Stone chopping tool
Lower Palaeolithic, about 1.8 million years
old
From Olduvai Gorge,
Tanzania
The oldest object in the British
Museum
Made nearly two million years ago, stone tools
such as this are the first known technological
invention.
This chopping
tool and others like it are the oldest objects in the British
Museum. It comes from an early human campsite in the bottom layer
of deposits in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. Potassium-argon dating
indicates that this bed is between 1.6 and 2.2 million years old
from top to bottom. This and other tools are dated to about 1.8
million years.
Using
another hard stone as a hammer, the maker has knocked flakes off
both sides of a basalt (volcanic lava) pebble so that they
intersect to form a sharp edge. This could be used to chop branches
from trees, cut meat from large animals or smash bones for marrow
fat - an essential part of the early human diet. The flakes could
also have been used as small knives for light duty
tasks.
To some people this
artefact might appear crude; how can we even be certain that it is
humanly made and not just bashed in rock falls or by trampling
animals? A close look reveals that the edge is formed by a
deliberate sequence of skilfully placed blows of more or less
uniform force. Many objects of the same type, made in the same way,
occur in groups called assemblages which are occasionally
associated with early human remains. By contrast, natural forces
strike randomly and with variable force; no pattern, purpose or
uniformity can be seen in the modifications they
cause.
Chopping tools and
flakes from the earliest African sites were referred to as Oldowan
by the archaeologist Louis Leakey. He found this example on his
first expedition to Olduvai in 1931, when he was sponsored by the
British Museum.
The
chopping tool and other objects from Olduvai Gorge was displayed as
part of the Made in
Africa exhibition, at the British Museum
from 20 January to 3 April 2005.
L.S.B. Leakey, Olduvai Gorge (Cambridge, University Press, 1951)
K.D. Schick and N. Schick, Making silent stones speak. Hu (London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1993)