Editing Kenyanthropus (section)

==Technology==
In 2015, French archaeologist [[Sonia Harmand]] and colleagues identified the Lomekwian [[stone tool|stone-tool]] [[industry (archaeology)|industry]] at the Lomekwi site.<ref name=Harmand2015/> The tools are attributed to ''Kenyanthropus'' as it is the only hominin identified at the site, but in 2015, anthropologist Fred Spoor suggested that at least some of the indeterminate specimens may be assignable to ''A. deyiremeda'' as the two species have somewhat similar maxillary anatomy.<ref name="Spoor2015"/> At 3.3 million years old, it is the oldest proposed industry. The assemblage comprises 83 [[lithic core|cores]], 35 [[lithic flake|flakes]], 7 possible anvils, 7 possible [[hammerstone]]s, 5 pebbles (which may have also been used as hammers), and 12 indeterminant fragments, of which 52 were sourced from [[basalt]], 51 from [[phonolite]], 35 from trachyphonolite (intermediate composition of phonolite and [[trachyte]]), 3 from [[vesicular texture|vesicular]] basalt, 2 from trachyte, and 6 indeterminant. These materials could have originated at a [[conglomerate (geology)|conglomerate]] only {{cvt|100|m}} from the site.<ref name=Harmand2015>{{cite journal|last1=Harmand|first1=S.|display-authors=et al.|title=3.3-million-year-old stone tools from Lomekwi 3, West Turkana, Kenya|journal=Nature|date=2015|volume=521|issue=7552|pages=310–315|doi=10.1038/nature14464|pmid=25993961|bibcode=2015Natur.521..310H|s2cid=1207285}}</ref>

The cores are large and heavy, averaging {{cvt|167|x|147.8|x|108.8|mm}} and {{cvt|3.1|kg}}. Flakes ranged {{cvt|19|to|205|mm}} in length, normally shorter than later [[Oldowan]] industry flakes. Anvils were heavy, up to {{cvt|15|kg}}. Flakes seem to have been cleaved off primarily using the passive hammer technique (directly striking the core on the anvil) and/or the bipolar method (placing the core on the anvil and striking it with a hammerstone). They produced both [[uniface]]s (the flake was worked on one side) and [[biface]]s (both sides were worked). Though they may have been shaping cores beforehand to make them easier to work, the knappers more often than not poorly executed the technique, producing incomplete fractures and fissures on several cores, or requiring multiple blows to flake off a piece. Harmand and colleagues suggested such rudimentary skills may place the Lomekwian as an intermediate industry between simple pounding techniques probably used by earlier hominins, and the flaking Oldowan industry developed by ''Homo''.<ref name=Harmand2015/>

It is typically assumed that early hominins were using stone tools to cut meat in addition to other organic materials.<ref name=Torre2019/> Wild chimpanzees and [[black-striped capuchin]]s have been observed to make flakes by accident while using hammerstones to crack nuts on anvils, but the Lomekwi knappers were producing multiple flakes from the same core, and flipped over flakes to work the other side, which speak to the intentionality of their production.<ref name=Harmand2015/><ref>{{cite journal|first1=M.|last1=Lombard|first2=A.|last2=Högberg|first3=M. N.|last3=Haidle|year=2018|title=Cognition: From Capuchin Rock Pounding to Lomekwian Flake Production|journal=Cambridge Archaeological Journal|volume=29|issue=2|pages=201–231|doi=10.1017/S0959774318000550|doi-access=free}}</ref> In 2016, Spanish archaeologists Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo and Luis Alcalá argued Harmand and colleagues did not convincingly justify that the tools were discovered ''[[in situ]]'', that is, the tools may be much younger and were [[reworked fossil|reworked]] into an older layer.<ref>{{cite journal|first1=M.|last1=Domínguez-Rodrigo|first2=L.|last2=Alcalá|year=2016|title=3.3-Million-Year-Old Stone Tools and Butchery Traces? More Evidence Needed|journal=PaleoAnthropology|pages=46–53|doi=10.4207/PA.2016.ART99|doi-broken-date=1 November 2024}}</ref> If the date of 3.3 million years is accepted, then there is a 700,000 year gap between the next solid evidence of stone tools, at [[Ledi-Geraru]] associated with the earliest ''Homo'' [[LD 350-1]], the [[Oldowan]] industry, reported by American palaeoanthropologist David Braun and colleagues in 2019. This gap can either be interpreted as the loss and reinvention of stone tool technology, or [[preservation bias]] (that tools from this time gap either did not preserve for whatever reason, or sit undiscovered), the latter implying the Lomekwian evolved into the Oldowan.<ref name=Torre2019>{{cite journal|first=I.|last=de la Torre|year=2019|title=Searching for the emergence of stone tool making in eastern Africa|journal=Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences|volume=116|issue=24|pages=11567–11569|doi=10.1073/pnas.1906926116 |pmid=31164417|pmc=6575166|bibcode=2019PNAS..11611567D |doi-access=free}}</ref>