Paleolithic

A palm-sized fragment of elephant bone, shaped and used as a precision tool almost half a million years ago, has been identified as the oldest known elephant-bone implement in Europe. Although the artifact was excavated at Boxgrove in West Sussex in the 1990s, new microscopic analysis revealed it was deliberately fashioned and repeatedly used to maintain razor-sharp stone handaxes - offering an unusually intimate glimpse of how early humans worked, planned and conserved valuable materials in Ice Age Britain. Science Advances Puzzling Identity of the Most Ancient Humans in England 500000-Year-Old Horse Bone Tools Discovered in England A Boxgrove Breakthrough The tool comes from the famous Boxgrove locality near Chichester, a site celebrated for exceptionally preserved evidence of Lower Palaeolithic