Anthropology

Judi Lynn

(164,153 posts) Thu Apr 9, 2026, 05:37 AM 11 hrs ago

220,000-Year-Old Quarry Site in South Africa Studied

April 8, 2026

Visible accumulations of stone artifacts at the Jojosi site, South Africa
University of Tübingen/Manuel Will

TÜBINGEN, GERMANY—According to a statement released by the University of Tübingen, evidence of quarrying some 220,000 years ago has been discovered at the Jojosi site in eastern South Africa by a team of researchers led by Manuel Will of the University of Tübingen. It had been previously thought that early modern humans found stones for making tools incidentally as they looked for food. Team member Gunther Möller reassembled more than 350 rock fragments recovered from the site into “refits,” or stones that had been broken apart by knapping. “With these 3D puzzles, we were able to see precisely where and how material was chipped off and in what order,” Möller said. “Several of these puzzles together then allow us to draw conclusions about the form of the actual end product, before it was taken to another place,” he explained. The lack of tools or traces of other activities conducted at the site suggests that people traveled to Jojosi only to obtain the desired rocks. This practice continued for about 100,000 years, based on luminescence dating of the finds. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Nature Communications. To read about hunter-gatherers in southern Africa who traveled long distances some 40,000 years ago to obtain special stones for toolmaking, go to "Source Material."

A reassembled stone artifact known as a refit found at the Jojosi site. The last three strikes made by a human knapper are visible in this 3D refit, which consists of four conjoining fragments.
University of Tübingen/Gunther H. D. Möller

https://archaeology.org/news/2026/04/08/220000-year-old-quarry-site-in-south-africa-studied/

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Nature Communications:

Open access
Published: 07 April 2026
Specialised and persistent raw material procurement by humans in the Middle Pleistocene

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-70783-8

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Source Material:

https://archaeology.org/issues/november-december-2025/digs-discoveries/source-material/

4 replies

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Highlight:

220,000-Year-Old Quarry Site in South Africa Studied (Original Post) Judi Lynn 11 hrs ago OP

Imagine setting down your tool...and 222,000 years later... MiHale 10 hrs ago #1

Fascinating OC375 9 hrs ago #2

Nah. In 200,000 years, there will be 600 kg of uranium in Iran in the same spot it is in now. 3Hotdogs 9 hrs ago #3

After the Klingons had realized it was too heavy to make a dcent bat'leth.and that Earth could still Warpy 2 hrs ago #4

MiHale

(13,069 posts)

1. Imagine setting down your tool...and 222,000 years later...

Reply to Judi Lynn (Original post)

Thu Apr 9, 2026, 07:23 AM

10 hrs ago

OC375

(1,019 posts)

2. Fascinating

Reply to Judi Lynn (Original post)

Thu Apr 9, 2026, 07:41 AM

9 hrs ago

In 220,000 years, there will only be our masonry left as well. No cars, writing or iPhones would leave a trace. What would they say about us, based on nothing but our rocks and their perspective? Would they even know we had the wheel?

3Hotdogs

(15,390 posts)

3. Nah. In 200,000 years, there will be 600 kg of uranium in Iran in the same spot it is in now.

Reply to OC375 (Reply #2)

Thu Apr 9, 2026, 08:34 AM

9 hrs ago

The Romulans will wonder how it got there.

Warpy

(114,623 posts)

4. After the Klingons had realized it was too heavy to make a dcent bat'leth.and that Earth could still

Reply to 3Hotdogs (Reply #3)

Thu Apr 9, 2026, 03:27 PM

2 hrs ago

and that Earth could still be dismissed as being mostly harmless.

(I see your geekdom and raise you a book series.)

As for the OP, they're finally sending people like soil scientists and botanists in there along with the translators and they've found a long history of soil improvement and concentration of food stock plants where they shouldn't be concentrated. The patterns followed what the people needed, not western style agriculture, so they had been missed for decades. The region is turning out to be a lot more complex than any earlier observers had anticipated.

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