Cool Finds

These Big-Brained Ancestors May Have Loved Crystals Just as Much as Modern Humans Do, According to New Research

Archaeologists in Israel unearthed prehistoric hand axes that Homo erectus crafted from stones including fossils and crystals, perhaps a sign that they wanted to connect with the cosmos

Sarah Kuta | Daily Correspondent

April 20, 2026

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Many modern humans love collecting unique rocks, from shiny gold nuggets to fossil-bearing stones and geodes filled with colorful crystals. Now, new research suggests that our Homo erectus ancestors may have shared this fascination.

Archaeologists in Israel unearthed ten prehistoric hand axes made from rocks that contain fossils, crystals or some other geological anomaly. The researchers think H. erectus selected these rocks deliberately and created the artifacts between 500,000 and 200,000 years ago, they report in a paper published March 17 in the journal Tel Aviv.

H. erectus died out between 117,000 and 108,000 years ago, so scientists can’t know for certain what prompted the species to transform naturally occurring geological curiosities into tools. However, they suspect that these human ancestors might have been drawn to the distinctive specimens because they “connected to their cosmological understandings of the world,” the researchers write in the paper. H. erectus may have recognized fossils and geodes as “traces of a primordial time and place” and perceived them as “tokens of potency.”

“We assume that fossils, geodes and other geological phenomena were understood to have powerful effects on the people with whom they interacted, and they were perceived as essential elements for sustaining life and ensuring the prosperity of both humans and the cosmos, including all the elements upon which humans depend,” the researchers add in the paper.

Co-author Muataz Shalata, an independent researcher, initially discovered some hand axes in Israel’s Sakhnin Valley in 2024 and 2025. Recognizing their significance, he got in touch with Ran Barkai, an archaeologist at Tel Aviv University, and the two agreed to conduct additional searches together.

When the two met up, Shalata “took a hand ax out of his bag and gave it to me with the fossils facing down, so the face I saw looked like a regular hand ax,” Barkai, the study’s lead author, tells IFLScience’s Benjamin Taub. “But when I turned it around, I was really shocked. It’s the first time I’d seen something like that. … It was a really, really impressive moment.”

The researchers say the cache represents the largest concentration of fossil- and geode-bearing stone tools discovered to date. “Until now such items were singularly found, only one extraordinary piece here and there,” Barkai writes in an email to Live Science’s Sandee Oster.

Experts believe H. erectus evolved roughly two million years ago in present-day Africa. Archaeological evidence suggests that these ancestors—which had relatively large brains—were skilled toolmakers. They’ve been linked to more sophisticated implements known as “Acheulean” tools, including multipurpose, pear-shaped hand axes they likely used for butchering, digging and cutting.

But making hand axes was no easy feat—and crafting them out of rocks that contain fossils, geodes or other geological anomalies was probably even more challenging. That difficulty, coupled with the discovery of so many unique stone tools in the same place, suggests that H. erectus living in the Sakhnin Valley didn’t accidentally grab the fossil-studded rocks and geodes while searching for stones to craft into tools. Rather, the evidence suggests that they selected the unusual stones for this purpose, the researchers argue.

But why go to all the trouble? At the time, the species was likely experiencing a major threat to its survival as elephant populations in the region began to decline. Because H. erectus relied on the enormous creatures for food, they were probably scared and searching for any possible fix, Barkai tells Haaretz’s Ruth Schuster.

“Until the elephants disappeared, [H. erectus] lived quietly in peace and had no need for faith, no ritual,” Barkai tells Haaretz. “There is no sign that they did anything but lived like chimps in the best way they could, maybe being attracted to [an object because it was] shiny but they didn’t do anything with it. We start to see things like [the hand axes] at Sakhnin because people began to understand they had a problem with the world and had to find a solution.”

Similarly, Barkai tells IFLScience he believes that H. erectus were “looking for some help, some assistance from the cosmos in order to find solutions to their problems.”

Other researchers, however, are skeptical of this theory. Sarah Wurz, an archaeologist at the University of the Witwatersrand who was not involved with the research, tells Live Science in an email that she finds the hand axes to be “extraordinary” and “noteworthy.” However, “further inferential scaffolding [evidence] would strengthen the interpretation of symbolic behavior,” she adds.

In any case, it would not come as a surprise to many researchers that H. erectus was attracted to unusual rocks—especially geodes. Archaeological evidence suggests that human ancestors have been collecting small crystals for at least 780,000 years. And recent research suggests that this fascination with sparkly rocks might have evolutionary origins. In experiments, scientists discovered that chimps are also interested in crystals.

Because humans and chimpanzees diverged from a common ancestor roughly six to eight million years ago, the findings suggest “we’ve had crystals in our minds” for at least that long, Juan Manuel García-Ruiz, the lead author of that study, said in a statement last month.

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Sarah Kuta is a writer and editor based in Longmont, Colorado. She covers history, science, travel, food and beverage, sustainability, economics and other topics.