Homo Habilis and Stone Crafting: Early Sense of Technology in Human Community

Several species of Homo belonged in the genus hominid, all of them living in Africa between 2.5 and 1.8 million years ago. The best known is Homo habilis, “handy man.” These creatures’ brains were half again as large as those of the Australopithecines, though still only half the size of ours. The fact that they carried cobbles up to nine miles from the riverbeds where they were found shows that they could plan for the future, something no other apes could do. They used these cobbles as hammers and made choppers by removing flakes from both sides, an improvement over their predecessors’ tools. We do not know what other tools they made or how dependent they were on their simple technology. We know, however, that they were well adapted to surviving on the open savannas of Africa, for their anatomies and their choppers remained virtually unchanged for almost a million years. We know much more about the creatures called Homo erectus (“standing man”) who replaced these early hominids around 1.8 million years ago. They had brains two-thirds the size of ours. Like modern humans, their jaws and teeth were smaller than those of Homo habilis , and their arms were shorter and their legs longer. They were much less adept at biting and chewing and at climbing trees than earlier species. They could not have survived without tools. Their tools, however, were much more developed than their predecessors’. We call their stone tools hand axes, or bifaces, because they were carefully fl aked on both sides to provide a fairly even and longlasting cutting edge. Some had a sharp point, and others, called cleavers, had a straight edge. Hand axes and cleavers could weigh as much as five pounds. They were multipurpose tools used to skin and butcher animals, to scrape skins, and to carve wood. Evidently, these hand axes served them well, for they hardly changed for close to a million years (Source: Technology, A World History).