John Shea at Stony Brook University is one of the best stone toolmakers on the planet today, keeping alive the technologies used by our most ancient ancestors. As a paleoanthropologist, his interest is in recreating these once-ubiquitous tools to learn more about the early hominids who relied on them for survival. In this web-exclusive video, John Shea teaches Alan Alda some of the ins and outs of toolmaking… Do you think you can tell the difference between a stone that’s been worked by a person and one that’s been broken by nature?
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3 Responses to “Spark Blog: Video – Making Stone Tools Is Sooo Millions of Years Ago”
DID I hear the scientist say that these types 0f rock tools date back to 2 bil.years ago???? I didn’t think primates came into existence until after the Dinosaurs became extinct around 160 million years ago?????? And aren’t the oldest homid fossils about 4 mil. years old?????
The oldest stone tools date to approximately 2.6 million years ago.
Fascinating,intriguing program about human development across millions of years. At age 11, I realized/learned how to knap my own arrowheads/projectile points and how to haft the stone tips to one end of the wooden shaft then attached 2 feather strips to opposite end of arrow. No other person was present when I learned/improvised the knapping techniques-I learned them from a book. I did not major nor minor in paleontology/anthropology-these are fields of personal interest. I also constructed bows, spears, axes. I am here today because the human spark lit a fire that never went out. Non-human/other species do not start/make fire using any method-not even the bow and drill method. My interest in human survival/development was sparked decades ago by a difficult life and due to an interest in Amerind culture,art,crafts etc.