Tools of the Old and New Stone Age essays

Tools of the Old and New Stone Age essays Tools of the Old and New Stone Age is a book written by Jacques Bordaz, the Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Montreal. The book generally concerns itself with the uses of ancient tools, as well as the manufacturing of these tools. The book is full of information, almost to a point were the reader will feel bogged down with facts as they read. Very early people who studied the tools, of the Stone Age, first had the bizarre belief that these tools were created by lightning strikes. Many claimed they found such tools at exact locations were lightning did strike. The tools became known as Thunderstones. Later, early scholars renamed them ceraunias from the Greek word, keraunos, meaning thunderbolt. Of course new evidence has all but vanquished these beliefs. The period of time this book is concerned with is the, what geologists call the Quaternary period. It is broken down into the Pleistocene, and Holocene. Archaeologists classify these periods into the Paleolithic (Old Stone Age), Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age), and the Neolithic (New Stone Age). The main focus being on the Paleolithic is again broken down into lower, middle, and upper periods. Each one of these divisions is characterized by major types of tool-flaking techniques. The tools of the Stone Age consisted of not just stone, but also bone, antler, and wood. Bone and antler were a harder material to work with; they often did not use much detail when shaping tools out of these materials. They were generally roughly shaped, or often times, there was no modification used, especially with sharp-pointed antlers, which made great weapons. The first ability for man to actually construct tools looks at Bipedalism, which is the ability to walk upright. This freed the upper limbs from the work of locomotion, leaving only the lower limbs for this. With the ability to walk on solely the lower limbs, it left the up...