Archaeologists in Israel have discovered half-million-year-old stone tools that suggest the cognitive abilities of the early humans who crafted them were much more similar to our own than previously thought.
The tools were found in the Israeli Arab town of Jaljulia, located at the edge of the coastal plain near the border with the West Bank, researchers said.
Described as a kind of stone-age Swiss army knife by archaeologists, many of the objects found were flint hand axes, among other tools, 'SBS News' reported.
"The carving of these pieces requires a conceptual leap that allowed them to imagine the desired tool before starting to shape it," said Ran Barkai, the head of the Archaeology Department at Tel Aviv University in Israel.
"The findings are amazing, both in their state of preservation and in their implications about our understanding of this ancient material culture," the excavation's director, Maayan Shemer, added.
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