Stones and How to Use Them

Meredith Johnson (0:05)

This is Origin Stories, The Leakey Foundation Podcast. I'm Meredith Johnson.

Humans aren't the only animals that use tools. Capuchin monkeys use rocks to smash nuts. Even crows and otters use tools. I've even seen a video of an orangutan using a saw to cut wood. But we humans and our hominin ancestors have been making and using tools for a very long time. The oldest stone tools in the archaeological record date to 3.3 million years ago. The most iconic stone tool, the teardrop-shaped tool called the hand axe, pretty much had the same design for more than a million years without changing. Which is kind of mind-blowing considering the pace at which our technology changes today.

We're also the only animals who take our tools with us everywhere we go. Tools are part of our identity.

Back in the 1960s, before Jane Goodall first saw David Greybeard the Chimp using a stick to fish for termites, anthropologists called us man the tool maker. You've got at least one tool with you right now for sure if you're listening to this podcast. And if you consider really early tools and compare them to the computer or phone you're hooked up to right now, it's easy to think that we've just gotten smarter and smarter. But John Shea doesn't see it that way. He's a paleoanthropologist at Stony Brook University and a Leakey Foundation grantee. Reporter Audrey Quinn met with him this spring.

Audrey Quinn (1:41)

In the back room of John Shea's lab, there's a wall lined with shelves. Each one has a handwritten label.

Spears stone tipped, spears bone tipped, spears wood.

John Shea (1:54)

Some of my guys call it the Tower of London.

When I teach the students how to make stone tools, I have the rocks and things here. But I also teach them how to use spears, darts, bows, arrows, other kinds of weapons as well.

Audrey Quinn (2:07)

John calls this part of the lab his weapons room. The spears on these shelves are all handmade by him and his students. Thin wooden rods with different shaped tips.

He points to the wood tipped ones.

John Shea (2:18)

When I first saw them, I thought these things are too heavy to be spears. And the archaeologist who found an excavation said, well, they're javelins. And they do genuinely look like javelins, but they're a lot heavier than javelins. So when I talk to my students about this, I say, well, how could we test this hypothesis? And they, oh, gee, Professor Shea, I don't know.

Audrey Quinn (2:35)

Professor Shea has a pretty good idea. And he could just answer them with a straightforward lecture. Hey, people used to use these spear things about 300,000 years ago in what's now called Germany. They're tough to throw, so they're only lethal if you're really close up.

But forget the lecture. John instead offers himself up as human target practice.

John Shea (2:55)

Let's do this. You guys can stand 11 meters away from me, which is the usual distance from which people hunt with spears nowadays, throw spears. And if you hit me, I will give you 20 bucks.

So I just stand out there, you know, and the spears come in. They're usually coming in, you know, they pitch high, and so I can see where they're coming. I just swat them out of the way or just take a step to the side.

Audrey Quinn (3:16)

Have you ever had a javelin thrower in your class?

John Shea (3:20)

Oh yeah, he sent one buzzing over my head. But I point out, you know, you missed me.

Audrey Quinn (3:24)

And there's the lesson. When you try and throw these spears over a distance, you're doing it wrong. What's the name of the guy with the apple?

John Shea (3:32)

William Tell's son.

You know, the old Swiss patriot, you know, like this. I don't stick an apple on top of my head. That would give him too much of an incentive.

Audrey Quinn (3:42)

John Shea has devoted his career to this kind of hands-on experimenting with stone tools because he thinks they hold secrets to the way our ancestors behaved.

John Shea (3:52)

I'm different from most archaeologists in that I was interested in stone tools and things before I became an archaeologist. And I've been making and using them since I was a teenager. That doesn't mean I'm more likely to be right.

It just means I have a lot of ideas about what these things were used for and how they're made. And those ideas lead me to try to test hypotheses, to see if I'm right or if I'm wrong.

Audrey Quinn (4:13)

Do you remember kind of the scene in which you were first exposed to stone tools?