In this undated photograph offered by the Greek Culture Ministry, on Thursday, June 1, 2023 exhibits stone tools dated about 700,000 years in the past. The Culture Ministry stated that a five-year worldwide venture in Megalopolis, southern Greece, has uncovered the oldest-known archaeological web site within the nation, pushing back the dawn of Greek archaeology by as much as 250,000 years.
| Photo Credit: AP
Deep in an open coal mine in southern Greece, researchers have discovered the antiquities-rich nation’s oldest archaeological web site, which dates to 700,000 years in the past and is related to trendy people’ hominin ancestors.
The discover introduced Thursday would drag the dawn of Greek archaeology back by as a lot as a quarter of a million years, though older hominin websites have been discovered elsewhere in Europe. The oldest, in Spain, dates to greater than a million years in the past.
The Greek web site was one of 5 investigated within the Megalopolis space throughout a five-year venture involving a global group of specialists, a Culture Ministry assertion stated.
It was discovered to include tough stone tools from the Lower Palaeolithic interval — about 3.3 million to 300,000 years in the past — and the stays of an extinct species of large deer, elephants, hippopotamus, rhinoceros and a macaque monkey.
The venture was directed by Panagiotis Karkanas of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Eleni Panagopoulou from the Greek Culture Ministry and Katerina Harvati, a professor of palaeoanthropology on the University of Tübingen in Germany.
The artifacts are “simple tools, like sharp stone flakes, belonging to the Lower Paleolithic stone tool industry,” the co-directors stated in feedback e-mailed to The Associated Press.
They stated it is doable the objects have been produced by Homo antecessor, the hominin species relationship from that interval in different elements of Europe. Homo antecessor is believed to have been the final widespread ancestor of trendy people and their extinct Neanderthal cousins, who diverged about 800,000 years in the past.
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“However, we will not be able to be sure until hominin fossil remains are recovered,” the venture administrators stated. “(The site) is the oldest currently known hominin presence in Greece, and it pushes back the known archaeological record in the country by up to 250,000 years.”
The tools, which have been probably used for butchering animals and processing wooden or different plant matter, have been made about 700,000 years in the past, although the researchers stated they have been awaiting additional analyses to refine the relationship.
“We are very excited to be able to report this finding, which demonstrates the great importance of our region for understanding hominin migrations to Europe and for human evolution in general,” the three co-directors stated.
Archaeologist Nikos Efstratiou, a professor of prehistoric archaeology at Greece’s University of Thessaloniki who was not concerned within the venture, stated the invention was “very important” in itself, not simply because it represented the nation’s oldest identified web site.
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“There is an archaeological context in which tools, and remains of animals, have been found,” Efstratiou stated. “It’s an important and very early site … that allows us to move far back, and in an authoritative manner, the age of the first tools in Greece.”
Another of the websites investigated within the Megalopolis space of the southern Peloponnese peninsula — residence of the enormously later websites of Mycenae, Olympia and Pylos — contained the oldest Middle Palaeolithic stays present in Greece, relationship to roughly 280,000 years in the past.
“(It’s) one of the oldest sites in Europe that have tools characteristic of the so called Middle Palaeolithic tool industry, suggesting that Greece may have played a significant role in (stone) industry developments in Europe,” the researchers stated.
The Megalopolis plain has for many years been mined for coal to provide a native energy plant. During Palaeolithic occasions it contained a shallow lake.
The space has lengthy been generally known as a supply of fossils, and in historical occasions big prehistoric bones dug up there have been linked with the Greek myths of a long-vanished race of giants that fought the gods of Olympus. Some historical writers cited Megalopolis as the location of a main battle in that supernatural struggle.
