Mechanics · Vol. I|Stone tools|c. 3.3 million years ago

Stone tools

c. 3.3 million years ago

Long before our own species, someone sat with a cobble and struck flakes sharp enough to cut. The oldest known tools, from Lomekwi 3 in Kenya, are about 3.3 million years old. A flake is a knife; a core is a hammer or anvil. That is the first machine: energy stored in a swing, delivered to an edge.

East Africa (Lomekwi, Kenya)

Stone tools — Original plate drawn for this atlas. Not a photograph of a museum object or a copyrighted portrait.

How the mechanism is arranged

A hammerstone strikes a core; a flake shears off along a conchoidal fracture. The flake is the knife.

How it works

Strike a hard cobble against another stone so a flake shears off along a conchoidal fracture.
Use the sharp flake to cut hide, meat, or plant fiber; use the heavier core to pound.
Retouch the edge by smaller strikes when it dulls — the first maintenance cycle.

Why it mattered

Opened foods that teeth and nails could not process.
Created a skill that could be taught, so technique accumulated.
Began the long partnership between hand, eye, and material.

What it unlocked

For further study

Harmand et al., Nature (2015). Lomekwi 3 lithic industry.
Smithsonian Human Origins. Survey of early stone technologies.

Check

Why is a struck flake a technology, not just a broken rock?