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merlin's picture

First Humans to Use Tools

 

 

At some point, early bipedal primates developed the ability to pick up sticks, bones and stones and use them as weapons or tools for killing small animals, cracking nuts, or cutting. This behavior was a primitive use of technology. Bipedal tool-using primates date back as early as 7 to 5 million years ago.

By 2.4 million years ago Homo habilis appeared in East Africa: the first known human species, and the first known to make stone tools.

Tool use required a larger brain, which required a larger skull, which required a female to have a wider birth canal for the baby's wider skull. But the female could no longer run as well, so the babies had to be born sooner and require a longer period of dependence on the mother for care. THis created societies in which groups remained stationary and could not migrate as much. Males had to go out and hunt for food while the females cared for the babies. This created even more of a dependance on tools to compete with other humans. 

 

 

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