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These early tools were simple, usually made by chipping one, or a few, flakes off a stone using another stone. Oldowan tools were used during the Lower Paleolithic period, 2.9 million years ago up until at least 1.7 million years ago (Ma), by ancient Hominins (early humans) across much of Africa.
The side that does not do the cutting is left unscathed, an unusual practice. These old instruments were made from specific materials. Initially, they were composed of quartz, quartzite, basalt, or obsidian. In the later years of the Oldowan age, two other materials were used: flint and chert. These materials could hold an edge while still ...
The earliest stone tools in the era of genus Homo are Mode 1 tools, [14] and come from what has been termed the Oldowan Industry, named after the type of site (many sites, actually) found in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, where they were discovered in large quantities. Oldowan tools were characterised by their simple construction, predominantly using ...
And the tools from the Kenya site — likely the most ancient Oldowan tools found to date — suggest this gave them an advantage in a key area: eating. The site, known as Nyayanga, is a lush ...
Stone tools preserve more readily than tools of many other materials. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] So the oldest tools that we can find in many areas are going to be stone tools. It could be that these tools were once accompanied by, or even preceded by, non-stone tools that we cannot find because they did not preserve.
The Leakeys determined that choppers were the most common stone tool found at the gorge, amounting to over half of the total number, and identified 11 Oldowan sites in the gorge, 9 in Bed I, and 2 in Bed II. They also identified the Developed Oldowan as the subsequent diverse tool-kit found in Beds II, III, and IV, with small tools made mostly ...
Tool types found in Acheulean assemblages include pointed, cordate, ovate, ficron, and bout-coupé hand-axes (referring to the shapes of the final tool), cleavers, retouched flakes, scrapers, and segmental chopping tools. Materials used were determined by available local stone types; flint is most often associated with the tools but its use is ...
In 1969 in the 2nd edition of World Prehistory, Grahame Clark proposed an evolutionary progression of flint-knapping industries (also known as complexes or technocomplexes [42]) in which the "dominant lithic technologies" occurred in a fixed sequence where simple Oldowan one-edged tools were replaced by these more complex Acheulean hand axes ...