Tools have been made by our prehistoric ancestors for hundreds of thousands of years. According to recent study, Homo erectus foragers relied on possessing a specialized forge to forge tools and weapons as part of their hunting strategy.

When you go back far enough in time, our understanding of our forefathers becomes quite hazy. Nevertheless, over the years, various tools connected to Homo erectus have been found. Homo erectus is thought to be the direct ancestor of modern humans. For instance, tools that may be as old as 3 million years ago were recently found in Kenya and are possibly related with Paranthropus or another ancestor of the Homo genus.

But having a real workshop you can use and leave to your offspring differs from simply constructing a few tools when the occasion presents itself.And as researchers have discovered, our predecessors were able to do both, demonstrating that they were thinking forward rather than simply responding to their current surroundings.

Indeed, scientists have recently verified one of the earliest known human workshops at a flint rock exposure in northern Israel, a location that people probably frequented for tens of thousands of years. The research was published in the journal Geoarchaeology in June 2023.

According to Meir Finkel, a geoarchaeologist at Tel Aviv University in Israel and coauthor of the latest study, "they probably passed this knowledge down through many generations."

Acheulean Tools Discovered in Ancient Workshop

The Hula Valley in northern Israel is home to the well-known archaeological site Gesher Benot Ya'aqov (GBY). Both the elephants' remains and the stone implements used to butcher them can be found at the location. The now-dry area was formerly a lake where huge animals would congregate for water before it was drained in the 1950s.

According to Finkel, it's still unclear if the hominids who inhabited the area hunted elephants and other animals or used the mud as a kind of trap where they could slay animals when they got stranded. In any case, the Hula Valley's GBY and Ma'ayan Barukh adjacent provided the hominids with a consistent food source that they frequented throughout the course of hundreds of thousands of years.

Both sites contain thousands of hand axes and other tools that date to the Acheulian style, a period of typically oval stone tool production that is frequently connected to Homo erectus and lasted from around 1.7 million years ago to about 200,000 years ago. The Ma'ayan Barukh site was created about 500,000 years after the GBY site, which dates to approximately 750,000 years ago.

Where Did The Hula Valley Axes Come From?

There had to be a source for the enormous number of hand axes discovered in these Hula Valley sites. According to Finkel, "the amount attests to continuous exploitation of the same source."

In the most recent research, Finkel and his coworkers broke down samples from 10 hand axes from GBY and 10 from Ma'ayan Barukh before evaluating them with a mass spectrometer, which gauges the concentration of various elements in material.

They needed to locate a match from the source once they got the flint's signature in the tools. About 12 miles to the west of these locations, on the Dishon Plateau, Finkel had previously researched a flint workshop as part of his doctoral dissertation. Thousands of abandoned stone tools, flakes, chips, and other artifacts from the Acheulian tool-making tradition dating back hundreds of thousands of years were discovered at this location by prior studies.

These tools could always be obtained from the Dishon Plateau. But the researchers also wanted to rule out anything else close to validate that fact. They carried out field surveys close to the sites, collecting rock samples from streams that flowed into the valley, the Ramim Ridge, the Safed Mountains, and flint exposures in the Golan Heights.

Comprehensive Review of Flint Tools

The majority of the flint exposures at these locations did not provide as many stone tools as those discovered at the Hula Valley sites. Additionally, Finkel claims that the manufacturing of each Acheulian hand axe resulted in an average amount of waste of 75–80%. Nothing would have provided enough stone for more than a few tools, with the exception of the flint outcropping at Dishon.

However, the researchers used the mass spectrometer to examine samples from each of these locations just to be certain. The 20 flint tools from GBY and Ma'ayan Barukh's signatures matched the stone at Dishon Plateau, indicating virtually conclusively that they all originated from the same location.

Finkel asserts that there is essentially no alternative for that many hand axes anyplace else.

It is likely that the individuals utilizing tools had to plot their route to the Dishon Plateau, which is about 20 kilometers to the west of the Hula Valley and would have involved climbing around 800 meters in height. It's not en route; they must go directly to this location, according to Finkel.

How Does This Finding Affect Us?

In more recent decades, anthropologists have documented hunter-gatherers going on these kinds of journeys, Finkel notes, traveling very far to particular locations to harvest materials for their tools.

The findings in the Hula Valley and Gishon Plateau "may be the first proof of what is seen in ethnographic research," he claims. Whether Acheulian foragers used these axes and other weapons to hunt elephants or simply waited by the prehistoric Hula Lake for trapped animals, they had to be prepared to act quickly.

"Going to get hand axes was great planning," says Finkel.