Researchers have discovered stone tools and processed animal bones in Kenya that are up to three million years old – significantly older than previous finds. But who handled it? It most certainly wasn’t monkeys.
From
Jacob Wetzel
Anthropologists can be quite unfair. Many years ago, for example, they colloquially dubbed the pre-human Paranthropus the “Nutcracker Man” simply because it had jaws with strong chewing muscles and remarkably large molars. It has long been clear that the name does not fit because the species feeds less on nuts and more on grasses. But now it turns out that even if these pre-humans had loved to eat nuts, they probably wouldn’t have cracked them with their teeth. Rather, they would have used a tool to do so.