Early Humans May Have Collected Souvenirs Up to 500,000 Years Ago, Israeli Study Suggests

Anyone who has pocketed a smooth beach pebble or kept a ticket stub from a great trip knows the feeling: a small object can hold a whole memory. A new hypothesis from Israel suggests our ancestors may have felt something similar hundreds of thousands of years ago. Researchers at Tel Aviv University propose that early humans collected colorful pebbles, fossil-bearing flint and very old stone tools as personal keepsakes, and that this habit may have helped shape human autobiographical memory. The authors stress that this is a hypothesis, not proof.

Where the idea comes from

The paper, titled “Homo Memorabiliaxis: Souvenirs and the Evolution of Autobiographical Memory and Self,” appeared in the journal Evolutionary Anthropology in 2026. Dr. Yoav Ram of the School of Zoology and Prof. Ran Barkai and Dr. Ella Assaf of the Department of Archaeology lead the work at Tel Aviv University. Prof. Liad Mudrik of the School of Psychological Sciences and Dr. Bar Efrati of Oxford University join them. Tel Aviv University issued a press release on 9 November 2026, and the story spread through outlets such as Phys.org and i24NEWS.

The team does not report a single new dig. Instead, it pulls together finds from several prehistoric sites in Israel and asks a different question about them: why did people carry these objects around, and what might that behavior say about their minds?

What the sites contain

At Qesem Cave, a Lower Paleolithic site near Tel Aviv, excavators recovered small, colorful pebbles that people brought in from other places. Assaf described 17 such unmodified flint pebbles in a 2018 paper in the Journal of Lithic Studies. None showed signs of use, and all were smaller than the pebbles the cave’s toolmakers normally worked. Qesem Cave is generally dated to roughly 420,000 to 200,000 years ago. Its occupants also hauled in carcasses, firewood and stone for tools, so they knew their landscape well. That makes it less likely they picked up the pretty pebbles by accident.

In the Sakhnin Valley in northern Israel, researchers found handaxes shaped from flint nodules that contained fossils or unusual geological features. The knappers kept those features visible near the center of the stone. A separate study on Sakhnin handaxes, reported by Live Science in April 2026, dated them to between about 500,000 and 200,000 years ago and linked them to Homo erectus.

At Revadim, Jaljulia and Qesem Cave, people also collected old flint tools whose surfaces had already aged. Most kept their weathered surfaces and traces of earlier work, although some got resharpened. The authors read this as selective keeping of objects with a visible past.

The 500,000-year figure

The headline number needs care. The “about 500,000 years” figure is the broad, earliest estimate for the whole argument. It does not describe Qesem Cave, whose layers fall roughly between 420,000 and 200,000 years ago. The older end of the range fits the Sakhnin handaxes better. I could not find site-by-site dates for Revadim and Jaljulia in the sources I could read, so the safest summary is “up to about half a million years ago, depending on the site.”

Why keepsakes might matter for memory

The authors suggest that an unusual stone or a fossil-studded handaxe could work as an “external memory device,” in Ram’s phrase. Holding it may have helped a person recall a particular place, meeting or event. Its look and feel may also have helped separate first-hand experience from stories someone heard or imagined. Keepsakes could even have supported trust and cooperation, which depend on remembering who did what and where.

Over many generations, the team proposes, this reliance on objects may have favored brain mechanisms that track the source and reliability of memories. Those mechanisms underpin autobiographical memory and a sense of self. Barkai adds an environmental angle: as large animals such as elephants disappeared, people shifted to hunting medium-sized game across unfamiliar territory. Objects taken from those places may have kept a personal link to landscapes that fed them.

Caveats and open questions

The authors say plainly that this is a hypothesis, “rather than proof that every unusual stone was a keepsake.” Other explanations remain on the table, including a simple love of beauty, trade, or symbolic and spiritual meaning. The pebbles at Qesem show no use, but that does not reveal why someone carried them. The reports I read quote only the study’s authors, and I found no independent expert comment. The team proposes archaeological, developmental and experimental tests to tell the memory idea apart from the alternatives.

The study also leans on inference. Nobody can interview a Lower Paleolithic collector, and a weathered tool kept in a cave could have been stockpiled raw material. Even so, the pattern across several sites gives researchers something concrete to test. If the hypothesis holds up, the humble souvenir may count among the oldest tools of memory we know.

Sources

• Barkai R. et al. (2026). “Homo Memorabiliaxis: Souvenirs and the Evolution of Autobiographical Memory and Self.” Evolutionary Anthropology. DOI: 10.1002/evan.70051
• Tel Aviv University press release, “Were humans collecting keepsakes as early as half a million years ago?” (9 November 2026), via EurekAlert!
• Phys.org: Did early humans collect keepsakes 500,000 years ago?
• i24NEWS report
• Assaf E. (2018). “Paleolithic aesthetics: Collecting colorful flint pebbles at Middle Pleistocene Qesem Cave, Israel.” Journal of Lithic Studies 5(1). DOI: 10.2218/jls.2616
• Live Qurious: Qesem Cave fire dates (420,000 to 200,000 years) and Live Science on Sakhnin handaxes

Image credit: Tel Aviv University, via EurekAlert!. Colorful, patinated old flint items from Qesem Cave.