INVENTION OF KNIFE

c.2.600.000 BCE

Australopithecine Hominids

GONA, ETHIOPIA 

The use of our first tools assured human survival, and the appearance of stone knives marks the beginning of the archaeological record. Since they can be used for cutting, slashing, spearing and pricking, knives have many uses in feeding and defending humankind. For millennia, knives were essential for hunting and butchering animals. The first stone tools were thought to be the ‘Oldowan’ tools found in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania by Louis Leakey in the 1930s. They were made by the extinct hominid Homo erectus between 1.7 and 2.4 million years ago. However, tools of a similar type were found in the Gona fossil fields in Ethiopia in the 1970s, and they have been dated to 2,600,000 BCE. The discoveries provided strong evidence that toolmaking, once thought to be a skill special to the Homo genus, began long before its emergence, perhaps by half a million years. (Homo sapiens, the only surviving hominid, originated in Africa only around 200,000 years ago, and reached full behavioural modernity only 50,000 years ago.)

It is a reasonable assumption that the tools were made by more primitive members of the human lineage, the Australopithecines, the only hominids known to have existed at that time. These stone tools generally consisted of sharp flakes battered off a stone core, but early hominids also carried out more sophisticated flaking and reshaping to sharpen and straighten their blades. Because of its role as humankind’s first tool, many cultures have attached spiritual and religious significance to the knife. To produce an Oldowan tool, a roughly spherical hammerstone was struck on the edge, or striking platform, of a suitable core rock, to make a ‘conchoidal fracture’ with sharp edges useful for various purposes. Originally made of rock, flint or obsidian (a naturally occurring volcanic glass), knives evolved in construction. Stone knives would later be lashed onto a bone or wooden handle to make them easier to use.

By Terry Breverton in "Breverton's Encyclopedia of Inventions", Quercus Publishing UK, 2012 excerpts chapter 1. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.