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Monday, October 20, 2014

Ancient Stone Tools - (c. 2,600,000 B.C.E)

Every humankind ushers in the age of inventions.

The very first human invention consisted of sharp flints, found and used in their natural state by primitive peoples, who then went on to purposely sharpen stones. The practice reaches back to the very dawn of humankind; stone tools found in 1969 in kenya are estimated to be 2,600,000 years old.
The principal types of tools, which appeared in the Paleolithic period, and varied in size and apperance , are known as core, flake, and blade tools.
The core tools are the largest and most primitive, and were made by working on a fist-sized piece of rockor stone with a similar rock and knocking large flakes off one side to produce a sharp crest, This was a general-purpose implement used fo hacking, pounding, or cutting , Eventually, thinner and sharper core tools were developed, which were more useful. Much later, especially during the last 10,000 years of the stone age , other techniques of producing stone artifacts-including pecking, grinding, sawing, and boring - come into play.

The evolution of tool making enabled early humankind to complete many tasks previously impossible or accomplished only very crudely, Animals could be skinned, defleshed, and the meat divided up with stone cutters, cleavers, and choopers. Clothing was made from animal hides cleaned with rough stones scrapers and later punctured with awls. Hunting became more efficient with spreadheads fashioned from stone flakes, And with the aid of stone adzes (axes), early humankind could create shelter and begin to shape the physical world to its liking,

Stone age humans became adept at chipping flakes of hard, volcanic rocks to make tools and weapons.

"The best materials...include absidian (a form of natural glass) chert, flint, and chalcedony".

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