Archeologists Find Thousands of Stone Age Artifacts in South Africa

Archaeologists have found thousands of Stone Age artifacts at an ancient site in Northern Cape Province of South Africa.

According to researchers, the Kathu Townlands site is one of the richest prehistoric sites in South Africa. It is believed that the site is 700,000-1 million years old.

The work, conducted by the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa and the University of Toronto (U of T), sheds new light on prehistoric life in the region. The excavated artifacts included tools and hand axes.

Kathu is a major iron mining center. Researchers said that a prehistoric site located in the middle of a massive iron mining zone poses a unique challenge to the mining industry as well as archeologists.

"The site is amazing and it is threatened. We've been working well with developers as well as the South African Heritage Resources Agency to preserve it, but the town of Kathu is rapidly expanding around the site. It might get cut off on all sides by development and this would be regrettable," said Steven James Walker, from the Department of Archaeology at UCT and lead author of the study.

The prehistoric region dug up in the study is actually a group of archaeological sites - the Kathu Complex. According to researchers, Kathu Pan 1 has produced fossils of elephants and hippos as well as tools such as axes and spears.

"We need to imagine a landscape around Kathu that supported large populations of human ancestors, as well as large animals like hippos. All indications suggest that Kathu was much wetter, maybe more like the Okavango than the Kalahari. There is no question that the Kathu Complex presents unique opportunities to investigate the evolution of human ancestors in Southern Africa," Michael Chazan, director of the Archaeology Centre at U of T, said in a news release.

Excavations at prehistoric sites in South Africa have helped other archaeologists understand early human communities in the region.

The study is published in the journal PLOS ONE.