2.5-MILLION-YEAR-OLD STONE TOOLS FROM GONA, ETHIOPIA

The Oldowan Stone tool industry was named for 1.8-million-year-old (Mp r) artefacts found near the bottom of Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. Subsequ ent archaeological research in the Omo (Ethiopia) and Turkana (Kenya) also yielded stone tools dated to 2.3 Myr. Palaeoanthropological inves tigations in the Hadar region of the Awash Valley of Ethiopia(1), reve aled Oldowan assemblages in the adjacent Gona River drainage(2). We co nducted held work in the Gona study area of Ethiopia between 1992 and 1994 which resulted in additional archaeological discoveries as well a s radioisotopic age control and a magnetic polarity stratigraphy of th e Gona sequence. These occurrences are now securely dated between 2.6- 2.5 Myr. The stone tools are thus the oldest known artefacts from anyw here in the world The artefacts show surprisingly sophisticated contro l of stone fracture mechanics, equivalent to much younger Oldowan asse mblages of Early Pleistocene age. This indicates an unexpectedly long period of technological stasis in the Oldowan.