The First Technologies
Early humans were casual tool users, using convenient sticks or stones to achieve a purpose and then discarding them. Pointed sticks, hardened in a fire, were used as digging tools or light spears for killing small animals. But for sharpening their sticks, and scraping the flesh from bones, early man needed other tools and weapons. These were made out of stone, usually out of a kind of hard stone called flint, which can be chipped to a sharp edge. The earliest Neanderthals made only a few varieties of tools, and most of those were large. But gradually their tools became more delicate. The two made most often by the Neanderthals, probably because they found them most useful, were a sharp-pointed triangle and a kind of knife with one long sharp edge. The sharp point of the triangle could be used to slash meat or skin, or to cut tough tendons. The same triangle could also be fastened to a long wooden shaft, to make a spear. The other sharp-edged stone, usually called a scraper, could be used to scrape pelts, or to cut up almost anything. Probably the scraper too was sometimes fitted into a handle.

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