1.2-Million-Year-Old Obsidian Handaxe Factory Discovered in Ethiopia

A team of researchers has discovered a workshop for Obsidian handaxe in Ethiopia while working at the Melka Kunture dig site.

Obsidian Handaxe-Making Workshop Discovered

A group of researchers affiliated with several institutions in Spain, with two colleagues from France and another from Germany, were working on a Paleolithic site in the upper Awash Valley, Ethiopia, when they found a handaxe buried in a layer of sediment, Phys.org reported.

However, the item wasn't rare because they found more. They collected 578 handaxes, and all but three were made of obsidian, suggesting that the material around the axes was approximately 1.2 million years ago.

They also noticed that the handaxes were crafted similarly, indicating that they had just discovered a knapping workshop. They found marks that were reportedly the oldest known example of such a workshop and the first of its kind outside Europe. However, since it was done long ago, they could no longer figure out which hominids created them.

The paper is published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

ALSO READ: Stone Age Discovery: Humans Aren't the Only Ones Who Used Tools Made of Stone

Stone Age Revisited

The Stone Age was the period of prehistory when humans used primitive stone tools. It lasted approximately 2.6 million years and ended 5,000 years ago when humans in the Near East began working with metals and creating tools using bronze, according to History.

Historians usually break the era down into Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic periods. Earlier research has shown that "knapping workshops" appeared sometime during the Middle Pleistocene, Europe-approximately 774,000 to 129,000 years ago.

Knapping workshops emerged as the craft of tool-making gained popularity. People who had developed such skills collaborated in workshops to produce sufficient quantities of tools required by those living in the surrounding area. The handaxe was one example of this type of tool; it could either be used for chopping or as a weapon.

Crafting a sharp edge on a stone by chipping bits off was the traditional method for making handaxes. When in use, one needed to hold them in one's hand as they did not require attachments.

Flint was typically the stone used, but in recent times, obsidian is a type of volcanic glass. Even today, people consider obsidian to be a challenging material to work with because it is so rough on the skin.

According to GeologyScience, obsidian occurs as a natural glass formed by the rapid cooling of lava. They have a conchoidal fracture and vitreous luster. They usually come in dark, black, grey-black to grey colors.

Depending on the trace element content and the inclusion character, they may also occur in ed, brown-green, green, yellow, and rare transparent colorless.

In the course of their latest investigation, the researchers discovered evidence of an obsidian handaxe knapping workshop that was established significantly earlier than any other workshop that has ever been discovered.