As early as 1.2 million years ago, hominids roamed western Turkey. This is apparent from the accidental discovery of a stone tool, which was left behind in an old riverbed by the ancient people of that time.
In recent years there have been more indications that humans had been present in Turkey so long ago. But the discovery of these Stone Age tools provides the first hard evidence for this assumption. The tool, probably some kind of knife, was found about 200 kilometers south of the Bosphorus. That was probably the gateway to Europe for primitive man from Asia. It may mean that humans arrived in Europe via this route much earlier than thought.
That is what a team of earth scientists from the University of Twente, VU University Amsterdam, Wageningen University, Utrecht University and universities from the United Kingdom and Turkey writes in the journal Quaternary Science Review this month. .
Primary blade
The stone shard found is made of quartz, measures about 5 centimeters, and is clearly visible. Pieces have been knocked off with a hard object, apparently to sharpen the edges.
The discovery of the primal blade was a coincidence. Earth scientists came across the quartz shard during a research project aimed at reconstructing the former course of the Gediz River. It flows through a volcanic landscape in western Turkey. Lava flows there periodically shifted the course of the river. Because the age of lava is easy to determine from radioisotope measurements, the researchers were able to accurately date the sediments in which they found the tools. The quartz shard must have been left behind in the dried up river bend between 1.17 and 1.24 years ago, the earth scientists concluded. The maker was probably a copy of the Homo erectus, one of the first forerunners of man, who walked the earth from about 1.8 million to 200,000 years ago.
Evidence
The oldest known remains of primordial humans from Turkey are a few skull fragments of the Homo erectus, found in Kocabas in 2007. A year ago it was suggested that these too are about 1.2 million years old – instead of the previously estimated 500,000 years – but that dating was accompanied by many uncertainties. “The primeval blade from the Gediz is the first indisputable evidence that hominins were indeed already present in Turkey at that time,” says Tom Veldkamp of the University of Twente, who has been involved in river research in Turkey for ten years. The find strengthens the theory that our precursor arrived in Asia from Africa about 2 million years ago, and ended up in Europe via Turkey over a million years ago.
Alexander Verpoorte, archaeologist from the University of Leiden, and not involved in the research, thinks the research looks solid. “It confirms what to expect based on previous finds from Dmanisi in Georgia and Atapuerca in Spain,” he says. The oldest human remains from Europe have been found in Atapuerca, about 1.2 million years old, in Georgia in Asia a 1.8 million year old human skull. Verpoorte does hope that the investigation will be expanded further. “One find is still a bit meager,” he says.