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New Dates for North Africa’s Acheulian Stone Tools

Friday, July 30, 2021

CASABLANCA, MOROCCO—The AFP reports that a hand-ax manufacturing sited dated to some 1.3 million years ago has been uncovered in a quarry in central-western Morocco by an international team of researchers. Archaeologist Abderrahim Mohib said the discovery pushes back the emergence of Acheulian stone tool technology in North Africa by about 600,000 years. Acheulian tools in South Africa have been dated to 1.6 million years ago, and to 1.8 million years ago in East Africa. Mohib said that the tools were associated with the human relative Homo erectus. To read about tools that predate these, go to "Earliest Stone Tools," one of ARCHAEOLOGY's Top 10 Discoveries of 2015.

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