Early humans (probably Homo erectus) in the Hula Valley, Israel invested in systematic procurement of raw materials much earlier than previously believed. We’re talking as far back as 750,000 years ago. The researchers used chemical analysis and AI to figure out the origin of the flint used to make hand axes, and found that it came from Dishon Plateau. That’s over 10 miles away, and it’s 700+ meters higher than Hula Valley. If that doesn’t seem far away, consider that the average hand ax was produced by reducing stones that were 5x larger. So for the 3,500 hand axes found at the site of Ma’ayan Barukh alone, it would have taken 3.5 tons of flint. According to the researchers, “Our findings indicate that these early humans had high social and cognitive abilities: they were familiar with their surroundings, knew the available resources, and made great efforts to procure the high-quality raw materials they needed. For this purpose, they planned and carried out long journeys, and transferred this essential knowledge to subsequent generations.” It always astounds me how capable ancient humans were. (If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while, the appropriate response would be, “Uh yeah, duh.”)