Archaeologists have found the world's oldest tools in Kenya.

The set of 20 stone flakes and anvils, found off the shores of Lake Turkana, appears to have been crafted more than 3.3 million years ago - 500,000 years before our genus Homo, designating the first fully fledged humans, came to be.

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The implications will be far-reaching if the evidence holds up since it's long been believed that tool-making was a skill exclusive to Homo.

"The artifacts were clearly knapped and not the result of accidental fracture of rocks," announced Archaeologist Sonia Harmand, of New York's Stony Brook University, in the annual meeting of the U.S. Paleoanthropology Society.

Until now, the earliest known stone tools were found at Gona in Ethiopia and were dated to 2.6 million years ago. These belonged to a tool technology known as the Oldowan, so called because the first examples were found more than 80 years ago at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania by famous paleoanthropologists Louis and Mary Leakey.

In 2010, researchers working at the site of Dikika in Ethiopia discovered cut marks on animal bones dated to 3.4 million years ago. They argued that tool-using human ancestors made the linear marks.

The claim was immediately controversial, however, and some argued that what seemed to be cut marks might have been the result of trampling by humans or other animals. Without the discovery of actual tools, the argument seemed likely to continue without resolution.

Now, with the discovery of actual tools, the theory backing the ancient cut marks' origin is all the more convincing.

"The obvious implication is that stone tools were invented and used by multiple lineages of early hominins. Just as there were different styles of body shape and bipedal mechanics among early hominins, there were likely different styles of technical traditions," stated the blog of the University of Wisconsin anthropologist John Hawks.

Harmand said although latest research has now pushed back the origins of the genus Homo to as early as 2.8 million years ago, the tools are too old to have been made by the first fully fledged humans, she said in her talk. She concluded the artifacts were made either by australopithecines similar to Lucy or by Kenyanthropus.

Harmand and her colleagues propose to call the new tools the Lomekwian technology because they are too old and too distinct from Oldowan implements to represent the same technology.

"The Lomekwi 3 tools mark a new beginning to the known archaeological record," Harmand said.

TagsArchaeologists Unearthed the World's Oldest Tools in Kenya, oldest tools, ancient tools, Kenya, Lake Turkana, Homo, Lucy, Kenyanthropus, Oldowa, Lomekwian technology