Stone tools

Stone and other tools were used by human ancestors long before Homo sapiens appeared, around 200,000 years ago.The Paleolithic, or “Old stone age,” encompasses all of human history up until the development of agriculture approximately 12,000 years ago. The earliest methods of making stone tools, known as the Oldowan “industry,” date back at least 2.3 million years ago[7].

The earliest direct evidence of tool usage was found in Ethiopia within the Great Rift Valley, approximately 2.5 million years ago[8].A hammerstone was used to strike a “core” of hard stone with specific flaking properties, like flint, to make a stone tool.Both the core stone and the flakes developed sharp edges as a result of this flaking, making them useful tools, particularly choppers and scrapers.

These tools made it much easier for early humans to perform a variety of tasks, such as butchering carcasses and breaking bones to get at the marrow, in their hunter-gatherer lifestyle.cleaving wood;opening up nuts;removing an animal’s skin for its hide;and even constructing additional tools from softer materials like bone and wood[9].