A series of artifacts dating back 600,000 years serves as shocking evidence of a great technological explosion not created by modern humans.
The Technological Explosion 600,000 Years Ago did not occur in the same manner as we are witnessing in the 21st century, but it laid the foundation for the remarkable development of our species hundreds of thousands of years later.
According to Science Alert, this technological explosion marked a significant leap in the complexity of stone tools, indicating that human knowledge suddenly surged around 600,000 years ago.
Ancient humans created a great technological explosion for stone tools – (AI Image: Anh Thư).
A research team led by anthropologists Jonathan Paige from the University of Missouri and Charles Perreault from Arizona State University analyzed a series of ancient tools from Africa, Europe, Asia, Oceania (including the Sahul shelf), and the Americas (including Greenland).
A total of 62 different stone tool technologies were categorized based on findings from 57 archaeological sites.
They discovered that up until about 1.8 million years ago, the sequence of stone tool production consisted of 2-4 process units. During the subsequent 1.2 million years, the complexity of tools increased, reaching up to 7 process units.
However, it was not until approximately 600,000 years ago that our ancestors elevated this to a new level: Tools suddenly became extremely complex, with some crafted through as many as 18 different process units.
The authors suggest that such a significant technological advancement depended on knowledge passed down from previous generations.
In subsequent generations, the complexity of stone tools continued to accelerate, much like how our world today has “transformed” rapidly due to modern digital technology.
This leap also indicates that at that time, the humans inhabiting Earth had evolved to a point where they were ready to experiment and discover new methods from the very mistakes they inadvertently made during tool production.
In other words, it was akin to a form of primitive scientific research.
The widespread improvement of tool production processes also demonstrates that the human brain at that time had evolved to harness collective knowledge and engage in cultural exchanges.
This allowed individuals to use and improve technology without needing to fully understand every aspect of its development, paving the way for a growing and adaptive knowledge base. This is also the foundation for today’s advancing society.
As collective knowledge and related behaviors developed, the genes influencing learning could also be selected.
The product of this process of “co-evolution” between culture and genes may include an increase in relative brain size, the complexity of personal lives, and other key traits that underlie human uniqueness.
Although these new findings provide solid evidence for the presence of cumulative culture around the onset of the Middle Pleistocene, this cultural intelligence may have emerged even earlier in human history.
Our species, Homo sapiens, also known as modern humans or wise humans, emerged around 300,000 years ago.
This means that this technological explosion was not created by our direct ancestors, but rather by the ancient human species that have since gone extinct.
Previous studies indicate that at the time our species arose, there were still at least 8-9 other species within the genus Homo coexisting.
