Its name comes from the site of Saint-Acheul, suburb of Amiens, where tools from the Lower Paleolithic were discovered, the characteristic part of which is the biface.
An international team has discovered the oldest Acheulean in North Africa, dating back 1.3 million years, on the outskirts of Casablanca, Moroccan researchers who participated in the research program said on Wednesday.
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Until now, archaeologists estimated that the Acheulean culture, one of the hallmarks of which is the invention of two-sided tools, during the Lower Paleolithic, was established 700.00 years ago in this part of North Africa. “
With this new chronological rebound, almost double, the country is positioned on the scale of the (African) continent where the Acheulean is documented almost 1.8 million years ago in East Africa and 1.6 million years ago. years in South Africa,
”explained Moroccan archaeologist Abdelouahed Ben Ncer. This is a "
major
"
discovery
which "
contributes to enriching the debate on the emergence of the Acheulean in Africa.
», Welcomed the co-director of the Franco-Moroccan Prehistory of Casablanca program, Abderrahim Mohib, during a press conference in Rabat.
This research, published in the British journal
Nature Report
, mobilized 17 Moroccan, French and Italian researchers.
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It is based on the study of lithic (bifaces, cleavers or pikes) and geological tools, extracted from the site of the “Thomas I” quarry, not far from Casablanca (west), where research has been carried out since the 1980s. Archaeologists have discovered there "
one of the richest Acheulean assemblages in Africa,
" said Abderrahim Mohib.
“
This is very important because we are talking about prehistoric time, a complex period with little data.
"
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The research also made it possible to discover "
the oldest human occupation in Morocco
", affirmed the co-director, specifying that they were "
variants of
Homo Erectus
". In 2017, in the prehistoric site of Jebel Irhoud (southwest), archaeologists discovered the remains of
Homo Sapiens
300,000 years old, the oldest in the world. This discovery had turned the view of human evolution upside down.
