Stone tools and other artifacts offer evidence about how early humans made things, how they lived, interacted with their surroundings, and evolved over time. Spanning the past 2.6 million years, many thousands of archeological sites have been excavated, studied, and dated. These sites often consist of the accumulated debris from making and using stone tools. Because stone tools are less susceptible to destruction than bones, stone artifacts typically offer the best evidence of where and when early humans lived, their geographic dispersal, and their ability to survive in a variety of habitats.
But since multiple hominin species often existed at the same time, it can be difficult to determine which species made the tools at any given site. Most important is that stone tools provide evidence about the technologies, dexterity, particular kinds of mental skills, and innovations that were within the grasp of early human toolmakers.
The creation and use of tools 2. New subsistence patterns 3. The occupation of new environmental zones Tool Making Some chimpanzee communities are known to use stone and wood as hammers to crack nuts and as crude ineffective weapons in hunting small animals, including monkeys.
However, they rarely shape their tools in a systematic way to increase efficiency. The most sophisticated chimpanzee tools are small, slender tree branches from which they strip off the leaves. The se twigs are then used as probes for some of their favorite foods-termites and ants. More rarely, chimpanzees have been observed using sticks as short thrusting spears to hunt gallagos in holes and crevices of trees where they sleep during the day time.
It is likely that the australopithecines were at least this sophisticated in their simple tool use. Oldowan tradition core tool (chopper) The first unquestionable stone tools were evidently made and used by early transitional humans and possibly Australopithecus garhi in East Africa about 2.5 million years ago. While the earliest sites with these tools are from the Gona River Region of Ethiopia, simple tools of this kind were first discovered by Mary and Louis Leakey associated with Homo habilis at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. Hence, they were named Oldowan tools after that location. These early toolmakers were selective in choosing particular rock materials for their artifacts. They usually chose hard water-worn creek cobbles made out of volcanic rock.
There were two main categories of tools in the Oldowan tradition. There were stone cobbles with several flakes knocked off usually at one end by heavy glancing percussion blows from another rock used as a hammer. This produced a jagged, chopping or cleaver-like implement that fit easily in the hand. These core tools most likely functioned as multipurpose hammering, chopping, and digging implements. Efficient use of this percussion flaking technique requires a strong precision grip. Humans are the only living primates that have this anatomical trait.
Probably the most important tools in the Oldowan tradition were sharp-edged stone flakes produced in the process of making the core tools. These simple flake tools were used without further modification as knives. They would have been essential for butchering large animals, because human teeth and fingers are totally inadequate for cutting through thick skins and slicing off pieces of meat.
Evidence of their use in this manner can be seen in cut marks that still are visible on bones. Some paleoanthropologists have suggested that the core tools were, in fact, only sources for the flake tools and that the cores had little other use. Audio recording of an NPR interview with anthropologists Erin Williams and Dennis Sandgathe concerning the relationship between stone tool making and the evolution of the human hand. This link takes you to an external website. To return here, you must click the 'back' button on your browser program. (length = 7 mins, 46 secs) In addition to stone tools, Homo habilis probably made simple implements out of wood and other highly perishable materials that have not survived.
In the 1940's, Raymond Dart suggested that australopithecines and early humans also used the hard body parts of animals as clubs, daggers, and other sorts of weapons. Dart proposed an entire tool making tradition which he named osteodontokeratic, based on the presumed use of bones (osteo), teeth (donto), and horns (keratic). This idea has been rejected by most paleoanthropologists today since there is a lack of evidence for the systematic shaping or even use of these materials for weapons or other types of tools at this early time. In addition, it is unlikely that the earliest humans were aggressive hunters. They most likely were primarily vegetarians who occasionally ate meat that was mostly scavenged from the leftovers of kills abandoned by lions, leopards, and other large predators. At times, they also may have hunted monkeys and other small game much as chimpanzees do today. Homo habilis made and use d stone tools in the Oldowan tradition for nearly a million years but with gradual improvements over time.
The early Homo erectus also used what could be described as advanced or evolved Oldowan tool making techniques. By 1.8 million years ago, the skills of some Homo erectus had increased to the point that they were making more sophisticated stone implements with sharper and straighter edges.
Their tool kits were sufficiently advanced by 1.5 million years ago to consider them to be a new tool making tradition now referred to as Acheul ian. It was named after the Saint Acheul site in southwest France where these kinds of tools had been discovered in the 19th century. However, the Acheulian tool making tradition was first developed in East Africa.
Perhaps, the most important of the Acheulian tools were hand axes. They are rock cores or very large flakes that have been systematically worked by to an elongated oval shape with one pointed end and sharp edges on the sides. Since they were shaped on both faces, they are also referred to as biface tools. In profile, hand axes usually had a relatively symmetrical teardrop or broad leaf shape. Referring to these artifacts as hand axes may be misleading since we do not know for sure whether they were primarily axes in a modern sense or even if they were held in the hand. Based on tool edge wear patterns and the brittle fracturing lithic materials that were used to make them, it is likely that hand axes were multipurpose implements used for light chopping of wood, digging up roots and bulbs, butchering animals, and cracking nuts and small bones.
In a sense, they were the Swiss Army knives of their times. They were reusable portable tools intended to be carried from place to place rather than made each time they were needed. Acheul ian bifaces (hand axes )-the earliest known bilaterally symmetrical tools Some of the Acheul ian tools were shaped by additional percussion flaking to relatively standardized forms. For instance, the surfaces of late Acheul ian hand axes often had many relatively small flake scars, suggesting that these tools were not completely made with heavy hammerstones. Late Homo erectus or their immediate successors must have begun using softer hammers for greater control in the final shaping process. Pieces of hard wood, antler, or bone would have functioned well for this purpose. Percussion Flaking Techniques: hard hammer (left) and soft hammer (right) While hand axes are the most diagnostic of Acheul ian tools, they usually make up only a small percentage of the artifacts found at Homo erectus sites.
In fact, these early humans made a relatively wide variety of stone tools that were used for processing various plant and animal materials. Their tool kits included choppers, cleavers, and hammers as well as flakes used as knives and scrapers. It is quite likely that Homo erectus also made many implements out of more perishable materials such as wood, bark, and even grass, which can be easily twisted together to make string and rope.
The Acheul ian tradition of tool making apparently began in East and South Africa by 1.5 million years ago. It spread into Israel and probably other parts of Southwest Asia by 1.4 million years ago. However, not all early Homo erectus leaving Africa had Acheulian tools. Apparently, some only had the older Oldowan tradition.
Acheulian tool making reached Europe by at least 500,000 years ago and possibly as early as 900,000 years ago. Until recently, the lack of hand axes at Zhoukoudian and other East Asian Homo erectus sites suggested that the Acheul ian tradition did not reach that far. It was thought likely that the same functions that hand axes performed in the west were being performed in the Far East by other kinds of tools, perhaps made of bamboo. However, 24 sites in southern China have now been found to contain Acheul ian tools dating back about 80 0,000 years. There remains controversy as to whether they include true hand axes. Throughout most of the Homo erectus geographic range, there is clear evidence of progressive improvement in tool making over time. The late Homo erectus had more complex mental templates guiding them in the manufacture of their artifacts.
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In addition, the reliance on tools increased as the implements became more useful. By half a million years ago, major Homo erectus habitation sites commonly had tens of thousands of discarded stone tools. New Subsistence Patterns Anthropologists use the term subsistence pattern, or subsistence base, to refer to sources of food and the way it is obtained. A clear measure of success in human evolution has been the progressive development of new food getting techniques and the inclusion of new food sources. These measures have made it possible for humanity to increase in numbers from a few thousand australopithecines in Africa three million years ago to perhaps hundreds of thousands of Homo erectus by a half million years ago. This trend of expanding and diversifying subsistence patterns making it possible for population growth continues to the present.
In fact, it accelerated dramatically two centuries ago and is largely responsible for our burgeoning world population of seven billion people today. Our modern hybridization and genetic modification of food crops and farm animals is just the latest human attempt to solve this recurring problem.
Based on the analysis of tooth wear patterns and food refuse evidence, it is likely that australopithecines and early transitional humans were primarily wild plant food collectors and occasional scavengers of meat and eggs. By the time of Homo erectus, small game hunting and large animal carcass scavenging were apparently becoming much more common. The evidence of this change in subsistence pattern can be seen especially at late Homo erectus sites such as Zhoukoudian. Literally tens of thousands of fragmentary food refuse bones were found there. They came from pigs, sheep, rhinoceros, buffalo, and especially deer. In addition, there were large numbers of bones from small animals including birds, turtles, rabbits, rodents, and fish as well as the shells of oysters, limpets, and mussels.
Some of these bones ended up in the cave at Zhoukoudian as a result of large carnivorous animals rather than humans, but there is sufficient evidence to suggest that by a half million years ago, some Homo erectus were exploiting virtually every animal in their environment for food. They undoubtedly were harvesting vast amounts of wild plant foods as well. It would be a mistake to assume that Homo erectus had become an efficient specialized big game hunter. That development did not occur until more advanced forms of humans had evolved, several hundred thousand years later. Occupation of New Environmental Zones Homo erectus was the first species in our line of evolution to expand their range beyond and environments into climatic zones of the Old World where they encountered relatively cold winters.
This occurred by at least a half million years ago in Asia and evidently a few hundred thousand years earlier in Southern Europe. It was made possible mainly by the success of new inventions and new subsistence strategies. The most important change may have been increased meat consumption as a result of hunting and more successful scavenging. The greatest difficulty living in temperate areas was probably not the cold weather but obtaining something to eat during the winter when fresh plant foods are scarce. It is in that season that meat would have been the most important calorie source. The ability to use fire for cooking and heating may also have been significant in the successful colonization of colder regions.
Stone Tools Made By Earman
However, the first convincing evidence of regular fire use for these purposes does not come until 780,000-400,000 years ago, when Homo erectus were evolving into Homo heidelbergensis. The earliest suggestive evidence of fire being associated with humans was found at two sites in Kenya dating to 1.5 million years ago. In both cases, soil sediments appear to have been exposed to high temperatures. However, it is not necessary to assume that early humans were responsible. The burned soil could have resulted naturally from lightning started wild fires that are common in the grasslands of East Africa even today. Similar questionable evidence has been found in South Africa dating to about 1,000,000 years ago. There is no convincing evidence of human control of fire at this early time.
A 790,000 year old site in Israel has more credible evidence, though there does not seem to have been any cooking or repeated fire creation. The first reasonably good evidence of cooking is in the form of burned bones and fire altered stones at the Chinese site of Zhoukoudian dating sometime between 780,000 and 400,000 years ago. All of these sites in Africa and Asia with uncertain fire use indications presumably would have been occupied by Homo erectus. We have no evidence as to how Homo erectus might have obtained fire or even if they had the ability to create it at will. Implications The cultural developments of Homo erectus essentially began a new phase of our evolution-one in which natural selection was altered by cultural inventions. This has been referred to as biocultural evolution. Culture can affect the direction of human evolution by creating non-biological solutions to environmental challenges.
This potentially reduces the need to evolve genetic responses to the challenges. Normally, when animals move into new environmental zones, natural selection, operating on random mutations, causes evolution. In other words, the population's gene pool is altered as a result of adapting to a new environment. When late Homo erectus moved into temperate environments, nature should have selected for biological adaptations that were more suited to cooler climates.
Such things as increased amounts of insulating body fat and insulating hair covering most of the body would be expected. Homo erectus evidently achieved much of the same adaptation by occupying caves, using fires, and becoming more capable at obtaining meat. By using their intelligence and accumulated knowledge, they remained essentially tropical animals despite the fact that they were no longer living only in the tropics. However, natural selection continued to select for increased brain size and presumably intelligence. This pattern of culture altering natural selection accelerated dramatically with the evolution of modern humans. Today, most of us live in cities and towns that are essentially unnatural environments and the rate of culture change has accelerated dramatically.
We have occupied most environmental zones on land, and yet we are still essentially tropical animals physically. As a result, we perish rapidly if our cultural technology is taken away from us in environments in which the temperature drops to freezing.
The advent of simple tools gave human ancestors a competitive edge against the larger, stronger, and more ferocious beasts of the age. Even the most basic stone tools developed over time, growing increasingly complex and varied from the earliest sharp rocks that served as a catch-all for many hunter-gatherer societies. Beyond that, these tools and their developments showed increased cognition among early hominids and spoke to their resourcefulness and understanding of the world. Listed below are some of the earliest tools known to mankind, some of which exist in some form or another today.
. A stone tool is, in the most general sense, any tool made either partially or entirely out of. Although stone tool-dependent societies and cultures still exist today, most stone tools are associated with, particularly cultures that have become extinct. Often study such prehistoric societies, and refer to the study of stone tools as. Has been a valuable research field in order to further the understanding and cultural implications of stone tool use and manufacture.
Stone has been used to make a wide variety of different tools throughout history, including, spearpoints and. Stone tools may be made of either or, and a person who creates tools out of the latter is known as a. Chipped stone tools are made from materials such as or, and via a process known as. One simple form of reduction is to strike stone from a nucleus (core) of material using a or similar hard hammer fabricator. If the goal of the reduction strategy is to produce flakes, the remnant may be discarded once it has become too small to use.
In some strategies, however, a reduces the core to a rough or, which is further reduced using flaking techniques or by the edges. More complex forms of reduction include the production of highly standardized blades, which can then be fashioned into a variety of tools such as, and. In general terms, chipped stone tools are nearly ubiquitous in all pre-metal-using societies because they are easily manufactured, the is usually plentiful, and they are easy to transport and sharpen. A selection of stone tools. Archaeologists classify stone tools into (also known as complexes or technocomplexes ) that share distinctive technological or morphological characteristics. In 1969 in the 2nd edition of World Prehistory, proposed an evolutionary progression of in which the 'dominant lithic technologies' occurred in a fixed sequence from Mode 1 through Mode 5.
He assigned to them relative dates: Modes 1 and 2 to the Lower, 3 to the, 4 to the and 5 to the. They were not to be conceived, however, as either universal—that is, they did not account for all; or as synchronous—they were not in effect in different regions simultaneously. Mode 1, for example, was in use in long after it had been replaced by Mode 2 in.
Clark's scheme was adopted enthusiastically by the archaeological community. One of its advantages was the simplicity of terminology; for example, the Mode 1 / Mode 2 Transition. The transitions are currently of greatest interest. Consequently, in the literature the stone tools used in the period of the are divided into four 'modes', each of which designate a different form of complexity, and which in most cases followed a rough order. Pre-Mode I Kenya Stone tools found from 2011 to 2014 at in, are dated to be 3.3 million years old, and predate the genus Homo by half million years. The oldest known Homo fossil is 2.8 million years old compared to the 3.3 million year old stone tools.
The stone tools may have been made by —also called — (a 3.2 to 3.5-million-year-old hominin fossil discovered in 1999) the species whose best fossil example is, which inhabited East Africa at the same time as the date of the oldest stone tools. Dating of the tools was by dating volcanic ash layers in which the tools were found and dating the magnetic signature (pointing north or south due to reversal of the magnetic poles) of the rock at the site.
Ethiopia Grooved, cut and fractured animal bone fossils, made by using stone tools, were found in, near (200 yards) the remains of, a young girl who lived about 3.3 million years ago. Mode I: The Oldowan Industry Wikimedia Commons has media related to. Main article: The earliest stone tools in the life span of the genus are tools, and come from what has been termed the, named after the type of site (many sites, actually) found in, where they were discovered in large quantities. Oldowan tools were characterised by their simple construction, predominantly using forms. These cores were river pebbles, or rocks similar to them, that had been struck by a spherical to cause removing flakes from one surface, creating an edge and often a sharp tip. The blunt end is the proximal surface; the sharp, the distal.
Oldowan is a percussion technology. Grasping the proximal surface, the hominid brought the distal surface down hard on an object he wished to detach or shatter, such as a bone or tuber. The earliest known Oldowan tools yet found date from 2.6 million years ago, during the period, and have been uncovered at in. After this date, the Oldowan Industry subsequently spread throughout much of Africa, although archaeologists are currently unsure which species first developed them, with some speculating that it was, and others believing that it was in fact. Homo habilis was the hominin who used the tools for most of the Oldowan in Africa, but at about 1.9-1.8 million years ago inherited them.
The Industry flourished in southern and eastern Africa between 2.6 and 1.7 million years ago, but was also spread out of Africa and into by travelling bands of H. Erectus, who took it as far east as by 1.8 million years ago and by 1.6 million years ago. Mode II: The Acheulean Industry. A Biface (trihedral) from Amar Merdeg, Zagros foothills, Lower Paleolithic, National Museum of Iran The Leakeys, excavators at Olduvai, defined a 'Developed Oldowan' Period in which they believed they saw evidence of an overlap in Oldowan and Acheulean.
In their species-specific view of the two industries, Oldowan equated to H. Habilis and Acheulean to H.
Developed Oldowan was assigned to habilis and Acheulean to erectus. Subsequent dates on H.
Erectus pushed the fossils back to well before Acheulean tools; that is, H. Erectus must have initially used Mode 1. There was no reason to think, therefore, that Developed Oldowan had to be habilis; it could have been erectus. Opponents of the view divide Developed Oldowan between Oldowan and Acheulean. There is no question, however, that habilis and erectus coexisted, as habilis fossils are found as late as 1.4 million years ago. Meanwhile, African H. Erectus developed Mode 2.
In any case a wave of Mode 2 then spread across Eurasia, resulting in use of both there. Erectus may not have been the only hominin to leave Africa; European fossils are sometimes associated with, a contemporary of H.
Erectus in Africa. In contrast to an Oldowan tool, which is the result of a fortuitous and probably operation to obtain one sharp edge on a stone, an Acheulean tool is a planned result of a manufacturing process. The manufacturer begins with a blank, either a larger stone or a slab knocked off a larger rock. From this blank he or she removes large flakes, to be used as cores. Standing a core on edge on an anvil stone, he or she hits the exposed edge with centripetal blows of a hard hammer to roughly shape the implement.
Then the piece must be worked over again, or retouched, with a soft hammer of wood or bone to produce a tool finely chipped all over consisting of two convex surfaces intersecting in a sharp edge. Such a tool is used for slicing; concussion would destroy the edge and cut the hand. Some Mode 2 tools are disk-shaped, others ovoid, others leaf-shaped and pointed, and others elongated and pointed at the distal end, with a blunt surface at the proximal end, obviously used for drilling.
Mode 2 tools are used for butchering; not being composite (having no haft) they are not very appropriate killing instruments. The killing must have been done some other way.
Mode 2 tools are larger than Oldowan. The blank was ported to serve as an ongoing source of flakes until it was finally retouched as a finished tool itself. Edges were often sharpened by further retouching. Mode III: The Mousterian Industry. Main article: Eventually, the Acheulean in Europe was replaced by a lithic technology known as the, which was named after the site of in France, where examples were first uncovered in the 1860s. Evolving from the Acheulean, it adopted the to produce smaller and sharper knife-like tools as well as scrapers. The Mousterian Industry was developed and used primarily by the, a native European and Middle Eastern hominin species.
Mode IV: The Aurignacian Industry The long (rather than flakes) of the Mode 4 industries appeared during the between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago. The culture is a good example of mode 4 tool production. Mode V: The Microlithic Industries. Axe heads found at a 2700 BC Neolithic manufacture site in, arranged in the various stages of production from left to right. Click to see individual images. In prehistoric, ground stone tools appear during the period, that lasted from around 40,000 BC to 14,000 BC.
Elsewhere, ground stone tools became important during the period beginning about 10,000 BC. These ground or polished implements are manufactured from larger-grained materials such as, and, and some forms of which are not suitable for flaking.
The greenstone industry was important in the, and is known as the. Ground stone implements included, and, which were manufactured using a labour-intensive, time-consuming method of repeated grinding against an abrasive stone, often using water as a lubricant. Because of their coarse surfaces, some ground stone tools were used for grinding plant foods and were polished not just by intentional shaping, but also by use. Are hand stones used in conjunction with for grinding corn or grain. Polishing increased the intrinsic of the axe.
Polished stone axes were important for the widespread clearance of woods and forest during the Neolithic period, when crop and livestock farming developed on a large scale. They are distributed very widely and were traded over great distances since the best rock types were often very local. They also became venerated objects, and were frequently buried in or with their former owners.
During the period, large axes were made from flint by chipping a rough shape, a so-called 'rough-out'. Such products were traded across a wide area. The rough-outs were then polished to give the surface a fine finish to create the axe head. Polishing not only increased the final strength of the product but also meant that the head could penetrate wood more easily.
There were many sources of supply, including in, in and near in to mention but a few. In, there were numerous small quarries in areas where flint was removed for local use, for example. Many other rocks were used to make axes from stones, including the as well as numerous other sites such as and in,.
In Langdale, there many of the were exploited, and knapped where the stone was extracted. The sites exhibit piles of waste flakes, as well as rejected rough-outs. Polishing improved the of the tools, so increasing their life and effectiveness.
Many other tools were developed using the same techniques. Such products were traded across the country and abroad.
Modern uses The invention of the gun mechanism in the sixteenth century produced a demand for specially shaped. The industry survived until the middle of the twentieth century in some places, including in the English town of. For specialist purposes are still made and used today, particularly for cutting for in a technique known as. Freshly cut blades are always used since the sharpness of the edge is very great. These knives are made from high-quality manufactured, however, not from natural raw materials such as chert or obsidian.
Surgical knives made from are still used in some delicate surgeries. Tool stone. Michaels, George H.; Fagan, Brian M. University of California.
Retrieved 22 January 2011. Gunness, Jo Lynn (1998). University of Hawaii Anthropology Department. Archived from on 13 June 2001. Retrieved 22 January 2011. Prindle, Tara (1994–2011). Retrieved 22 January 2011.
Stone Age Reference Collection (SARC), University of Oslo. Archived from on 5 February 2006. Retrieved 22 January 2011. Texas Beyond History, University of Texas at Austin. Retrieved 18 January 2011. Prindle, Tara (1994–2011).
Retrieved 18 January 2011. Grace, Roger. Stone Age Reference Collection (SARC), University of Oslo. Archived from on 29 May 2010. Retrieved 18 January 2011. Archived from on 6 September 2006.
Retrieved 18 January 2011. World Museum of Man. Retrieved 18 January 2011. English Heritage. Google Arts & Culture.
Retrieved 19 August 2018.
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