![]() ![]() Today, scientists conduct knapping experiments to determine what abilities and techniques are needed to create various stone tools, and to understand the evidence early hominids left behind. Mastering the technique can take days of practice, even for modern humans. Chipping flakes off cores is known as “knapping”. Other primates remain unable to independently create these tools.Īn understanding of stone stress factors is required to find the acute angle on the core and give it the sharp, glancing blow required to break off a flake. The manufacture of stone tools marks the first unique trait of the genus Homo. These tools were probably made by Homo habilis (“Handy man”). Sterkfontein has produced the oldest stone tools in Southern Africa – cores and flakes of the Oldowan industry dating to nearly 2-million years ago. The oldest stone tools and most primitive stone tool technology, the Oldowan industry, is named after Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, where tools of this type were first discovered. ![]() Rocks that weren’t fashioned into stone tools could also have been by hominids for pounding or crushing seeds and for throwing, for example. But some cores could have been used to break open bones for their protein-rich marrow and to chop up tough vegetation for eating. They are commonly no more than by-products of stone tool making. Stone cores result from striking flakes of stone off a rock. The stone flakes, or flake tools, that were struck off the cores, were more usually the desired end-product and were used for cutting and skinning animals or to work plant materials. ![]()
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