Earliest evidence for stone grinding tool dates back 350,000 years
The discovery shows that our ancestors played games using rocks that were heated and used as different pieces.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFF350,000-year-old game pieces made by Homo Sapiens, discovered by Haifa University(photo credit: DR. IRIS GOMAN-YAROSLAVSKI)
"Simple" tools were used to fashion pieces for games in discoveries found in the Tabun Caves at Mount Carmel and published in the Journal of Human Evolution by Dr. Ron Shimelmitz, Dr. Iris Goman-Yaroslavski, Prof. Mina Weinstein-Evron and Prof. Dani Rosenberg of Haifa University's Archaeology Department.The Tabun site has intermittently been home to people from 500-40 thousand years ago and has been declared by UNESCO as having "universal value" showing stages of human evolution.This discovery shows that 350,000 years ago, our ancestors played games using rocks that were heated and used as different pieces – much like today where different shaped pieces of a game hold different values.Until 2017 it was thought that Homo sapiens were only 160,000 years old. The discovery in Tabun helps to confirm a discovery in Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, which suggested that our species is probably closer to 350,000 years old.“It was indeed a big wow [moment],” says Jean-Jacques Hublin at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, according to the New Scientist magazine, though at the time there was skepticism.The research conducted by the University of Haifa also proves that 350,000 years ago our ancestors used fire as part of their everyday life, which in itself is an important discovery.All of this shows that Homo sapiens who existed 350,000 years ago were almost fully developed in the evolutionary chain.What is peculiarly significant though is that until now, it was thought that Homo sapiens used techniques to make game pieces similar to modern humans only 150,000 years ago. "The period of time 200,000-400,000 years ago is a period of important technological innovations and significant changes," Shimelmitz said.
