Middle Stone Age

News is breaking of a new discovery made by a Canadian archaeologist based in Calgary. Professor Julio Mercader, of the University of Calgary, has found evidence in a Mozambique cave that Homo Sapiens were eating wild grains as early as 100,000 years ago. The discovery is reported today in the journal Science.

It's being touted as the “earliest direct evidence of humans using pre-domesticated cereals anywhere in the world,” in a university press release.

Scientists have long believed that grains played little role in the Stone Age diet. This belief is fueled by the fact that it’s difficult to process grain using the tools of the time.

The cave that Mercader excavated had a layer that was used by people from 105,000 years ago to 42,000 years ago. In it there was a vast number of tools. 

Exciting times in Botswana. Giant hand axes are among a stash of Stone Age tools discovered there that could tell us more about how the ancestors of modern humans hunted, coped with climate change and migrated through Africa.

Oxford University researchers have uncovered an incredible collection of artefacts – including four hand axes, thought to be the world’s largest stone tools – in the dry basin of Lake Makgadikgadi in the Kalahari Desert. Their latest finds throw light on how early humans adapted to climate change during the Middle and Late Stone Age, that is, 150,000 to 10,000 years ago.