Stone Age technology

17 Nov 2012

At ... a Canadian team of anthropologists say they have found evidence humans were using stone tipped weapons to hunt as long ago as 500,000 year - somewhat earlier than was led to believe. Neanderthal and modern humans alike used such stone tools but now, we are being assured, so too did Homo Heidelbergensis, in the Middle Pleistocene. This throws a bit of a spanner into the toolbox, it might be said, as earlier forms of humanity are supposed to be progessively duller and less than clever. Anthropologists have famously made a mountain out of pieces of skull bone - now what. Homo heidelbergensis is a common ancestor of both Neanderthals and modern humans, and where it is accepted both of these two groups had the ability to haft pieces of sharpened stone to wooden spears, now this technological innovation must be placed ever earlier on the model of man's progress from ape to walking on the moon.

Not sure why at the moment but the link is not working. Go to and scroll down to the article