Evolution of Humankind
Senior 1 · History and Citizenship
Evolution of Humankind
Lesson 3 of 5
22 min
This stone, now in the British Museum in London, was found at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. Look at its shape and at the scars all over its surface before you read on.
Worked example: reading a stone tool as a source
For more than 99% of the human story, people made their sharpest tools from stone. Archaeologists call this long period the Stone Age. In Africa it is divided into three periods by the kinds of tool people made. (European books use the words Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic; the African periods do not match them exactly.)
| Period | Approximate dates in Africa | Main tools | Hominids |
|---|---|---|---|
| Earlier (Old) Stone Age | c. 3.3 million to 300,000 years ago | choppers and flakes (Oldowan); later large hand-axes and cleavers (Acheulean) | Homo habilis, Homo erectus |
| Middle Stone Age | c. 300,000 to 40,000 years ago | smaller flakes and points struck from prepared cores, often fixed to spears | early Homo sapiens |
| Later Stone Age | from c. 50,000 years ago until iron arrived | tiny blades called microliths, set in arrows and knives; bone tools; bows | Homo sapiens |
After the Later Stone Age, some people began farming and herding; this change is often called the New Stone Age (Neolithic). In the Great Lakes region, iron tools replaced stone about 2,500 years ago.
Definition
Stone Age: the long period in which people made their main tools from stone, from about 3.3 million years ago until metal tools came into use. It is divided by the kinds of tools made.
Definition
Knapping: shaping stone by striking it with a harder stone (a hammerstone) or a piece of bone so that flakes break off. Example: a hand-axe is made by knapping both faces of a stone.
Definition
Hand-axe: a pear-shaped or oval stone tool, worked on both faces to give a point and two cutting edges; the typical tool of the Acheulean tradition. Example: the Olduvai hand-axe above.
Definition
Microlith: a very small stone blade, often less than 3 cm long, set in a handle or shaft to make arrows, spears and knives. Example: Later Stone Age arrows barbed with microliths.
At Olorgesailie, in the Rift Valley south-west of Nairobi, thousands of hand-axes lie where people made and dropped them between about 1.2 million and 500,000 years ago. The site has been studied since the 1940s and is now an open-air museum.
Excavations published in 2018 found something new in layers about 300,000 years old: small, carefully made Middle Stone Age points, some of them of black volcanic glass (obsidian) carried from sources up to about 90 km away, and red and black pigments. For Stone Age people who travelled on foot, that is a long way: it suggests that groups exchanged materials with their neighbours. Olorgesailie shows the change from the Earlier to the Middle Stone Age happening in East Africa.
HHMI BioInteractive: "Stone Tool Technology of Our Human Ancestors". Watch the palaeoanthropologist Tim White make a flake tool, and note how he shows that a stone has been worked by a person.
Think, pair, share: For more than a million years the Acheulean hand-axe hardly changed. Then, in the Middle and Later Stone Age, new kinds of tools appeared much faster. What might explain why change speeded up? Think about brains, language, population and contact between groups.
Practice
Sources and credits
