Palaeontology

'Carpet of tools' discovered in the Sahara

By T.K. Randall
March 15, 2015

Image: AI-generated (Midjourney) Finding a discarded tool that was once used by one of our ancient ancestors is usually a rare and exciting event, but in an extensive outcrop of sandstone in the Sahara desert there are so many such artefacts that the area has been dubbed the "carpet of tools".

Thought to have built up over several hundred thousand years, the tools are so plentiful that there are millions of them within a single square kilometer. The region is thought to be the earliest known landscape to have been modified by hominim activity."The Messak sandstone, now in the middle of the vast sand seas of Libya, would have been a high quality rock for hominins to fracture," said Dr Robert Foley. "The landscape is in effect a carpet of stone tools, most probably made in the Middle and Upper Pleistocene."

It is believed that the earliest stone tools in the region date back over two million years.

Source: University of Cambridge

Tags: Sahara, Tools