According to a study, this botartefact is one of the oldest specialized tools and the manufacture differs from artifacts in East and South Africa and of the same age.
An international team, consisting of researchers from the National Institute of Archeology and Heritage Sciences (Insap) of Rabat, the Natural History Museum of London and the University of Oxford, discovered a bone tool from animals that are 90,000 years old in Rabat.
According to the Ministry of Culture and Communication, a study published on October 3, 2018 in the American scientific journal Plos One showed that this botartefact is one of the oldest specialized tools and that its manufacture differs from artefacts in Africa from the east and south and of the same age.
The discovery took place in Dar es Soltan 1, south of Rabat, about 260 meters from the Moroccan Atlantic coast.
After a thorough investigation by the scanning electron microscope and the tomographic scanner, the team, led by Abdeljalil Bouzouggar, teacher-researcher at Insap, discovered that the tool was obtained from a large coast of a mammal, shaped and cut into a knife of a length of up to 13 cm, through a complex range of adjustments.
The human groups, which had settled in the Dar es-Soltan site 90,000 years ago, bear the name of the Atériens and were capable of a complex and controlled succession of actions involved in the production of bone tools. specialized.
According to the same source, this discovery shows the rise of these techniques in North Africa 45,000 years earlier than in Europe of the Neanderthals and "represents a new understanding of the development of human cognition".
The authors of the study also suggest that this new tool-making technique "could be a reaction to changes in the diet of human groups, focused on the exploitation of marine resources about 90,000 years ago," the report said. ministry.
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