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The new discoveries at sites in Senegal on the West coast of Africa, by Max Planck Institute researchers, are fuelling a rethink of the passage of human evolution.
New research, published Monday in the journal Scientific Reports, suggests humans in what is now Senegal continued to use Middle Stone Age flake-making technologies as late as 11 thousand years ago.
Homo sapiens emerged in Africa around 300 thousand years ago, where their fossils are found with the earliest cultural and technological expressions of our species. This repertoire, commonly referred to as the ''Middle Stone Age'', remained widely in use across much of Africa until around 60-30 thousand years ago. New research in Senegal shows this 'first human culture' persisted until 11 thousand years ago - 20 thousand years longer than previously thought.