New evidence suggested hominids in prehistoric times recycled.
Early hominids often found broken or worn down tools and "recycled" them into new useful objects, the Associated Press reported.
"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," Ran Barkai, an archaeologist and one of the organizers of a four-day gathering at Tel Aviv University where the subject was discussed, said, the AP reported.
"[The behavior] appeared at different times, in different places, with different methods according to the context and the availability of raw materials," he said.
Homo erectus, Neanderthals, and other hominids in Europe, Africa, and Asia all had something in common, they reused spent items.
The early hominids were most likely more concerned with survival than being "green."
"Why do we recycle plastic? To conserve energy and raw materials," Avi Gopher, a Tel Aviv University archaeologist, said, the AP reported. "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."
Researchers found 300,000-year-old bones in a dry pond near Rome, Italy.
"We find several levels of reuse and recycling," Giovanni Boschian, a geologist from the University of Pisa, said. "The bones were shattered to extract the marrow, then the fragments were shaped into tools, abandoned, and finally reworked to be used again."
At other sites researchers found flint chips that had been reshaped from other objects to form "cutlery."
About 10 percent of the items found at the sites had been reused or recycled in some way.
"It was not an occasional behavior; it was part of the way they did things, part of their way of life," Gopher said.
The researchers said studying prehistoric recycling could help them understand "trading links" and how long certain groups of hominids stayed in the area.
