PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Sahnouni, Mohamed
AU  - Parés, Josep M.
AU  - Duval, Mathieu
AU  - Cáceres, Isabel
AU  - Harichane, Zoheir
AU  - van der Made, Jan
AU  - Pérez-González, Alfredo
AU  - Abdessadok, Salah
AU  - Kandi, Nadia
AU  - Derradji, Abdelkader
AU  - Medig, Mohamed
AU  - Boulaghraif, Kamel
AU  - Semaw, Sileshi
TI  - 1.9-million- and 2.4-million-year-old artifacts and stone tool–cutmarked bones from Ain Boucherit, Algeria
AID  - 10.1126/science.aau0008
DP  - 2018 Nov 29
TA  - Science
PG  - eaau0008
4099  - http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2018/11/28/science.aau0008.short
4100  - http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2018/11/28/science.aau0008.full
AB  - East Africa has provided the earliest known evidence for Oldowan stone artifacts and hominin induced stone tool cutmarks dated to ~2.6 million years ago (Ma). The ~1.8 Ma stone artifacts from Ain Hanech (Algeria) were considered to represent the oldest archaeological materials in North Africa. Here we report older stone artifacts and cutmarked bones excavated from two nearby deposits at Ain Boucherit estimated to ~ 1.9 Ma, and the older to ~2.4 Ma. Hence, the Ain Boucherit evidence shows that ancestral hominins inhabited the Mediterranean fringe in Northern Africa much earlier than previously thought. The evidence strongly argues for early dispersal of stone tool manufacture and use from East Africa, or a possible multiple origin scenario of stone technology in both East and North Africa.