A new study conducted on archeological finds suggests that humans may have evolved over 80,000 years earlier than previously believed.Dating the stone tools found in the 1970s at the archaeological site of Gademotta, in Ethiopia's Rift Valley, researchers at Berkeley Geochronology Center found that the volcanic ash layers of the site were at least 276,000 years old.
The argon-argon dating - a technique that compares different isotopes of the element argon - showed that the tools were much older than the oldest known Homo sapien bones, which date back to around 195,000 years ago.
The tools are believed to be associated with the emergence of the modern human species, Homo sapiens, the National Geographic reported.
"It seems that we were technologically more advanced at an earlier time that we had previously thought," said study co-author Leah Morgan, from the University of California, Berkeley.
Archeologists believe Gademotta attracted many settlers because of its close proximity to fresh water and its rich resources of a hard, black volcanic glass, known as obsidian. "Due to its lack of crystalline structure, obsidian glass is one of the best raw materials to use for making tools," Morgan explained.
Lack of skeletal remains makes it difficult for archeologists to determine whether Homo sapiens created the Gademotta tools or other human species may have had the required mental and manual abilities to forge them.