Stone Tools: Introduction
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-09914-2
The Stone Age extends back before the genus Homo evolved, going back to 3,300,000 years ago, predating Homo by nearly a million years, and lasting until only 4,000 years ago, though there are some uses for stone tools still exist today, and covers a very wide variety of of stone tools and styles. These tools can be made by removing material through knapping, or removing material by percussive action, or grinding the material off through friction. Both of these can happen naturally, incidentally, or deliberately and when done deliberately leads to an archaeological industry, or complexes or technocomplexes, that have shared characteristics, either in how they're made or how they're shaped, usually defined by knapped stones.
These complexes are divided generally into a sequence of five Modes, with the first two, Modes 1 and 2, dating to the Lower Paleolithic, Mode 3 to the Middle Paleolithic, Mode 4 to the Upper Paleolithic, and Mode 5 to the Mesolithic. These modes don't encompass all the types of lithic technologies, nor do the timelines of one place exactly match the timelines of other places. The advantage of this system of categorizing stone tools by characteristics and complexity that tend to follow in generally chronological order.
More recent research has added a pre-Mode 1 and were found at a place known as Lomekwi near Lake Turkana in Kenya. Mode 1 was discovered in the Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania and is now also known as the Oldowan Industry. Mode 2 was first found in Saint-Acheul, France and is also known as Acheulean Industry. First found in Le Moustier Mode 3 is also known as Mousterian Industry. Mode 4 is when humans began to spread into the New World and was first found in Aurignac, France and is therefore called the Aurignacian. Mode 5 is defined by the production of microlithis and composite tools.
Over the next few days, we will explore the various types of stone tools and the hominids have used.
