The Early Man: Cultural and Economic Practices of Early Man

Summary: In the study of early man, we will seek to answer questions that human beings have always sought to answer about how they appeared on earth, whether they were created and where the universe came from.

Cultural and Economic Practices of Early Man

Culture is the way of life of a people-Customs, language and social institutions.
The things that early humans made and used formed their material culture.
Early man’s culture can be understood through study of Stone Age or Paleolithic periods

What is Stone Age?

This refers to the early period of human history when man’s tools and weapons were mainly made of stone and to some extent – wood and bone.
There are three Stone Age periods

• Old stone age – Paleolithic period – 4,500,000 to 50,000years
• Middle stone age – Mesolithic period -50,000-15,000 years.
• New Stone Age – Neolithic period – 15,000- 1,500 years

Stone Age

The Paleolithic Age

The Paleolithic is the longest of all stone ages, covering roughly 2 million years. The hominid species who lived side by side were Australopithecus, Homo habilis and Homoerectus.

The Early Stone Age Tools

The hominids Made tools from stone The Tool Traditions was called Oldowan tools / pebble tools.
The tools were named after Olduvai Gorge where they were found.
They were made by Australopithecus and Homo erectus.
They were also known as pebble tools because they were made of stones.

Among the finds at Olduvai were the chopper, fist hatchet (core tools) and several flake tools.
Such tools were also found at Kobi For a near Lake Turkana, Omo River Valley in Ethiopia, and Kafu Valley in Uganda, Shaba province in Zaire and in Algeria, Tunisia and morocco.

They didn’t have the intelligence to make sophisticated tools, so they may have made tools out of bones that they found.

Homo Habilis and the Oldowan Tradition

They made stone tools for chopping, scraping, and cutting.
Making of Choppers involved knapping a few flakes off the core.

Homo Habilis ChoppersBoth cores and flakes were used.
The Knapper could strike a spherical piece of stone until Flake falls off opposite side.
The Tool would then be flipped over and procedure repeated.

Characteristics of Acheulian Hand Axe

• It was Bifacial: both sides were knapped
• Symmetrical in breadth
• Shaped to a point on one end
• The edge is thin and sharp
• Broad end is curved, but edge is still sharp

Acheulian Hand Axe