Oldest archaeological site

The site, called Lomekwi 3, holds bones of hominins as well as stone artifacts and is located on a low hill in West Turkana, Kenya. In a study published in 2015 in the journal Nature, researchers reported that, by dating the sediment where the artifacts were found, they estimated the age of the site to be about 3.3 million years. The finds “mark a new beginning to the known archaeological record,” a team of scientists wrote in the journal article. The tools were likely created by Australopithecus afarensis, a hominin (human ancestors and their relatives) that thrived in the region at the time. 

The site is located in a wooded area on a small hill not far from Lake Turkana. It’s possible that Australopithecus afarensis was using the stone artifacts to break open nuts the team wrote in the paper. The number of people who lived at the site at any given time is not clear. 

“Lomekwi 3 is the oldest known archaeological site in the world,” Jason Lewis, assistant director of the Turkana Basin Institute and a co-author of the paper, told Live Science in an email. 

Jeremy DeSilva, an associate professor of anthropology at Dartmouth College who was not involved in the study, agreed that Lomekwi 3 is the oldest known archaeological site, but he noted that not all scholars agree. “Lomekwi is controversial, and some of our colleagues remain unconvinced of the antiquity of these tools,” DeSilva told Live Science. 

Rick Potts, director of the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program, is convinced that Lomekwi 3 “is the oldest site with solid evidence of stone-on-stone percussion,” meaning that it’s the oldest site that has stone artifacts made by human ancestors. He noted that the stone artifacts at Lomekwi 3 appear different from those found at Gona; they are cruder and may not have been used as tools at all. The stone artifacts at Lomekwi 3 “show awkward fracturing of the rocks, including large, thick, irregularly shaped flakes that could have been the accidental byproducts of pounding — for what purpose, no one currently knows,” Potts wrote in an email, noting that people at Lomekwi 3 may not have been creating tools but rather pounding rocks together for unknown reasons. Even if the Lomekwi 3 artifacts weren’t used as tools, they would still be considered artifacts created by humans. 

Brian Villmoare, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Nevada, told Live Science, “I do tend to think that Australopithecus afarensis could have made stone tools,” but he noted that he has not examined the Lomekwi 3 artifacts. 

Live Science