team was wandering around and discovered these stone tools at Loma Cuy and through the fieldwork that we had done there a little how long before maybe ten years before whatever we knew what the age of the various layers was so where they found these stone tools

including inside the layers was an area 3.3 million years old and hominin fossils had been found in that same area that were assigned to coniantropous platyops so these were the older stone tools my impression at least is from talking with colleagues is that on the whole they are accepted as being real hominin made tools question is of course who is the tool maker that brings us then to the species that's already mentioned a few times kenyanthropus platyops well let's kind of rewind a little let's rewind a bit go into that because you know now we are at the tools and we're talking about who is the tool maker 3.3 million years ago there do seem to be a number of different candidates but this seems to

be number one kenyanthropus platyops what is Kenyanthropus platyops I know this is something that you know lots about yes so in another episode of the podcast we talked about Australopithecus we talked a lot about Australopithecus afarensis and this was really until the end of the 1990s was the one species that was known and its predecessor became known through its predecessor, Australopithecus anamensis. I might say that that podcast on Australopithecus, we've recorded it, but that might go out after. Ah, okay, well then stand by, but do realize between three and four million years ago, one hominin species was known and its predecessor, so Australopithecus anamensis,

leading to Australopithecus this is between 3.8 and 3 million years ago was sort of the mother of us all because from there it would all fan out after 3 million years ago. Now there were some challenges to that including some intriguing Australopithecus material that have been found by a French team in the Sahara desert in Chad. But many people think that that's ultimately also Australopithecus afarensis, at least you can't really distinguish it too well. Remains to be seen, we'll see. Meveleki started to do fieldwork after she had discovered Australopithecus anamensis

on the west side of Lake Takano, more towards the south a little bit, but in that area she found fossils that she named Australopithecus anamensis, which is the predecessor of Australopithecus afarensis. And then she changed her interest, working with her daughter Louise Leakey, she changed her interest in an area further up the western shores of Lake Turkana, Lomekwe, further up the western shores of Lake Turkana, Lomekwi. And in the late 1980s just a quick expedition, sort of roaming around a little bit as one does, had recovered a few intriguing hominin fossils. A few teeth here and a bit of a lower jaw there. So she did two full seasons of fieldwork,

lots of isolated teeth, about 40 something of them, some other bits and bobs and as it's often happened in the last day of the final season of the second year when they said well we think we really collected everything there is to collect in this area with our our fossil hunting team of about 25 very skilled people they found some er meaning that it's sort of weathered by the sun and the rain and everything else, eroded pieces of upper jaw on the surface. They excavated and they found that there was a face attached to that. And when they actually excavated more, they found the rest of the cranium as well.

So the vault bones, the bits that hold the brain, all of that was there as well. It's not a very pretty fossil. They did all the excavations and what you do in that situation, you do a lot of sieving. You take all the layers off from the surface, anything that could have been eroded out. You put those on increasingly small mesh sieves to get every single little bit of bone out that you can glue onto the thing. So she collected all of that. There was excavation going on to all the materials collected and

she brought it to Nairobi for two field seasons worth of interesting, but you could argue slightly disappointing fossils because here's a cranium. Wow, they already knew from geologists who worked with them that this would be sort of between the 3.2 and 3.5 million years old in that area. So their response was, OK, we have a really badly beaten up, badly eroded skull of Australopithecus afarensis, because that's the only species known from that time. I became involved because I was doing some of my own research in Nairobi working on inner ears that are visualized by making CT scans in the hospital of various fossils.

I had also helped the team with various projects to reconstruct fossils this and that and so to my surprise and delight of course doesn't happen often in your life but me even initially asked me you know would be great if we can ct scan this new cranium in the hospital and see what we can get out of it and that was my understanding that that would be my role but then she very soon after that said and actually what i want you you are an anatomist because my background is in anatomy medical and human anatomy although i'm a paleontologist by training, but I'm focused on that side. I'm not an archaeologist working on stone tools or an anthropologist being very human

focused. But as a human anatomist, typically I was asked, why don't you take the lead in describing this new material, including the skull? Of course, overjoyed, because that's a very privileged to be asked this. skull. Of course overjoyed because that's very privileged to be asked this but then of course I also instantly dawned on me that this was a rather difficult task because it was such a distorted and not well preserved fossil. So I got to work with me, we spent lots of time on the specimen cleaning, reconstructing, comparing. We went to Ethiopia, we went to South Africa to compare with other fossils. And as we went along, we started off absolutely with,

okay, this is just a variety of Australopithecus afarensis that's expected from that age and broadly speaking, the Eastern African region. But as we went along, we started to doubt this more and more. There were more and more features that define Australopithecus afarensis that could not be found in this new skull. And it had everything to do with the face. In fact, the neurocranium, the bit that holds the brain, had many features that were more primitive than Australopithecus afarensis. But in the face, it had many features that were more evolved. but in the face it had many features that were more evolved.

It's less snouty, sort of not as chimpanzee-like sticking out snout, but it's sort of more withdrawn the face and flat, so flat-faced. That was then expressed. Eventually we published this in 2001. And for various technical reasons, that I won't bore the listeners too much, for various technical reasons we made a new genus name available because we felt for unbiological reasons that it didn't fit within the Australopithecus envelope now there are some people who call everything that is old call it Australopithecus and we literally said if you do that then be merry and happy and call this

Australopithecus as well then it's just Australopithecus platyops. Platyops meaning flat faced. But if you take different criteria of how you name a genus then there are reasons to argue that this should be a different genus and then we make the name Kenyanthropus, Kenya Anthropus, the human from Kenya, make that name available so in total then you have Kenyanthropus, the human from Kenya make that name available. So in total then you have Kenyanthropus platyops, the flat-faced human from Kenya. And as so often with these things it got quite a bit of resistance in an ironic way, particularly

the person of Tim White who had fought long and hard battles with scientists in South Africa to get Australopithecus afarensis accepted as a species different from the southern Australopithecus, Australopithecus africanus, now was the greatest critic to say no, no, no, no, if it's three and a half million years old it absolutely has to be Australopithecus afarensis. And if anything that you present that claims that that's not the case, it just means that it's a distorted fossil, that it's all broken up into pieces and you just haven't looked very hard. Initially, a lot of, because he was a very well-known person

and I was a nobody and, okay, I worked, of course I worked with Mies Leakey and this and that, but then they would say, okay, but she has already described some new fossils and maybe a new species. So it was yes there was some skepticism initially but there were some breakthroughs that another expert bill kimball who worked with the team one of the really of the key people working on australopithecus afarensis particularly on the cranium of australopithecus afarensis he was the expert he looked at our

material and he said well i, I'm very cautious, but I can see that you have a point. And he was very supportive, often in public a little bit more, a bit more cautious, never skeptical, but cautious, but in always encouraging, yes, go on with this and does stuff there. And we ended up doing very detailed analysis of what the distortion was like in the face of this conianthropous fossil and could really prove that if you if you counteract all the distortions and the expansion whatever awkward things that happen to fossils if we if you counter balance all of that you still end up with a very different creature. So this was found at

Loma Cuy some fossils clearly also belong to the same thing, others not. Wind forward the clock then in the same area these French archaeologists, great team, they found these stone tools and yes literally a few meters away from where the stone tools were found fossils that we assigned to Kenyans-Prasplatiobs are found there as well. So there are different candidates but the most logical candidate is of course found fossils that we assign to Kenyan Trisplatiobs are found there as well. So there are different candidates but the most logical candidate is of course that Kenyan Trisplatiobs made those first stone tools.

Now people could say ho ho not so fast because there is one other important element and that touches on the whole question of tool use versus tool making. A little bit earlier a good friend and colleague of mine, Zerai Adam Seget, who had found a beautiful Australopithecus baby in Ethiopia, had continued to do field work in the area of the Kika in the Afra triangle in Ethiopia and he had found some animal bones, mammal bones, antelope here or you know different types, that had scratches on them, deep cuts that were recognized by archaeologists as cut marks. So when you use a stone tool, a very sharp stone, and you cut the muscles of a bone, which is typically something that it's used for, or you crush, you crush a bone to get the

bone marrow out. But if you use the sharp thing to cut off muscle, then almost unavoidably you leave scratches and cuts on the bone. The same happens now if you use a steel knife. If you would go to a butcher, you ask, can we have the bones for the dog? Then in a very characteristic way that reflects the type of butchering, the way the muscles are cut off the bone, you find spots on the skeleton where stuff has been cut. Now the problem is a big discussion had been going on in archaeology for many many decades already, how to distinguish between accidental, a sharp stone sliding along a bone because some animal run over it and

and it scratches into the bone and when is it actually a cut that really reflects a hominin holding a sharp piece of stone and cutting it. So they found limb bones that had cut marks in them of about 3.4 million. This was before the 3.3 stone tooth sonolomic we had been found. But because it's only a few of these cut marks, it really is an ongoing, to this day I think, an ongoing discussion of skeptical archaeologists who say, maybe not, and some that say yes, no, definitely yes. Because even when crocodiles, which are quite abundant in the fossil records in Eastern Africa at that time. A lot of fossils are created in watery environments, and so there's crocodiles abound who chew on carcasses

and drag carcasses into the water where they might fossilize and later on in the slush of the sediments. Crocodile bites are not unheard of, and crocodiles have a sharp edge to their... They look like they have these nasty little conical teeth everywhere, but actually very often they have sort of a sharp edge to their, they look like they have these nasty little conical teeth everywhere, but actually very often they have a sort of a sharp edge on the side, so the crocodile bites can also mimic this sort of thing. So there's a big discussion. So, but the scene was set for the possibility that Australopithecus, in this case it was literally found where Australopithecus

afarensis was found, There is evidence, controversial evidence, but there's evidence for stone tool use rather than stone tool making because the stone tools themselves have never been found in that area. From the Kika at 3.4 and then now came the French and said we have this new culture of very primitive, they're big stones both around things and yes you can see how on purpose bits have been knocked off from either side and how it all fits together and it's often the question do you have the boulder that you hammer on do you sort of hold that on the ground and then you hammer on it or do you hold one in one hand and you take another rock in the other hand and you you knock pieces off in a more

controlled way you can distinguish all these technologies in different ways. They described new technology that they called the Lomachrian just like you had the older one or the Acheulean so and that's done the oldest culture and I have the impression that it's much more accepted among archaeologists than the cut marks from the Kika as such and yes in the case of these Lomachri stone tools the the toolmaker, the plausible toolmaker is the one that is found in the same region and Australopithecus afarensis has never been found in that area at all. Some fossils have been referred to Australopithecus afarensis in that area but that was only done because that was in the days when no alternatives were known.

And so if you find half a tooth and a bit of scrappy bone of a hominin that is 3.5 or 3.3 million years old, then you say it's a hominin and it's not Homo sapiens, it's not us. But, OK, what's alive now? Oh, yeah, OK, we have Australopithecus afarensis from Tanzania and from Ethiopia so that must be the same thing. So it had been published that way but that should not be confused with actively identifying Australopithecus afarensis was around here. So the nearest Australopithecus afarensis close to those 3.3 million year old tools, is literally thousands of kilometers away.

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to catch new episodes every Wednesday and Sunday. Well, it therefore begs the question, if it seems from their proximity to where these tools were discovered that Kenyanthropus platyopsis is the most plausible toolmaker for these 3.3 million year old tools. But what could be potential other candidates? What other fossils have been found that date to roughly that time in Lomekwi that could be a different candidate for the toolmaker? In Lomekwi and on the western side of Lake Turkana in general, nothing else. Really?

Nothing else. But there are some other candidates. So after we described Canyanspris platyops, three and a half million and also one or two other fossils, but particular one of the one that is about 3.3 million that has all the same characteristics so they fit together. Subsequently, and that is actually almost more intriguing still, an Ethiopian-American team that worked in an area in the Afro Triangle, once again quite close to Hadar where Lucy and all the other Australopithecus afarensis fossils have been found. They found some fossils that they felt didn't fit within the variation that is now known for Australopithecus afarensis. It's like Kenyanthropus platyopsis between

three and a half and 3.3 million and they described this as a new species of Australopithecus. Australopithecus diarhamida, complicated name to remember, but I sometimes feel that on the whole people are actually more skeptical about that than it might still be about Kenyanthropus platyops. It's partly because we did so much work on investigating the distortion and proving that that was not the factor. The big difference being as well that in direct, literally in the area where they find the fossils of this new species of Australopithecus, Australopithecus diarhamida,

they also find fossils of Australopithecus afarensis. So if it is correct that they have a second species, then it literally lived in the same area and if it's really rather alike that automatically, any biologist will then ask you the question, how could these two live in the same area without being in each other's way? That usually the answer is they have different ecological niches. They eat different things or they live at different types of the day or they live seasonally so they move in and out of the area but there is quite a bit of

skepticism going on so that would potentially be an alternative it has some things in common with King Anthroposplatiops now I already said the skepticism there but the real breakthrough that made it aware to anyone that Australopithecus afarensis is not alone between 3 and 3.8 million years ago, came again from the same Ethiopian-American team, Johannes Haile Selassie as the team leader. Because before they had found Australopithecus diarhamida, which remains to be seen if it is really a different species, they had found part of a foot. A foot sounds like, oh you find one clump of stuff, but of course any foot is made up out of a lot of different little bones. But these were bones that were associated with each other and it's like half a foot or something.

But it included, among other things, the bits that form your big toe. Humans as we all know, we only have to look at our own feet, we have big toes that you can't really, you can grasp something a little bit with it but you can't use it like your thumb. Whereas the big toe in apes in particular, you can clearly see they can just grasp like a hand so that's what you call an opposable big toe because they can rotate their big toe opposite to their fingers and you can really just grab something. So they

found this foot and they very convincingly could demonstrate and this all happens a few years before Australopithecus diarhamidae was found. They could really show that this foot was really fundamentally different from what we know from Australopithecus afarensis. A good number of foot bones have been found and it was well understood. Their big toe, Lucy doesn't have a big toe,

but the species, there's several species of big toes and we know they don't have a grasping big toe, that they have a big toe like humans. It's just pulled together with the rest of the toes, and it's great for when you walk, you push it off while you walk. So this same team had found a foot that demonstrated that another creature that clearly was a hominin,

that came from other elements of the toes, it was not an ape, it was a hominin, but with a partially opposable big toe. They very sensibly said okay a foot that is different from Afarensis we could give it a species name but unless you find another foot which is really relatively rare nobody who finds another group of fossils can ever compare it with our foot whereas teeth and skulls and lower jaws they are found quite regularly because they're hard and

they preserve well so we will refrain great discipline they will refrain from giving a species name to this foot that is known as the Brutale foot yeah I think it's 3.4 million or something along that line and so they had already demonstrated beyond reasonable doubts even people who still were skeptical about C. antroposplatiops as being a contemporary of Afarensis, this food demonstrated that something else was going on. So this food, it's an open question. It could be an ancestor of Afarensis because ultimately we don't have any food skeletons for Australopithecus anamensis let alone for even older things like Ardipithecus which is a more primitive species that comes

before there we actually do know that it also has an opposable big toe however that is a lot older you're talking about material that's a lot older so you would have a survival of that and of course it's I would say that would I it is still possible that of course this is the foot of Kenyans plus platyopes, if it lived all over eastern Africa. So the foot is sort of hanging in space, it's the best evidence we have that there's more more species than just one present between three and four million, but we don't know what it is. So yes there are other candidates out there for these stone tools that are made.

It's Kenyantropus platyops. If Australopithecus diaromidae is a real separate species, maybe that could be the owner of the Brutale foot. But all the other evidence other than Kenyantropus platyops, you have to go hundreds and hundreds of miles away from where the stone tools are made. It sounds like this is our best bet at the moment, but I guess it's also quite interesting for the future,

when it seems almost certain that more discoveries will be made, maybe more tools from 3.3 or maybe even 3.4 million years ago, that might even bring it back. We may even learn of a new species as being one of these tool makers from the mid-Pliocene. It's quite exciting for the future. This is the extent of our knowledge at the moment, but that might change in the near future. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And the limit in many respects and also the reason why we sometimes have these gaps in our understanding, the limit is what kind of what kind of geological layers are available in different places and do they have the right

age? Is have the right age, is it the right type of layers and if you want fossils then you know you prefer things like sandstone and to some extent mudstone. Mudstone is not great because that's actually there's a lot of clay in that and clay is not great for fossils. Actually Canyansplatiops it is so horrible because it was found in claystone and clay expands you know when you next time you walk around somewhere where there's a lot of clay around in in the countryside you will see that if it dries out in the summer you get all these cracks in it the typical perception of a clay pool with all the sort of pattern of cracks and that is because the clay contracts as it dries out when the next rain comes it expands again and it fills the whole thing. If there's a

fossil included in with clay then the clay actually, clay is like dust it goes into the fine little cracks that you may have in a fossil and when it rains that clay wants to expand so it pushes against the bone, makes the crack bigger and then when it dries out it's it's a contract again more dust can get in and it starts to really completely damage the fossil in any case so having the right sediments of the right type of environment plus on top of that something trivial not so trivial whether the political climate of a particular country is suitable for paleontologists to go there.

Best example of this is one after Libya and Gaddafi died and whatever there was a moment of glasnost when suddenly from earlier work in the 50s I think it was well known that there's a treasure trove from anything from dinosaurs to early humans and various options that there is in Libya. So there was a run of paleontologists wanting to work in Libya. And of course, that very quickly, once the civil war really started, and it became all very bloody, that's all completely dried up again. But it's a good example where changing politics can open up areas. But it remains that it's just a roll of the dice that

there are certain time periods when we know very little and that it might be difficult. But people learn because yes it is undoubtedly true, some very clever listeners may ask, so you were roaming around there in the late 1990s looking for fossils and you found fossils that became Cleantopus platyops, did you see any of these stone tools then? And the answer is probably yes, but because it was known to be 3.3, 3.5, in that ballpark, a million years old, and it was known that there were no stone tools older than 2.6, paleontologists who walk around there, they just think like, oh, well,

yes, you know, it looks good. A bit of fantasy could be a stone tool, but of course it can't be because it is way too old and it's probably just survived on the surface or it isn't anything at all. Plus it is a very primitive culture. So it becomes, if it's a beautiful, shiny hand axe, that is obviously something beautifully made. Yes, then you think twice but if it's just roughly hammered stones. So but now people know that this culture exists. In the same way that now people become suspicious when they see scratches of bone because of the dikiker cut marks, the moment that was published I know from colleagues who the first

thing they did was run back to their own animal bones that they collected and start to inspect them and saying do I have any cut marks? Because I never really looked for it because I knew my bones were 4 million years old or 3.5 million years old. You don't expect anything. So it helps a lot once you have an example to re-examine existing evidence so watch this space not that i have any special knowledge at the moment that something's coming up but nevertheless we know that over time more things will be found and ideally i always feel like let's hope that areas outside eastern africa can get explored and like like the site I referred to in the middle of Chad,

where remarkable 3.5 and 7 million year old fossils suddenly popped up. As long as you know where to look and the circumstances are right, that you can work there, then there is a lot to discover. Well, I said that was very exciting indeed. Well, for the future, we'll see what happens.

As you say, watch this space. And Fred, this has been brilliant. I will wrap it up now and just say, always a pleasure having you on the podcast, my friend. And thank you so much for coming back. You're most welcome. Well, there you go. There was Professor Fred Spohr talking all about these first toolmakers.

More than 3 million years ago in Africa the potential candidates for making these early tools discovered at Lemeckwi near Lake Tekana. It's such a fascinating topic there is still so much shrouded in debate and it's very very likely that in the future in the years ahead as more evidence comes to light, that the date for the first tool makers, well, it may well go even further back into the story of human evolution, more than 3.3 million years ago. Who knows? We'll see what happens in the years ahead, what finds are uncovered. Now, last things from me, you know what I'm going to say, but if you've been enjoying the ancients and you want to help us out, you know what you can do. You can leave us a

lovely rating on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts from. It greatly helps us as we continue to share these incredible stories from our distant past with you and with as many people as possible. But that's enough from me, and I will see you in the next episode.