Synonyms
Definition
The emergence of stone tools represents a significant milestone in hominin evolution culminating in the uniquely flexible abilities of humans to use and make tools. Studies on the evolution of tool use are aimed at reconstructing the evolutionary history of this adaptation. Although this area of inquiry has historically been the interest of archeologists, the integration of modern brain imaging techniques and the accumulation of comparative behavioral data in other animals have continued to widen its scope of study.
Introduction
The archeological record has revealed that humans and human ancestors have had a long reliance on stone tools (Larsen 2008). Since the early Pliocene (approximately three million years ago), the frequency and complexity of stone tools, as uncovered from archeological sites, gradually increased with a major expansion in tool technology occurring within the last 12,000 years (Boyd and Silk 2009), suggesting that...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
References
Adovasio, J., Soffer, O., & Klema, B. (1996). Upper Palaeolithic fibre technology: Interlaced woven finds from Pavlov I, Czech Republic, c. 26,000 years ago. Antiquity, 70, 526–534.
Ambrose, S. H. (2010). Coevolution of composite-tool technology, constructive memory, and language: Implications for the evolution of modern human behavior. Current Anthropology, 51(S1), S135–S147.
Asfaw, B., White, T., Lovejoy, O., Latimer, B., Simpson, S., & Suwa, G. (1999). Australopithecus garhi: A new species of early hominid from Ethiopia. Science, 284, 629–635.
Auersperg, A. M., von Bayern, A. M., Gajdon, G. K., Huber, L., & Kacelnik, A. (2011). Flexibility in problem solving and tool use of kea and New Caledonian crows in a multi access box paradigm. PLoS One, 6, e20231.
Boyd, R., & Silk, J. (2009). How human evolved (5th ed.). New York: Norton.
Clottes, J., & Arnaud, M. (2003). Chauvet cave: The art of earliest times. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
Cook, J. (2013). Ice age art: The arrival of the modern mind. London: The British Museum Press.
Fragaszy, D. M., Biro, D., Eshar, Y., Humle, T., Izar, P., Resende, B., & Visalberghi, E. (2013). The fourth dimension of tool use: Temporally enduring artefacts aid primates learning to use tools. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 368, 20120410.
Grine, F. E. (Ed.). (1988). Evolutionary history of the “robust” australopithecine. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
Gunturken, O. (2014). Is dolphin cognition special? Brain, Behavior and Evolution, 83, 177–180.
Hashimoto, T., et al. (2013). Hand before foot? Cortical somatotopy suggests manual dexterity is primitive and evolved independently of bipedalism. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 368, 20120417.
Hodos, W., & Campbell, C. B. G. (1969). Scala nature: Why there is no theory in comparative psychology. Psychological Review, 76(4), 337–350.
Holloway, R. L. (1981). Culture, symbols, and human brain evolution: A synthesis. Dialectical Anthropology, 3, 215–232.
Holloway, R. L., & Kimbel, W. H. (1986). Endocast morphology of Hadar hominid AL 162-28. Nature, 321, 536.
Holloway, R. L., Broadfield, D. C., & Yuan, M. S. (2004). The human fossil record, volume three: Brain endocasts: The paleoneurological evidence. Hoboken: Wiley-Liss.
Hovers, E., & Braun, D. (2009). Interdisciplinary approaches to the Oldowan. New York: Springer.
Hunt, G. R., & Uomini, N. (2016). A complex adaptive system may be essential for cumulative modifications in tool design. Japanese Journal of Animal Psychology, 66(2), 141–169.
Iriki, A., Tanaka, M., Obayashi, S., & Iwamura, Y. (2001). Self-images in the video monitor coded by monkey intraparietal neurons. Neuroscience Research, 40, 163–173.
Johanson, D. (2004). Lucy, thirty years later: An expanded view of Australopithecus afarensis. Journal of Anthropological Research, 60, 465–486.
Klein, R. G. (2009). The human career: Human biological and cultural origins (3rd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Klein, R. G. (2013). Hominin dispersals in the old world. In C. Scarre (Ed.), The human past: World prehistory & the development of human societies (pp. 84–123). London: Thames & Hudson.
Krützen, M., Mann, J., Heithaus, M. R., Connor, R. C., Bejeder, L., & Sherwin, W. B. (2005). Cultural transmission of tool use in bottlenose dolphins. PNAS, 102(25), 8939–8943.
Larsen, C. S. (2008). Our origins: Discovering physical anthropology. New York: Norton.
Leakey, M. D. (1971). Olduvia Gorge. Excavations in beds I and II, 1960–1963 (Vol. 3). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lemert, J., & Spocter, M. A. (2018a). Brain size and intelligence. In T. K. Shackelford & V. A. Weekes-Shackelford (Eds.), Encyclopedia of evolutionary psychological science. New York/Cham: Springer.
Lemert, J., & Spocter, M. A. (2018b). Brain size and intelligence. In T. K. Shackelford & V. A. Weekes-Shackelford (Eds.), Encyclopedia of evolutionary psychological science. New York/Cham: Springer.
Lepre, C. J., Roche, H., Kent, D. V., Harmand, S., Quinn, R. L., Brugal, J. P., Texier, P. J., Lenoble, A., & Feibel, C. S. (2011). An earlier origin of the Archeulian. Nature, 477, 82–85.
Lordkipanidze, D., Ponce de Leon, M. S., Margvelashvilli, A., Rak, Y., Rightmire, G. P., Vekua, A., & Zollikofer, C. P. E. (2013). A complete skull from Dmanisi, Georgia, and the evolutionary biology of early Homo. Science, 342, 326–331.
Manger, P. R., Hemingway, J., Spocter, M. A., & Gallagher, A. (2012). The mass of the human brain is it a spandrel. In S. Reynolds & A. Gallagher (Eds.), African genesis: Perspectives on hominin evolution. Cambridge studies in biological and evolutionary anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Maravita, A., Spence, C., Kennett, S., & Driver, J. (2002). Tool-use changes multimodal spatial interactions between vision and touch in normal humans. Cognition, 83, B25–B34.
Marzke, M. W. (2013). Tool making, hand morphology and fossil hominins. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 368, 20120414.
Marzke, M. W., Toth, N., Schick, K., Reece, S., Steinberg, B., Hunt, K., & Linscheid, R. L. (1998). EMG study of hand muscle recruitment during hard hammer percussion manufacture of Oldowan tools. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 105, 315–332.
McGrew, W. C. (1992). Chimpanzee material culture: Implications for human evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McGrew, W. C. (2004). The cultured chimpanzee: Reflections on cultural primatology. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Mehlhorn, J., Hunt, G. R., Gray, R. D., Rehkämper, G., & Güntürkün, O. (2010). Tool-making New Caledonian crows have large associative brain areas. Brain, Behavior and Evolution, 75, 63–70.
Mellars, P. (1996). The Neanderthal legacy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Pettitt, P. (2013). The rise of modern humans. In C. Scarre (Ed.), The human past: World prehistory & the development of human societies (pp. 124–173). London: Thames & Hudson.
Roebroeks, W., & Villa, P. (2011). On the earliest evidence for habitual use of fire in Europe. PNAS, 108, 5209–5214.
Rutz, C., Klump, B. C., Komarczyk, L., Leighton, R., Kramer, J., Wischnewski, S., Sugasaw, S., Morrissey, M. B., James, R., St. Clair, J. J. H., Switzer, R. A., & Masuda, B. M. (2016). Discovery of species-wide tool use in the Hawaiian crow. Nature, 537, 403–407.
Sanz, C. M., Call, J., & Boesch, C. (2013). Tool use in animals: Cognition and ecology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schick, K., & Toth, N. (1993). Making silent stones speak: Human evolution and the dawn of technology. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Schick, K., & Toth, N. (2006). An overview of the Oldowan industrial com complex: The sites and the nature of their evidence. In N. Toth & K. Schick (Eds.), The Oldowan: Case studies into the earliest stone age (pp. 3–42). Gosport: Stone Age Institute Press.
Schick, K., Toth, N., Garufi, G., Savage-Rumbaugh, E. S., Rumbaugh, D., & Sevcik, R. (1999). Continuing investigations into the stone tool-making and tool using capabilities of a bonobo (Pan paniscus). Journal of Archeological Science, 26, 821–832.
Semaw, S. (2000). The world’s oldest stone artefacts from Gona, Ethiopia: Their implications for understanding stone technology and patterns of human evolution between 2.6–1.5 million years ago. Journal of Archaeological Science, 27, 1197–1214.
Semaw, S. (2006). The oldest stone artifacts from Gona (2.6–2.5 Ma), Afar, Ethiopia: Implications for understanding the earliest stages of stone knapping. In N. Toth & K. Schick (Eds.), The Oldowan: Case studies into the earliest Stone Age (pp. 43–76). Gosport: The Stone Age Institute Press.
Semaw, S., Renne, P., Harris, J. W. K., Fiebel, C. S., Bernor, R. L., Fesseha, N., & Mowbray, K. (1997). 2.5-million-year-old stone tools from Gona, Ethiopia. Nature, 385, 333–336.
Shumaker, R. W., Walkup, K. R., & Beck, B. B. (2011). Animal tool behavior: The use and manufacture of tools by animals. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Spocter, M. A., Hopkins, W. D., Garrison, A. R., et al. (2010). Wernicke’s area homologue in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and its relation to the appearance of modern human language. Proceedings of the Biological Sciences, 277(1691), 2165–2174.
Stout, D. (2002). Skill and cognition in stone tool production: An ethnographic case study from Irian Jaya. Current Anthropology, 43, 693–722.
Tattersall, I. (2008). The Fossil Trail: How we know what we think we know. About Human Evolution (2nd edn). New York: Oxford University Press.
Teschke, I., Wascher, C. A. F., Scriba, M. F., von Bayern, A. M. P., Humble, V., Siemers, B., & Tebbich, S. (2013). Did tool-use evolve with enhanced physical cognitive abilities? Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 368, 20120418.
Toth, N. (1985). The Oldowan reassessed: A close look at early stone artifacts. Journal of Archeological Science, 12, 101–120.
Toth, N., & Schick, K. (2009). The Oldowan: The tool making of early hominins and chimpanzees compared. Annual Review of Anthropology, 38, 289–305.
Toth, N., & Schick, K. (2010). Hominin brain reorganization, technological change, and cognitive complexity. In D. Broadfield, M. Yuan, K. Schick, & N. Toth (Eds.), The human brain evolving: Paleoneurological studies in honor of Ralph L. Holloway (pp. 293–312). Gosport: Stone Age Institute Press.
Toth, N., & Schick, K. (2013). African origins. In C. Scarre (Ed.), The human past: World prehistory & the development of human societies (pp. 44–83). London: Thames & Hudson.
Toth, N., Schick, K., & Semaw, S. (2006). A comparative study of the stone tool-making skills of Pan, Australopithecus, and Homo sapiens. In N. Toth & K. Schick (Eds.), The Oldowan: Case studies into the earliest stone age (pp. 43–76). Gosport: The Stone Age Institute Press.
Uomini, N., & Hunt, G. (2017). A new tool-using bird to crow about. Learning & Behavior, 45(3), 205–206.
Washburn, S. L. (1960). Tools and human evolution. Scientific American, 203(9), 63–75.
White, R. (2003). Prehistoric art: The symbolic journey of humankind. New York: Abrams.
Whiten, A., Goodall, J., McGrew, W. C., Nishida, T., Reynolds, V., Sugiyama, Y., Tutin, C. E. G., Wrangham, R., & Boesch, C. (1999). Culture in chimpanzees. Nature, 399, 682–685.
Whiten, A., Schick, K., & Toth, N. (2009). The evolution and cultural transmission of percussion technology; integrating evidence from paleoanthropology and primatology. Journal of Human Evolution, 57, 420–435.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Bracken, E., Billings, B.K., Barnes, M.J., Spocter, M.A. (2020). Evolution of Tool Use. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2948-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2948-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences