Photo courtesy NPR

Excavations at three archaeological sites in Rabai in Baringo South, have revealed over 800 ancient stone tools dating back 300,000 years. Palaeontologists from the Turkana Basin Institute said the stone tools were found after only one month of digging.

The discovery of the stone tools has come about as the result of a Sh12 million project under the auspices of the Sino-Kenya Paleolithic Archaeological Project, a partnership between the National Museum of Kenya in conjunction with the Henan Provincial Institute of Culture Heritage and Archaeology in China.

Quoted in The Standard, Dr Job Kibii, the Coordinator of Research at the Turkana Basin Institute, said, “At Baringo, near Begoria Spa, we have excavations of archaeological sites going on to determine tolls left behind by our great ancestors.”

The technology of our ancestors

The stone tools discovered include choppers, flakes, angular fragments and sangoan picks (hand axe).

The discoveries will help archaeologists understand the type of equipment used by our Palaeolithic ancestors for cutting meat, hunting, and chopping tubers.

Kenya, the cradle of humankind

Dr Kibii said, “We are looking at the technology our great ancestors used, the initial human being’s technology with significantly Kenya being mentioned as the cradle of humankind with earlier human ancestors coming from Tugen Hills in Baringo dated 6 million years ago.”

In March this year, archaeologists in Kenya announced that they had unearthed ancient stone tools used by early man from as long as three million years’ ago, surpassing the age of such stone tools found in the Ledi-Gararu site in Ethiopia which date back 2.6 million years.

As reported in the journal Science the stone tools were found on the banks of Lake Victoria at the Nyayanga site in the Homa Bay area of western Kenya.