Stone tools about 1.4 million years old have been found in Ukraine

In western Ukraine, archaeologists have discovered stone tools that are about 1.4 million years old. They are the oldest known artifacts in Europe made by ancient people. Nature reported it.

In particular, the results of the study support the theory that representatives of the species Homo erectus entered Europe from the east and spread westward, probably in the valleys of the Danube River.

“Until now there was no hard evidence of east-west migration. Now we have it,” said study co-author Roman Garba, an archaeologist at the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague.

The tools were found in the 1980s in the Ukrainian village of Korolev near the Romanian border, but no one could date them precisely.

Archaeologists from the Czech Academy of Sciences used a dating method based on cosmogenic nuclides to help determine how long ago the mineral was buried. The team calculated that the tools must be 1.4 million years old.

To date, the oldest dated evidence of human ancestors in Europe are fossils and stone tools found in Spain and France. Both are between 1.1 and 1.2 million years old.

The dating of the Korolevo tools has led researchers to speculate that the ancestors of the people who made them were the only archaic people living outside of Africa, about 1.4 million years ago.

However, there are no fossilized human remains in the oldest sediment layer in the Ukrainian settlement, so it is impossible to be sure that the tools were made by Homo erectus.

It was previously reported that in a Neolithic settlement in Turkey, archaeologists discovered bread that is about 8,600 years old.