Humans
Ancient humans living in what is now Ukraine 400,000 years ago may have practised or taught tool-making techniques using mammoth tusks, a softer material than bone
A mammoth skeleton at the State Museum for Natural History in Stuttgart, Germany
DANIEL NAUPOLD/dpa/Alamy
Archaeologists excavating 400,000-year-old rock in western Ukraine have uncovered fragments of what could be the oldest human-made ivory objects ever found. These artefacts would have been too soft to use as cutting tools, but they could have been used as teaching aids, the researchers suggest.
“If the interpretations are correct, they add to an apparently increasing appreciation of the intelligence of pre-modern humans,” says Gary Haynes at the University of Nevada.
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