Oldowan

The Oldowan is the oldest widely recognised stone tool industry, characterised by simple tools made by striking flakes from cobbles to produce sharp edges, along with choppers and hammerstones. It is named after Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, where Louis and Mary Leakey identified it in the twentieth century. Sites in East Africa, such as Gona in Ethiopia, have produced some of the oldest examples, and Oldowan tools later spread widely across Africa and into Eurasia. The tools were used to butcher animal carcasses and process plants, giving early humans access to meat and marrow. Researchers still debate which species made the earliest tools, whether early Homo or other hominins, and some even older tool-like finds have been proposed.

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