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Why were stone tools important in the Paleolithic Age?
What tools were used in the Paleolithic Age?
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Who were the first people to use stone tools?
Jan 3, 2024 · Early Stone Age Tools. The earliest stone toolmaking developed by at least 2.6 million years ago. The Early Stone Age includes the most basic stone toolkits made by early humans. The Early Stone Age in Africa is equivalent to what is called the Lower Paleolithic in Europe and Asia.
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- Overview
- Paleolithic toolmaking
The Paleolithic Period is an ancient cultural stage of human technological development, characterized by the creation and use of rudimentary chipped stone tools. These included simple pebble tools (rock shaped by the pounding of another stone to produce tools with a serrated crest that served as a chopping blade), hand adzes (tools shaped from a block of stone to create a rounded butt and a single-bevel straight or curved cutting edge), stone scrapers, cleavers, and points. Such tools were also made of bone and wood. The Paleolithic Period was also characterized by the manufacture of small sculptures (e.g., carved stone statuettes of women, clay figurines of animals, and other bone and ivory carvings) and paintings, incised designs, and reliefs on cave walls.
tool
Learn more about the development of the first hand tools.
When did the Paleolithic Period begin?
The onset of the Paleolithic Period has traditionally coincided with the first evidence of tool construction and use by Homo some 2.58 million years ago, near the beginning of the Pleistocene Epoch (2.58 million to 11,700 years ago). In 2015, however, researchers excavating a dry riverbed near Kenya’s Lake Turkana discovered primitive stone tools embedded in rocks dating to 3.3 million years ago—the middle of the Pliocene Epoch (some 5.3 million to 2.58 million years ago). Those tools predate the oldest confirmed specimens of Homo by almost 1 million years, which raises the possibility that toolmaking originated with Australopithecus or its contemporaries and that the timing of the onset of this cultural stage should be reevaluated.
Lake Turkana remains
At sites dating from the Lower Paleolithic Period, simple pebble tools have been found in association with the remains of what may have been some of the earliest human ancestors. A somewhat more-sophisticated Lower Paleolithic tradition, known as the Chopper chopping-tool industry, is widely distributed in the Eastern Hemisphere, and it is thought to have been the work of the hominin species named Homo erectus. It is believed that H. erectus probably made tools of wood and bone, although no such fossil tools have yet been found, as well as of stone.
About 700,000 years ago a new Lower Paleolithic tool, the hand ax, appeared. The earliest European hand axes are assigned to the Abbevillian industry, which developed in northern France in the valley of the Somme River; a later, more-refined hand-ax tradition is seen in the Acheulean industry, evidence of which has been found in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Some of the earliest known hand axes were found at Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania) in association with remains of H. erectus. Alongside the hand-ax tradition there developed a distinct and very different stone tool industry, based on flakes of stone: special tools were made from worked (carefully shaped) flakes of flint. In Europe the Clactonian industry is one example of a flake tradition. The early flake industries probably contributed to the development of the Middle Paleolithic flake tools of the Mousterian industry, which is associated with the remains of Neanderthals. Other items dating to the Middle Paleolithic are shell beads found in both North and South Africa. In Taforalt, Morocco, the beads were dated to approximately 82,000 years ago, and other, younger examples were encountered in Blombos Cave, Blombosfontein Nature Reserve, on the southern coast of South Africa. Experts determined that the patterns of wear seem to indicate that some of these shells were suspended, some were engraved, and examples from both sites were covered with red ochre.
The Upper Paleolithic Period was characterized by the emergence of regional stone tool industries, such as the Perigordian, Aurignacian, Solutrean, and Magdalenian of Europe as well as other localized industries of the Old World and the oldest known cultures of the New World. Principally associated with the fossil remains of such anatomically modern humans as Cro-Magnons, Upper Paleolithic industries exhibit greater complexity, specialization, and variety of tool types, such as those made of bone, ivory, and antlers, and the emergence of distinctive regional artistic traditions involving paintings and sculpture and musical instruments.
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- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Stone tools are perhaps the first cultural artifacts which historians can use to reconstruct the worlds of Paleolithic peoples. In fact, stone tools were so important in the Paleolithic age that the names of Paleolithic periods are based on the progression of tools: Lower Paleolithic, Upper Paleolithic, Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age), and ...
Dec 21, 2016 · It is conceivable that tools used within textile production were among the first ones that appeared in the early Neolithic. A Neolithic site in Syria shows implements such as drills and reamers that may have been used for the joinery of wood – or joining pieces of wood together by using pegs and the likes.
- Emma Groeneveld
4 days ago · Stone Age, prehistoric cultural stage, or level of human development, characterized by the creation and use of stone tools, the oldest known of which date to some 3.3 million years ago. The Stone Age is usually divided into three separate periods: Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic.
Tools. Paleolithic humans made tools of stone, bone (primarily deer), and wood. The early paleolithic hominins, Australopithecus, were the first users of stone tools.
Sep 29, 2017 · Lower- or Early Palaeolithic - From the earliest known tool use around 2,6 million years ago, with simple cores, flaked pieces, and later large bifaces, up to roughly 250,000 years ago;