Archaeological evidence shows: Not only humans but Neanderthals and Homo erectus used broken flint, bone tools to make new ones
If you thought recycling was just a modern phenomenon championed by environmentalists— think again. There is mounting evidence that hundreds of thousands of years ago, our prehistoric ancestors recycled objects they used in their daily lives, say researchers gathered at an international conference in Israel.
“For the first time we are revealing the extent of this phenomenon, both in terms of the amount of recycling that went on and the different methods used,” said Ran Barkai, an archaeologist and one of the organizers of the four-day gathering at Tel Aviv University that ended Thursday.
Just as today we recycle materials such as paper and plastic to manufacture new items, early hominids would collect discarded or broken tools made of flint and bone to create new utensils, Barkai said.
The behavior “appeared at different times, in different places, with different methods according to the context and the availability of raw materials,” he told The Associated Press.
Homo erectus and recycling: A survival strategy?
From caves in Spain and North Africa to sites in Italy and Israel, archaeologists have been finding such recycled tools in recent years. The conference, titled “The Origins of Recycling,” gathered nearly 50 scholars from about 10 countries to compare notes and figure out what the phenomenon meant for our ancestors.
Recycling was widespread not only among early humans but among our evolutionary predecessors such as Homo erectus, Neanderthals and other species of hominids that have not yet even been named, Barkai said.
Avi Gopher, a Tel Aviv University archaeologist, said the early appearance of recycling highlights its role as a basic survival strategy. While they may not have been driven by concerns over pollution and the environment, hominids shared some of our motivations, he said.
“Why do we recycle plastic? To conserve energy and raw materials,” Gopher said. “In the same way, if you recycled flint you didn’t have to go all the way to the quarry to get more, so you conserved your energy and saved on the material.”
