For more than half a century, a core pillar of paleoanthropology was the "Man the Toolmaker" paradigm—the absolute conceptual link between the emergence of our genus, Homo , and the dawn of intentional stone tool technology. This milestone was traditionally anchored to the Oldowan Industrial Complex , which dates back to roughly 2.6 million years ago. However, the accidental discovery of Lomekwi 3 on the western shores of Lake Turkana, Kenya, shattered this paradigm, pushing the origin of stone