Dive Brief:
- Excavations have yielded a vast amount of recycled objects over the years and researchers have determined that approximately 10% of tools were recycled.
- Researchers speculated that over 1.3 million years ago cavemen learned to recycle items as a survival strategy.
- One researcher noted similarities between then and now. Early hominids used broken or unused tools to create new ones, much like we recycling paper and plastic for new uses today.
Dive Insight:
Researchers noted that some of the motivations for recycling were the same. "Why do we recycle plastic? To conserve energy and raw materials. In the same way, if you recycled flint you didn't have to go all the way to the quarry to get more, so you conserved your energy and saved on the material," said Avi Gopher, a Tel Aviv University archaeologist.
"For the first time we are revealing the extent of this phenomenon, both in terms of the amount of recycling that went on and the different methods used," said Ran Barkai, an archaeologist.
