tour 2 of 13
Africa '05
Stone chopping tools
'These are amazing
pieces. They have great meaning to me personally because this is
how it came to be known that humans as we know them started in
Africa. What I mainly like are the colours and shapes, and to
acknowledge that these were used instead of today's knives,
axes, shovels, and forks as cutting tools. It made me feel proud to
be Afro-Caribbean.' Coleen Dowdie, of
Jamaican origin
These
chopping tools and others like them are the oldest objects in the
British Museum. They come from an early human campsite in the
bottom layer of deposits in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, and represent
the world's first technological
invention.
Walking upright
on two legs enabled our earliest ancestors to search for food
throughout the day when it was too hot for other animals to hunt.
For some four to five million years this ensured survival, but
small body size and lack of speed, fangs and claws evened up the
competition with other
predators.
Tool-making
began in East Africa about 2.4 million years ago. Instead of just
picking up sticks or finding stones with sharp edges early humans
began to shape the tools they needed. Using another hard stone as a
hammer, they discovered that by knocking flakes off both sides of a
pebble or large flake they could create sharp regular edges. These
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 be used as small knives for
light duty tasks.
Tools
which could also have been used as weapons gave early human
ancestors a new advantage. In these early artefacts it is possible
to see the first spark of creative genius that set humans apart
from other animals and gradually enabled us to adapt to different,
often changing conditions all over the
world.
The chopping tools
featured here are made from quartzite and basalt cobbles. They are
sometimes referred to as Oldowan and were found by Louis Leakey on
his first expedition to Olduvai Gorge in 1931.