New fieldwork in West Turkana, Kenya, has identified evidence of much earlier hominin technological behaviour. We report the discovery of Lomekwi 3, a 3.3-million-year-old archaeological site where in situ stone artefacts occur in spatiotemporal association with Pliocene hominin fossils in a wooded palaeoenvironment. We propose for it the name ‘Lomekwian', which predates the Oldowan by 700,000 years and marks a new beginning to the known archaeological record.

Willy Aubert