The world was booming with technology before Homo sapiens existed.

(NLĐO) - A series of 600,000-year-old artifacts are shocking evidence of a great technological boom that was not created by modern humans.

The technological boom 600,000 years ago didn't unfold in the way we see in the 21st century, but it laid the foundation for the remarkable development of our species hundreds of thousands of years later.

According to Science Alert, this technological boom was a leap in the complexity of stone tools, suggesting that human knowledge increased dramatically around 600,000 years ago.

Ancient humans created a great technological breakthrough in stone tools - Photo: Anh Thu

The research team, led by anthropologists Jonathan Paige of the University of Missouri and Charles Perreault of Arizona State University, analyzed a range of ancient tools from Africa, Europe, Asia, Oceania (including the Sahul Shelf), and the Americas (including Greenland).

A total of 62 different Stone Age tool-making technologies have been classified from what was collected at 57 archaeological sites.

They discovered that until 1.8 million years ago, the process of producing stone tools consisted of 2-4 process units. Over the next 1.2 million years, the complexity of the tools increased, reaching 7 process units.

However, it wasn't until about 600,000 years ago that our ancestors took this to a whole new level: tools suddenly became incredibly complex, with some being crafted through as many as 18 different processes.

According to the authors, such a major technological advancement depends on knowledge passed down from previous generations.

In subsequent generations, the complexity of point-stone tools continued to increase rapidly, much like how our world has been completely transformed in a short period of time thanks to digital technology today.

This leap also shows that, at that time, the human species on Earth had evolved to the point where they were willing to experiment and discover new things from the very mistakes they inadvertently made during the tool-making process.

In other words, it's like a form of rudimentary scientific research.

The widespread improvement in toolmaking processes also shows that the human brain at that time had evolved to the point of utilizing collective knowledge and cultural exchange.

This allows individuals to use and improve technology without fully understanding every aspect of its development, paving the way for a growing and adaptable body of knowledge. This is also the foundation upon which modern society continues to progress.

As collective knowledge and related behaviors develop, genes that influence learning may also be selectively chosen.

The products of this cultural and genetic "co-evolution" may include an increase in relative brain size, increased complexity of personal life, and other key traits that underpin human uniqueness.

Although new findings provide strong evidence for the presence of accumulatory culture near the beginning of the Middle Pleistocene, this type of cultural intelligence may have emerged even earlier in human history.

Our species, Homo sapiens, also known as modern humans or Homo sapiens, only emerged about 300,000 years ago.

This means that this technological boom was not created by our direct ancestors, but by extinct ancient human species.

According to previous studies, at the time our species was born, the world still had at least 8-9 other species belonging to the genus Homo (human genus) living in it.

Source: https://nld.com.vn/the-gioi-bung-no-cong-nghe-tu-truoc-khi-homo-sapiens-ra-doi-196240619083623341.htm