Ancient tools found in a miracle cave in South Africa suggest our earliest ancestors set up camp there more than 1.8 million years ago, according to palaeontologists.
Experts from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem examined the Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa s Kalahari Desert, delving down to ancient layers within the historic site.
Few places in the world preserve a continuous archaeological record spanning millions of years, but this is one such site. Its name means miracle in Afrikaans.
The new study, including work by geologists and archaeologists, confirms the existence of human-made stone tools dating back 1.8 million years.
This marks it as the earliest cave occupation in the world and the site of some of the earliest indications of fire use and tool making among prehistoric humans.
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Apr. 26, 2021 5:00 AM
Archaeologists have found the oldest home in hominin history. Unsurprisingly, it is a cave: Wonderwerk Cave in the Kalahari Desert. Astonishingly, it has been occupied more or less continuously for two million years. Through most of that time, modern humans didn’t even exist.
The archaeologists have also demonstrated the earliest-ever use of fire, a million years ago, and of symbolic thinking half a million years ago in Wonderwerk Cave, report Ron Shaar, Ari Matmon, Liora Kolska Horwitz, Yael Ebert and Michael Chazan in Quaternary Science Reviews.
Among the signs of advanced cognitive ability, the archaeologists believe they have found indications that ocher may have been used there 500,000 to 300,000 years ago – hundreds of thousands of years earlier than thought.