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Many such sites have hominin bones, teeth, or footprints, but unless they also include evidence for tools or tool use, they are omitted here. This list excludes tools and tool use attributed to non-hominin species. See Tool use by non-humans. Since there are far too many hominin tool sites to list on a single page, this page attempts to list ...
Stone tool use – early human (hominid) use of stone tool technology, such as the hand axe, was similar to that of primates, which is found to be limited to the intelligence levels of modern children aged 3 to 5 years. Ancestors of homo sapiens (modern man) used stone tools as follows: Homo habilis ("handy man") – first "homo" species.
Oldowan tools were probably used for many purposes, which have been discovered from observation of modern apes and hunter-gatherers. Nuts and bones are cracked by hitting them with hammer stones on a stone used as an anvil. Battered and pitted stones testify to this possible use. Heavy-duty tools could be used as axes for woodworking.
Anthropologists believe that the use of tools was an important step in the evolution of mankind. [6] Because tools are used extensively by both humans (Homo sapiens) and wild chimpanzees, it is widely assumed that the first routine use of tools took place prior to the divergence between the two ape species. [7]
It covers the greatest portion of humanity's time (roughly 99% of "human technological history", [28] where "human" and "humanity" are interpreted to mean the genus Homo), extending from 2.5 or 2.6 million years ago, with the first documented use of stone tools by hominins such as Homo habilis, to the end of the Pleistocene around 10,000 BC. [28]
The first published picture of a hand axe, drawn by John Frere in the year 1800. Flint hand axe found in Winchester. A hand axe (or handaxe or Acheulean hand axe) is a prehistoric stone tool with two faces that is the longest-used tool in human history. [1]
Stone tools have been used throughout human history but are most closely associated with prehistoric cultures and in particular those of the Stone Age. Stone tools may be made of either ground stone or knapped stone , the latter fashioned by a craftsman called a flintknapper .
The Stone Age is a broad prehistoric period during which stone was widely used in the manufacture of implements with a sharp edge, a point, or a percussion surface. The period lasted roughly 2.5 million years, from the time of early hominids to Homo sapiens in the later Pleistocene era, and largely ended between 6000 and 2000 BCE with the advent of metalworking.