An assemblage of tools found in Tanzania that was fashioned about 1.5 million years ago from the limb bones of elephants and hippos reveals what scientists are calling a technological breakthrough for the human evolutionary lineage - systematic production of implements made from a material other than stone.

Bone artifacts discovered in Tanzania push back the earliest known date of bone tool technology by over a million years. In Olduvai Gorge, archaeologists have discovered a range of bone tools thought to have been made and used by an ancestral human species of hominid called Homo habilis 1.

New evidence uncovered in east Africa indicates ancient hominins began crafting tools from animal bones far earlier than previously thought. If confirmed, our human ancestors started shaping bones by striking them at specific angles in a process known as knapping as much as 1.