El Kherba Have Relation With Early Human Activities: 1.7 Million-Year-Old Site Found In Algeria

A paleoecological study has been done for reconstructing the paleoenvironments of the site of El Kherba in Algeria, which has been discovered recently. The age of the site is said to be 1.7 million years. The study shows the site having relation with early human activities.

According to Phys, the research study on the Algerian site of El Kherba is led by Mohamed Sahnouni, who is the coordinator of the Prehistoric Technology Program at the Centro Nacional de Investigation Sobre la Evolucion Humana (CENIEH). The study has also been published in the journal L'Anthropologie.

Sahnouni has used fossil fauna and carbon stable isotopes for the study on El Kherba. The conclusion from this paleoecological study demonstrates the event of an increasingly open landscape, which is bolstered by the pedogenic carbonate data, which shows a change in climate that is steady with the archived Plio-Pleistocene mainland pattern of expanding aridification and grassland expansion.

Centro Nacional de Investigation Sobre la Evolucion Humana (CENIEH) reported that the study on El Kherba shows hominid foraging activities were impacted by the climate change, most probably in the Archaeological level A. These early human activities were characterized by the use of stone tools and fossil bones, which witnesses the level A. Archaeological level B was also witnessed, as the findings had some closed habitats and abundant archaeological materials.

"The open habitat in level A would have caused major constraints for early hominids, such as limitations on access to food supply and water as a result of their diffusion and shortage on the landscape, as well as riskier possibilities for meat acquisition due to competition with carnivores," Mohamed Sahnouni said. In the study on El Kherba of Algeria, apart from CENIEH, some other organizations also participated such as Centre National de Recherches Prehistoriques, Anthropologiques et Historiques (CNRPAH, Algeria), Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales (Madrid), and Indiana University Bloomington and Chevron Energy (USA).