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stone tool industry, any of several assemblages of artifacts displaying humanity’s earliest technology, beginning more than 2 million years ago. These stone tools have survived in great quantities and now serve as the major means to determine the activities of hominids. Archaeologists have classified distinct stone tool industries on the basis of style and use.
The earliest stone industry was found by paleoanthropologists L.S.B. Leakey and Mary Douglas Leakey in the Olduvai Gorge in what is now Tanzania in the 1930s. Called the Oldowan industry, it dates from about 1.8 to 1.2 million years ago, in the Pleistocene Epoch, and consisted of what the Leakeys called choppers, shaped by hitting one stone against another until a sharpened edge was achieved. This could be used for cutting or sawing, while the unflaked end could be used for smashing or crushing. The variety and numbers of choppers found at the site led the Leakeys to identify the people who lived there as Homo habilis, implying “able man.” Remains of the Oldowan industry were also found in North Africa and Europe.
Many early sites unearthed by paleoanthropologists show a more-advanced tool industry, beginning with the Acheulean, which is dated from as early as 1.4 million years ago at Olduvai Gorge. The technique for making tools in the Acheulean industry was a development of the earlier technique, namely striking one stone against another, but the choice of stone was refined. Where flint, which was the ideal toolmaking material, was not available, quartz, quartzite, and other rocks were used.
As the Acheulean industry progressed, so did the skill with which tools were made. A bifacial cutting implement emerged, called a hand axe, that had longer, straighter, sharper edges than the earlier chopper. The earliest hand axes were made with a hard hammer. More-advanced techniques, however, began about 1 million years ago; rather than simply smashing the rock against a boulder, a soft hammer (usually antler) began to be used. In all, 18 different types of implements have been discovered for the Acheulean industry—including chisels, awls, anvils, scrapers, hammer-stones, and round balls. The evidence indicates that the industry was sufficiently developed to enable early humans to adapt to local conditions and seasonality, as in the temperate forest, temperate grasslands, or subtropics.
The Acheulean industry was followed by the Mousterian, a flake tool rather than core tool industry associated with Neanderthal peoples and others living north of the Sahara and eastward to Asia. In addition to the Mousterian industry, two other distinct industries were found in Africa south of the Sahara—the Fauresmith and the Sangoan. In these the flake tool was improved to become a blade, which is at least two times as long as it is wide.
In the Late Paleolithic Period, tools became even more sophisticated. As many as 80 different types of implements have been unearthed for what are called the Perigordian and Aurignacian industries in Europe. It is believed that these tools were used for hunting and butchering, clothes making, and a great variety of other tasks that moved early humankind closer to modern life. In all, hundreds of highly complex tools have been found, some of which are the prototypes for modern tools.
By 40,000 years ago humans created tools with bone and antler handles that gave them much more leverage. Still later, Cro-Magnons created bone tools with engravings that were probably used only for artistic or ritualistic purposes. The Solutrean Period produced laurel leaf and willow leaf knives that are today valued as works of art.
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