The First Stone Tools

The Oldowan is also called as Oldawan or Olduwan is the term which is used in the archeology to describe about the stone industry which was utilized by the homos and Hominines during the Lower Paleolithic period.  The Olduwan is important for being the earliest and the first stone tool industry in prehistory,  which is being used  from 2.6 mya up until 1.7 mya, as it was followed by the more refined Acheulean industry.

Between two and three million years ago, the first stone tools appear in African sites (Lewin 1981). They are associated with the fossils of hominids, of which there are several forms in two major groups, the Australopithecines and early Homo. All of these creatures walked upright and had bodies that in many ways were anatomically similar to ours, although their skulls and faces were more apelike and their brains were small compared with ours. They could probably use sticks, stones, and bones as tools, like the modern chimpanzees that stick twigs into termite holes to fish for termites. Homo habilis was presumably taking the next step and making more complicated tools by modifying natural materials; the others may have been as well.

The only definite tools that have survived are the stone tools. At this point they are very simple, no more than a pebble which has been struck with another pebble to remove a few flakes and make a sharp edge. These are called pebble tools, cobble tools, or choppers and are characteristic of the Oldowan industry. Archaeologically speaking, an industry is a group of different types of tools that com­monly occur together at many sites and are characteristic of a particu­lar time or area. They are usually named after a site; thus the name Oldowan comes from Olduvai Gorge in Africa, the site of Louis and Mary Leakey's pioneering finds of Australopithecines. Choppers and the flakes struck off in making them are not very im­pressive tools, and they are almost certainly not weapons. If you hit someone with a sharpened stone in your hand, you will do some dam­age, but a simple club or sharp stick is more effective.

Questionnaire:

• Explain more about the earliest or first stone tools used by Australopithecines and early Homo.