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Why do the earliest stone tools challenge the idea that Homo habilis was the first toolmaker?

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Illustration showing side-by-side reconstructions of five hominins in the human lineage: Australopithecus afarensis, Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis, and Homo sapiens, with each figure labeled and depicted in a walking pose to highlight evolutionary changes in posture and body structure. A scale bar at the top right indicates relative height. — human evolution An artist's depiction of five species of the human lineage.

The long-standing belief that Homo habilis was the first toolmaker has been challenged by archaeological discoveries that push the origins of tool use significantly further back in time.

Previously, it was widely thought that the ability to create sophisticated tools was exclusive to the genus Homo, with H. habilis credited as the first to develop stone-hewn pebble choppers approximately 2.6 million years ago. However, excavations at the Lomekwi 3 site near Lake Turkana in Kenya have uncovered primitive stone tools—including hammers, anvils, and cutting implements—dated to 3.3 million years ago.123

Because these tools predate the emergence of the genus Homo by several hundred thousand years, they provide strong evidence that toolmaking originated with earlier hominins, such as members of the genus Australopithecus. This discovery indicates that the development of technology was not an exclusive innovation of Homo habilis but rather a practice that began much earlier in the human evolutionary timeline.142