When Japanese scientists wanted to learn more about how ground stone tools dating back to the Early Upper Paleolithic might have been used, they decided to build their own replicas of adzes, axes, and ...

Ancient stone tools are often uncovered in Europe, but it can be difficult to identify who crafted them, as Neanderthals and Homo sapiens coexisted in the region for several thousand years. The makers ...

The increase in the productivity of stone tool cutting-edge (shown in white lines) did not occur before or at the beginning of Homo sapiens’ wide dispersals in Eurasia but subsequently occurred after ...

A new study illuminates the cultural evolution that took place approximately 50,000 to 40,000 years ago, coinciding with the dispersals of Homo sapiens across Eurasia. The insights gleaned from their ...

Oldowan stone tools made from a variety of raw materials sourced more than 6 miles away from where they were found in southwestern Kenya. The development of the Oldowan toolkit made it possible for ...

In southwestern Kenya more than 2.6 million years ago, ancient humans wielded an array of stone tools—known collectively as the Oldowan toolkit—to pound plant material and carve up large prey such as ...

At a site in Kenya, archaeologists recently unearthed layer upon layer of stone stools from deposits that span 300,000 years, and include a period of intense environmental upheaval. The oldest tools ...

Have you ever found yourself in a museum's gallery of human origins, staring at a glass case full of rocks labeled "stone tools," muttering under your breath, "How do they know it's not just any old ...