Ben Marwick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their ...

Our ancient ancestors weren’t fumbling with crude rocks. A groundbreaking archaeological discovery in Kenya reveals they had mastered a stone tool technology so effective that they stuck with it for ...

New technologies today often involve electronic devices that are smaller and smarter than before. During the Middle Paleolithic, when Neanderthals were modern humans’ neighbors, new technologies meant ...

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 ...

Sara Watson works for the FIeld Museum of Natural History and Indiana State University The Earth of the last Ice Age (about 26,000 to 19,000 years ago) was very different from today’s world. In the ...

Long before cities or farms, the earliest humans were standing in a changing northern Kenyan landscape, striking stone to stone with steady hands. Their world was noisy with wind, heat, wildfires, and ...

Sharp stone technology chipped over three million years allowed early humans to exploit animal and plant food resources. But how did the production of stone tools -- called 'knapping' -- start?

Humans are fundamentally technological creatures. We depend on the manufacture and use of tools for our survival to a degree qualitatively greater than any other species. Therefore, an understanding ...