Who made the first stone tools? Thirty-five years ago, the answer was easy: humans made tools, because making tools was a defining character of humans. In 1964, Louis Leakey and his colleagues, working at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, announced the remains of a hominid with a braincase appreciably larger than that of the previously known 'ape-man' Zinjanthropus boisei (now Paranthropus boisei). This new hominid was found in the same area as primitive-looking stone tools. It was natural to match the tools with the toolmaker. Because the ability to make and use tools was thought, without question, to be a human trait, the new hominid became human before our very eyes - Homo habilis - 'handy man': one of us, and distinct from the 'ape-men', Australopithecus and Paranthropus. That one of the ape-men might have been the tool-maker was either thought impossible or not considered.
Today, the answer to the question 'who made the first tools?' has become impossible to answer precisely. We now know that many animals besides humans make tools, and we suspect that the particular association between humanity and tool-making reflects a very subjective, human- centred view of the world. Work on the hand-bones of Paranthropus boisei suggests that this creature would have had sufficient manual dexterity to have made stone tools. Paranthropus boisei lived alongside Homo habilis. They were contemporaries. Tools are never found with their maker's mark. Both hominids could have made tools, or neither.
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