The Origins of Bone Tool Technologies An Introduction

Abstract

Tool use is one of the hallmarks of what makes us human. This defining behaviour is fostered by our high fidelity social learning environment and unique process of cumulative cultural evolution. From the Stone Age to the Digital Revolution, the human narrative has been written in the technologies we developed to meet the challenges of everyday life. How our ancestors accomplished increasingly com- plex tasks reflected the skills and materials available at the time, and as technology developed in com- plexity, so too did their lives. For over two million years of the human lineage, stone and bone tools preserve the only record of our technological herit- age and capacity for innovation. Studying the ori- gins and development of these technologies plays a vital role in retracing our evolutionary footsteps toward becoming human