Clues to first humans found

A collection of stone tools more than 700,000 years old has revealed that ancient humans lived in Britain many thousands of years earlier than previously believed.

The tools, found at an archaeological site near Pakefield in Suffolk, seem to have been made by early man hammering sharp flakes off flint pebbles carried by an ancient river running across what is now East Anglia.

The "pebble-bash people" lived about 200,000 years earlier than Boxgrove man, until now the earliest known humans to have made a home in this part of northern Europe.

Britain at this time was still connected by a landbridge to the rest of the European mainland and its climate was similar to that of the Mediterranean today.

A range of exotic animals, such as elephants, mammoths, lions, sabre-toothed cats, rhinos and hippos, lived alongside the people who made the stone tools, said Anthony Stuart of University College London.

"We were not an island. At the time we were connected to the continent. It was quite a lively place to live in those days," Professor Stuart said.

Professor Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London, said that about 30 stone tools have been found at the base of an eroded face of a seaside cliff at Pakefield.

"We are confident they are indeed stone tools. They are very fresh and show all the hallmarks of human workmanship.

"They possess the characteristics of human intentionality," Professor Stringer said.

Several dating methods have placed the age of the tools at around 700,000 years before the present, at a time when Britain was basking in the warmth of a relatively short interglacial period between two ice ages.

Details of the stone tools, published in the journal Nature, suggest they may have been made by early members of the species Homo heidelbergensis, the same species as the early human fossils found at Boxgrove in Sussex.

However, it is also possible that another distant cousin, Homo antecessor, who was known to have lived in southern Europe about 800,000 years ago, may have migrated north to colonise this part of Britain.

So far the scientists have not found any human bones at the site but Professor Stringer believes that human fossils may have been preserved alongside those of the many animals that lived here at the time.

"The fact that we know there were people in Britain at this date means that we can now start looking for them," Professor Stringer said.

"We're sure it's not the only site of this particular age and there is good reason to believe there are older ones," he said.

Eastern England was unusual in that the massive glaciers that destroyed much of the ancient topography of mainland Europe behaved in a radically different way, preserving the landscape rather than scraping it away, said Professor Jim Rose of Royal Holloway College in London.

"We are fortunate in that glaciers here floated across the landscape rather than pushing it up. It has preserved things exceptionally well."

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