The earliest human beings began to make use of tools around 35,000— 40,000 years ago. Sharpened flints were used to skin animals and fashion implements from wood and bone.
Paralleling the biological evolution of early humans was the development of cultural technologies that allowed them to become increasingly successful at acquiring food and surviving predators. The evidence for this evolution in culture can be seen especially in three innovations:
Some chimpanzee communities are known to use stone and wood as hammers to crack nuts and as crude ineffective weapons in hunting small animals, including monkeys. However, they rarely shape their tools in a systematic way to increase efficiency. The most sophisticated chimpanzee tools are small, slender tree branches from which they strip off the leaves. These twigs are then used as probes for some of their favorite foods–termites and ants. More rarely, chimpanzees have been observed using sticks as short thrusting spears to hunt gallagos in holes and crevices of trees where they sleep during the day time. It is likely that the australopithecines were at least this sophisticated in their simple tool use.
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The first unquestionable stone tools were evidently made and used by early transitional humans and possibly Australopithecus garhi in East Africa about 2.5 million years ago. While the earliest sites with these tools are from the Gona River Region of Ethiopia, simple tools of this kind were first discovered by Mary and Louis Leakey associated with Homo habilis at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. Hence, they were named Oldowan tools after that location. These early toolmakers were selective in choosing particular rock materials for their artifacts. They usually chose hard water-worn creek cobbles made out of volcanic rock.
There were two main categories of tools in the Oldowan tradition. There were stone cobbles with several flakes knocked off usually at one end by heavy glancing percussion blows from another rock used as a hammer. This produced a jagged, chopping or cleaver-like implement that fit easily in the hand. These core tools most likely functioned as multipurpose hammering, chopping, and digging implements. Efficient use of this percussion flaking technique requires a strong precision grip. Humans are the only living primates that have this anatomical trait. Probably the most important tools in the Oldowan tradition were sharp-edged stone flakes produced in the process of making the core tools. These simple flake tools were used without further modification as knives. They would have been essential for butchering large animals, because human teeth and fingers are totally inadequate for cutting through thick skins and slicing off pieces of meat. Evidence of their use in this manner can be seen in cut marks that still are visible on bones. Some paleoanthropologists have suggested that the core tools were, in fact, only sources for the flake tools and that the cores had little other use.
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