Archaeologists Sifted Through an Ancient Lakebed—And Found 1.5-Million-Year-Old Tools

• A pilot project to scan the surface material of an Iraqi desert revealed 850 different artifacts from the Old and Middle Paleolithic eras.

• Included in the finds were ancient stone hand axes that date back to as far as 1.5 million years ago.

• The ancient lake that has long been home to all of these hand axes offers a peak into the early human activity of the region.

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A pilot project to investigate the archaeological surface material present in the Iraqi Western Desert recently discovered a bounty of finds from the Old and Middle Paleolithic era, including 850 different Stone Age artifacts. The find was enough for archaeologist Ella Egberts to declare the entire effort a “huge success,” according to a statement from Vrije University Brussel.

The team discovered seven Paleolithic sites, all located in an area just six by 12 miles in size. Surface-level excavation zeroed in on one site that featured a dried-up lakebed with a dry riverbed crossing the landscape. Egberts collected over 850 artifacts from this spot, including hand axes that may be as old as 1.5 million years.

“The other sites also deserve equally thorough systematic investigation,” Egberts said, “which will undoubtedly yield similar quantities of lithic material.”

The stone tools were quite the pull, considering the archaeologists who discovered them simply sifted through the surface and didn’t conduct deep digs. Along with the ancient hand axes, the team also uncovered much more recent Levallois flakes. Considered more sophisticated than hand axes, the flakes are hand tools that date to between about 300,000 and 50,000 years ago.

By examining the distribution of the sites and studying the area’s geomorphological history, Egberts and her team the team found clues of early humans using the landscape. Expanding research into a larger area, Egberts believes, would allow researchers to gain a fresh perspective on how human evolution and behavior progressed on the Arabian Peninsula.

Egberts said that research in Iraq has been limited in recent decades due to the instability of the region. There weren’t issues in this particular effort, however, which was funded by the British Institute for the Study of Iraq. “Apart from the presence of numerous checkpoints, we were able to carry out our work without any problems,” she said. “The people are friendly, and it’s actually very nice to work in Iraq.”

The Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritages has encouraged the team to continue, which Egberts plans to do. Once she’s able to secure the necessary funding, she hopes to reconstruct pictures of Pleistocene environmental changes and the early human presence and behavior in the Western Desert—hand axes and Levallois flakes included.

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