A 220,000-year-old ‘stone workshop’ found in South Africa is changing what we know about early humans

New research has revealed that the early humans quarried metamorphic rock as far back as 220,000 years ago. A revolutionary study in Nature Communications uncovers that early humans in South Africa were involved in organised stone quarrying as long ago as 220,000 years. At the Jojosi site, located in eastern South Africa, an international team of researchers found evidence indicating that these ancient people actively sought out specific raw materials. This finding challenges the long-standing model of ‘embedded procurement,’ which claimed early humans only collected stones opportunistically during hunting or gathering activities. Instead, they made purposeful and repeated visits to certain places just to obtain high-quality hornfels. This pushes back the timeline for complex planning and shows Middle Pleistocene humans had an advanced grasp of their surroundings and managed resources over the long term. They passed this knowledge through generations. This deliberate resource management underscores a sophisticated cognitive shift, proving that prehistoric communities possessed strategic foresight and intricate social structures.Researchers from the University of Tübingen and the University of Cologne discovered that the Jojosi site served exclusively as a ‘stone workshop.’ In contrast to places where people lived, Jojosi shows no signs of fire, shelters, or food leftovers. It mainly contains almost exclusively production waste. This suggests that early humans went there for one reason: to gather and prepare stone before taking it elsewhere. At Jojosi, early humans showed a deep knowledge of geology. As noted in a study in Nature Communications, they chose hornfels, a durable rock shaped by volcanic heat, instead of the more plentiful quartz nearby. It wasn’t just any stone they picked; they assessed the mechanical properties to make sure it was good enough before starting to work with it. This careful choice shows that humans from the middle Pleistocene had the cognitive capacity to value how well something worked over how easy it was to get. Researchers wanted to learn about ancient mining techniques, so they used 3D refitting to assemble more than 350 stone fragments like a jigsaw puzzle, as noted in a study in Nature Communications. This study revealed that Jojosi served as a main production site for making ‘pre-forms.’ The area is covered with countless small flakes, which are leftovers from shaping stones. However, finished tools are almost nowhere to be found; this suggests that people developed an advanced system of logistical mobility, preparing heavy raw materials at the quarry. The goal was to reduce transport mass and make them easier to carry to faraway camps where they lived. To understand the timeline of the site, experts used luminescence dating. This method determines when sand grains were last exposed to sunlight; the findings reveal that this quarry wasn't just a temporary camp. It had continuous use for 110,000 years, starting about 220,000 years ago. Such long-term use indicates that the Jojosi quarry held significant significance in collective social memory. This knowledge was successfully archived and communicated across countless generations, representing one of the earliest examples of stable, multi-generational resource management.