Daily SumUp

Our ancestors were making tools out of bones 1.5 million years ago, winding back the clock for this important moment in human evolution by more than a million years, a study said on Wednesday.

Ancient humans — also called hominins — such as the robust Australopithecus are known to have used fragments of bones to dig up tubers from termite mounds. Even today our closest living relative, chimpanzees, use sticks in a similar way to dig out termites for a tasty treat. And more than two million years ago, hominins were using crude stone tools in Tanzania’s Olduvai Gorge, one of the world’s most important prehistoric sites.

But there were no known examples of anyone systematically making bone tools more than 500,000 years ago — until now.