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Results for chopper:

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chopper

SYNONYM: chopping tool
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: Any large, simple stone or pebble tool with a single, transverse cutting edge. It was used for hacking, breaking, or chopping and was especially characteristic of Middle Pleistocene, pre-Acheulian industries of the Old World, such as Choukoutien, in the Clactonian in England, and at the earliest levels of Oldowan industries. This crude tool was made by striking a limited number of flakes from the edge of a cobble or fist-size rock to produce a coarse cutting edge. It persisted until the Neolithic.

pebble tool

SYNONYM: pebble chopper
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A simple form of stone cutting tool, the oldest type of tool made by forerunners of modern humans. The tool consists of a rounded stone struck a number of blows with a similar stone used as a pounder, which created a serrated crest that served as a chopping blade. The core is only slightly altered by striking off a few small flakes. The most typical are choppers and chopping tools. These tools could be used as crude hunting knives, to grub roots, and for other purposes. The oldest examples are perhaps 2 to 2 1/2 million years old, from sites like the Omo Valley and Hadar in Ethiopia. Those found in large numbers in Olduvai Gorge, in Tanganyika, are universally accepted as eoliths, dating back man's history to 1,000,000 years ago. By a process of refinement these pebble tools developed into the handaxes of Africa, Europe, and southwest Asia, and into the chopping tools of the Far East.

peripheral chopper

CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A pebble tool worked on both faces and often irregular in shape. The cutting edge can go around periphery or there may be a break; it can be plano-convex in section. It differs from biface in that it is often not axially symmetric and in the undifferentiated position of the cutting edge. It is characteristic of the Oldowan and Acheulian complexes.

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Ain Hanech

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in Algeria which offers some of the earliest evidence of human occupation in northern Africa. Stone tools, including choppers and multi-faceted spheroids, dated to 1-1.5 million years ago. There is also mammal fauna of Villafranchian type associated with the tools.

Alaka culture

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A preceramic shell midden culture on the northwest coast of Guyana which may date to c 2000 BC. Located in the mangrove swamps, the middens have been grouped into the Alaka Phase. The culture relied on shellfish gathering, with some grinding stones, choppers, manos, and metates. There are some crude ceramics in the later stages and represent intrusive cultures and the passing of Alaka.

Anyathian

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Pleistocene industry of stone tools in terrace deposits of the upper Irrawaddy River in Burma. The culture was characterized by primitive pebble tools (choppers, chopping tools) and a poor flakes made of silicifed tuff and fossil wood. The earliest assemblages may be of Middle Pleistocene date and the industry may have continued into the early Holocene. The Early Anyathian had single-edged core implements associated with crude flake implements. In the Late Anyathian, smaller and better made core and flake artifacts are found.

Ayacucho complex

CATEGORY: culture; site
DEFINITION: A valley in southern Peru, north of the city of Ayacucho, with a series of caves -- notably Pikimachay (Flea) Cave and Jayamachay (Pepper) Cave -- which were the site of a complex of unifacial chipped tools (basalt and chert core tools, choppers, unifacial projectile points) and bone artifacts (horse, camel, giant sloth) dating between 15,000-11,000 BC. A human presence has been suggested in the Ayacucho Basin at that time, which would correspond with the first wave" of immigrants to the New World. Succeeding levels contain burins blades fishtail points and manos and metates. Gourds squash cotton lucuma and seed plants such as quinoa and amaranth were cultivated in the Ayacucho Basin before 3000 BC; corn and beans within the next millennium. There were also ground stone implements for milling seeds. It has been claimed that llamas and guinea pigs were domesticated within the complex. "

Babadan A

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Palaeolithic site in Japan dating between 50,000-70,000 bp. The lithic culture includes choppers.

Baikal Neolithic

CATEGORY: chronology; culture
DEFINITION: The Neolithic period of the Lake Baikal region in eastern Siberia. Stratified sites in the area show a long, gradual move from the Palaeolithic to Neolithic stage, starting in the 4th millennium BC. The Postglacial culture was not true" Neolithic in that it farmed but Neolithic in the sense of using pottery. It was actually a Mongoloid hunting-and-fishing culture (except in southern Siberia around the Aral Sea) with a microlithic flint industry with polished-stone blade tools together with antler bone and ivory artifacts; pointed- or round-based pottery and the bow and arrow. Points and scrapers made on flakes of Mousterian aspect and pebble tools showing a survival of the ancient chopper-chopping tool tradition of eastern Asia have also been found. There was a woodworking and quartzite industry and some cattle breeding. The first bronzes of the region are related to the Shang period of northern China and the earliest Ordos bronzes. The area covers the mountainous regions from Lake Baikal to the Pacific Ocean and the taiga (coniferous forest) and tundra of northern Siberia. A first stage is name for the site Isakovo and is known only from a small number of burials in cemeteries. The succeeding Serovo stage is also known mainly from burials with the addition of the compound bow backed with bone plates. The third phase named Kitoi has burials with red ochre and composite fish hooks possibly indicate more fishing. The succeeding Glazkovo phase of the 2nd millennium BC saw the beginnings of metal-using but generally showed continuity in artifact and burial types. Some remains of semi-subterranean dwellings with centrally located hearths occur together with female statuettes in bone."

Cabenge

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in southwest Sulawesi with late Pliocene fauna. Stone tools are found in association with bones. Toalian tools in the area include large core tools of the chopper/chopping tool tradition.

Camare

CATEGORY: culture; site
DEFINITION: An assemblage of artifacts including choppers, scrapers, leaf points, and other tools from the surface of the high terraces in Rio Pedregal, Venezuela. Dating indicates the site may have been inhabited 15,000 years ago.

Chiricahua

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The second of three chronological stages of the Cochise culture in southern Arizona and New Mexico, with dates clustering between 4000-500 BC. The appearance of distinctive, side-notched projectile points indicates an interest in hunting though a mixed food-gathering economy is indicated by assemblages commonly including cobble manos, shallow basin grinding slabs, choppers, and scrapers. There were large base camps, storage pits, and outlying specialized-activity camps that show some permanence. There is evidence from Bat Cave in New Mexico of the cultivation of primitive maize.

Clactonian

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An early flake-tool culture of Europe, dating from the early Mindel-Riss (Great Interglacial) of the Pleistocene epoch, which occurred from 1,600,000 to 10,000 years ago. It was named after discoveries at Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, England. A kind of concave scraper, perhaps used to smooth and shape wooden spears, is typical of the Clactonian industry. Apart from the tip of a wooden spear, the artifacts consisted of trimmed flint flakes and chipped pebbles, some of which can be classified as chopper tools. Handaxes were absent. The Clactonian seems therefore to have coexisted with Early Acheulian. Some believe that the two industries are quite distinct, while others maintain that both assemblages might have been made by the same people, and that the Clactonian could in theory be an Acheulian industry from which handaxes were absent because such tools were not needed for the jobs carried out at a particular site. Clactonian and related industries are distributed throughout the north European plain, and Clactonian tools are similar in appearance to those produced in the Soan industry of Pakistan and in several sites in eastern and southern Africa. The Tayacian industry of France and Israel is believed to be a smaller edition of the Clactonian.

core

SYNONYM: nucleus
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A piece of stone used as a blank from which flakes or blades were removed by prehistoric toolmakers. Usually it was the by-product of toolmaking, but it may also have been shaped and modified to serve as an implement in its own right. An object, such as a hand-ax, chopper, or scraper made in this way is a core tool. Cores were most often produced when hit by a pebble, antler, or bone hammer.

core tool

SYNONYM: core, core-tool
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A stone tool, such as a hand-ax, chopper, or scraper, formed by chipping away flakes from a core. These tools, often large and relatively heavy, were characteristic of Paleolithic the culture. They were made by using a pebble, antler, or bone hammer.

Hoshino

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Palaeolithic site in Tochigi Prefecture, Japan, with many cultural strata providing the stone tool chronology for the Kanto region. Tools, mostly of chert, were recovered from 13+ layers and choppers, scrapers, and flakes in the lowest layers are 40-50,000 bp according to radiocarbon and fission track ages of pumice beds between the layers. Blades and bifacial points in the top layers date to between 21,000-10,000 years ago. The dates are considerably older than most of the Japanese Palaeolithic sites, lending support to the idea that the archipelago was occupied in the Middle Pleistocene.

Humaitá

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A lithic tradition of southeastern Brazil, dated to the 5th millennium BC and continuing into the Christian era. The earliest artifacts are rough unifacial flakes and some bifacial boomerang shapes, flake knives, choppers, and scrapers -- all for hunting. Bifacial projectile points begin to appear more in the 3rd millennium BC and semi-polished axes and grooved bola stones were added in c 2000-1000 BC. The complex had no pottery.

Iwajuku

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The first Palaeolithic site discovered in Japan, with layers dating to 20,000 and 15,000 years old. Excavation there provided the first convincing evidence that the Japanese islands were occupied by man during Palaeolithic times. Among the finds are elongate blades, choppers, and scrapers in the oldest layer and thin small blades in the second. Other crude 'tools' estimated to be over 50,000 years old have been found.

Kartan culture

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A group of stone assemblages with heavy core tools found on Kangaroo Island and the nearby peninsulas of South Australia, a variant of the Australian Core Tool and Scraper Tradition. Kangaroo Island, now separated from Australia by a 15-km strait, was joined to the mainland during the Pleistocene. There were no Aboriginal inhabitants at the time of European contact. Radiocarbon estimates of 14,000 BC have been obtained for a possibly subsequent small scraper industry in Seton rock shelter on Kangaroo Island. Kartan tools include unifacially flaked pebble choppers, large steep-edged flake scrapers, waisted ax blades, and large horsehoof cores (mean weights of 500 grams), sometimes associated with small quartz flakes. The proportion of core tools in the assemblage is much higher than in other Pleistocene sites.

Kota Tampan

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site in peninsular Malaysia with a pebble and flake industry dating to 31,000 BP in the Upper Palaeolithic. . In northern Malaya a large series of choppers and chopping tools made on quartzite pebbles and found in Middle Pleistocene tin-bearing gravels have been referred to collectively as the Tampanian, since they come from Kota Tampan in Perak.

Kudaro

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Two cave sites in the Greater Caucasus Mountains of Georgia with Acheulian layers associated with Middle Pleistocene vertebrates and bifaces, choppers, and sidescrapers. Some Middle Palaeolithic artifacts are associated with Late Pleistocene vertebrates and points and sidescrapers. There are also late Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic remains.

Lazaret

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Acheulian cave site near Nice, France, with some evidence of hutlike structures and an assemblage dated to Riss III with pointed bifaces and choppers.

Le Lazaret

SYNONYM: Lazaret
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave site on the coast close to Nice, France, with deposits from before the last Interglacial, with Acheulian tools and interspersed beach deposits. Human remains of two children and one adult are known, and it has been claimed that large huts were constructed inside the cave. The assemblage is dated to Riss III and includes pointed bifaces and choppers.

Makarovo

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Four Upper Palaeolithic sites on the Lena River in south-central Siberia. Makarovo II dates between c 11,400-11,950 bp and contains microblades. Makarovo III's assemblage includes sidescrapers, endscrapers, and choppers. Makarovo IV has points, sidescrapers, and endscrapers believed to predate the Last Glacial Maximum.

Ngandong

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Terrace site in the Solo River valley in Java, Indonesia, which had remains of Pleistocene fauna and advanced Homo erectus (Solo Man) of c 200,000 years ago. Solo Man has features of earlier Java Man, and has also been regarded as a tropical Neanderthal. Faunal associations are Upper Pleistocene, and age estimates range from 60,000-300,000 years. There was a stone industry of choppers and retouched flakes, but it may not be associated with Solo Man.

Nihewan

SYNONYM: [Ni-ho-wan]
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Formation in Hebei Province, China, thought to be 1 million years old and containing northern China's earliest Palaeolithic tools of quartzite choppers and flakes. Mammal fauna is of the Lower Pleistocene and may be an early form of horse.

Northwest Riverine tradition

SYNONYM: Plateau tradition
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A series of cultures which reached maturity in the interior of Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, and in Idaho at the beginning of this millennium. The Columbia-Snake, Fraser-Thompson, and Klamath Rivers run through it and it is where the Old Cordilleran tradition arose. It is characterized by pebble choppers, leaf-shaped flaked stone projectile points, stone hammers, stone bowls, tubular pipes, stone slubs, and fine stone carving. It is an integrative concept created by G.R. Willey in an effort to characterize all of Plateau prehistory between 500-1850 AD.

Old Cordilleran Culture

SYNONYM: Old Cordilleran
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A late Pleistocene cultural tradition based on the hunting of small game and the collection of wild foods in the mountain and plateau region of western North America, especially Oregon and Washington, between c 9000-5000 BC (or later). The diagnostic tool is the leaf-shaped Cascade point, a distinctive bipointed lanceolate point. It was usually accompanied by scraping tools (chopper tools, bolas) and occasionally by milling stones (burins). The type site is Five Mile Rapids, Oregon (9800 BP). They may have been contemporaneous with Big Game Hunting tradition. The tradition has a terminal date of c 7000 BP and it may have cultural ties to the San Dieguito.

Olduvai

SYNONYM: Olduvai Gorge
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in northern Tanzania which is one of the most important sites for the understanding of both human evolution and the development of the earliest tools. The gorge is 30 miles long, located on the volcanic belt of the Great Rift Valley. Louis and Mary Leakey uncovered numerous Hominid remains, animal bones, and stone artifacts from c 1.9 million years to less than 10,000 years ago. Living floors and camp sites with pebble tools, choppers, and a few artifacts made on flakes go back to the earliest date as do the bones of two primitive forms of hominid, Homo habilis and Australopithecus robustus (Zinjanthropus). Crude handaxes have been dated to c 1.2-0.5 million years ago and are accompanied by several hominid fossils of Homo erectus and Homo sapiens. Acheulian tools are found with Neanderthal remains and later beds contained a Kenya Capsian industry. No site in the world has produced a longer sequence of stone tool assemblages and of hominid fossils.

Paccaicasas

SYNONYM: Paccaicasa
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The earliest stone tool complex of the Ayacucho Valley, in the central highlands of Peru, which may represent man's earliest presence in South America. Radiocarbon dates of 17,620 BC and 12,730 BC were obtained from sloth bone found in association with crude stone tools and flakes of volcanic tuff. Choppers, bifacial tools, and waste flakes therefore dated between 18,000-12,000 BC.

Pacitanian

SYNONYM: Patjitanian; Pacitan, Patjitan
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A pebble and flake tool industry with a small percentage of bifaces found in valleys in south-central Java, Indonesia. The region is known as Pacitan or Patjitan. The chopper and chopping tools were of a middle and late Pleistocene time. These tools were also a small part of a late Pleistocene and early Holocene industry.

Paleolithic

SYNONYM: Palaeolithic
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The more technical name for the Old Stone Age, a division of prehistory covering the time from the first use of stone tools by humans, c 2.5 million years ago, to the retreat of the glacial ice in the northern hemisphere c 10,000-8500 BC. It began in the Pliocene epoch and was followed by the Mesolithic. It is the Old World equivalent, although with a much greater extension back in time, of the paleo-Indian or Early Lithic stage of New World development. The Paleolithic was characterized by the making of chipped or flaked stone tools and weapons and by a hunting and food-gathering way of life. It is usually divided into Lower, Middle, and Upper (or Late) Paleolithic -- mainly based on artifact typology. The subdivisions are characterized this way: Lower Palaeolithic, c 2.5 million - 200,000 BC, the earliest forms of humans (Australopithecus and Homo erectus), and the predominance of core tools of pebble tool, handax, and chopper type; Middle Palaeolithic, c 150,000-40,000 BC, the era of the Neanderthal and the predominance of flake-tool industries (e.g. Mousterian) over most of Eurasia; and Upper Palaeolithic (starting perhaps as early as 38,000 BC-c 10,000 BC), with Homo sapiens sapiens, blade-and-burin industries, and the development of cave art in western Europe. During this stage, man colonized the New World and Australia. The main Palaeolithic cultures of Europe were, in chronological order: 1. Pre-Abbevillian, 2. Abbevillian, 3. Clactonian, 4. Acheulian, 5. Levalloisian, 6. Mousterian, 7. Aurignacian, 8. Solutrean, and 9. Magdalenian. The term was introduced in 1865 by John Lubbock in Prehistoric Times". The Palaeolithic was originally defined by the use of chipped stone tools but later an economic criterion was added and the practice of hunting and gathering is now regarded as a defining characteristic."

Paleolithic or Palaeolithic

SYNONYM: Old Stone Age, paleolithic
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The more technical name for the Old Stone Age, a division of prehistory covering the time from the first use of stone tools by humans, c 2.5 million years ago, to the retreat of the glacial ice in the northern hemisphere c 10,000-8500 BC. It began in the Pliocene epoch and was followed by the Mesolithic. It is the Old World equivalent, although with a much greater extension back in time, of the Paleo-Indian or Early Lithic stage of New World development. The Paleolithic was characterized by the making of chipped or flaked stone tools and weapons and by a hunting and food-gathering way of life. It is usually divided into Lower, Middle, and Upper (or Late) Paleolithic -- mainly based on artifact typology. The subdivisions are characterized this way: Lower Palaeolithic, c 2.5 million - 200,000 BC, the earliest forms of man (Australopithecus and Homo erectus), and the predominance of core tools of pebble tool, handax, and chopper type; Middle Palaeolithic, c 150,000-40,000 BC, the era of Neanderthal man and the predominance of flake-tool industries (e.g. Mousterian) over most of Eurasia; and Upper Palaeolithic (starting perhaps as early as 38,000 BC-c 10,000 BC), with Homo sapiens sapiens, blade-and-burin industries, and the development of cave art in western Europe. During this stage, man colonized the New World and Australia. The main Palaeolithic cultures of Europe were, in chronological order: 1. Pre-Abbevillian, 2. Abbevillian, 3. Clactonian, 4. Acheulian, 5. Levalloisian, 6. Mousterian, 7. Aurignacian, 8. Solutrean, and 9. Magdalenian. The term was introduced in 1865 by John Lubbock in Prehistoric Times". The Palaeolithic was originally defined by the use of chipped stone tools but later an economic criterion was added and the practice of hunting and gathering is now regarded as a defining characteristic."

Patjitanian

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Middle Pleistocene chopper-chopping tool culture from Java characterized by coarse flakes in the shape of cleavers, known from a very prolific site in south central Java. In the Patjitanian, the main types of implements consist of single-edged choppers and chopping tools that occur in association with primitive flakes with unprepared, high-angle striking platforms. There are also pointed, bifacial implements that have been described as crude hand axes.

pebble

CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A size of gravel between 4-64 mm in diameter, according to the Wentworth-Udden classification. Pebbles are shaped by the action of waves, torrents, or rivers, and are marked by splintering or rounded through rubbing. Tools such as the chopper and polyhedra (with several sides) were fashioned from pebbles. The pebble tool industries which preceded the Acheulian were based on tools made from pebble-sized clasts -- which provided a cutting edge (chopper) or a faceted sphere (polyhedron) formed by the removal of one or several pieces (flakes).

Pinto tradition

SYNONYM: San Dieguito-Pinto, Pinto/Gypsum Complex
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Culture of southern California deserts with characteristic Pinto points, a heavy often crudely made projectile point with triangular blade, narrow stem, and indented base. Artifacts also include plano-convex bifaces, scraper planes, choppers, hammerstones, and flat grinding slabs. Pinto was c 5000-2000 BC and the sometimes related Gypsum (in the Pinto/Gypsum Complex) c 1500 BC-600 AD.

Rio Claro

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Early stratified site in the highlands of Sao Paulo state, Brazil. The sequence begins with crude choppers dating c 20,000 years ago and ends with large stemmed points c 6000 BC.

Sambaquí

SYNONYM: Sambaqui tradition
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Shell middens along the Brazilian coast, north of Rio de Janeiro. The oldest debris was left by non-agricultural peoples who used no pottery and who made artifacts of chipped and polished stone (axes, adzes, choppers). The middens are of widely differing ages, from the 6th millennium BC until the centuries before the European conquest. There are also well-finished polished stone effigies (usually of birds or fish) which have a basin-like depression in the back. Probably of ceremonial significance, it has been suggested that these effigies were used in the ritual taking of snuff.

San Dieguito complex

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Late Palaeoindian complex of California, southwestern Nevada, and western Arizona, c 8000-7000 BC. Characteristic artifacts are leaf-shaped biface points or knives, choppers, scrapers, and hammerstones. It postdates the Clovis in local sequences. this tradition was distinct from the Desert Culture in its reliance on hunting rather than gathering.

Soan

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Lower Palaeolithic pebble tool and chopper industry of the Punjab (Pakistan) and northwest India. After a pre-Soan phase, the Soan proper begins during the second Himalayan interglacial, and its final stage, with an increase in flake tools (including some made by the Levallois technique), is probably contemporary with the early part of the Würm glaciation of Alpine Europe. There were handaxes and chopper / chopping tools. Some of the material has been redated to the Middle Palaeolithic and has questionable archaeological validity.

Sonviian

SYNONYM: Son Vi
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Pre-Hoabinhian stone industry in Upper Palaeolithic cave sites around the Red River valley of northern Vietnam. It is regarded as the immediate predecessor (or an early stage) of the Hoabinhian and of late Pleistocene date c 18,000-9000 BC. It is characterized by unifacially flaked pebbles, some bifacially worked pebbles, choppers, side-scrapers, and 'round-edged' pebbles. Son Vi is the type site of this industry.

Swartkrans

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: One of three neighboring South African sites where important fossil hominid remains have been found -- a short distance from Sterkfontein and Kromdraai. The valley is the richest hominid site in South Africa and Swarkrans dates between 1.8-1 million years ago, with remains of possibly over 60 individuals of Australopithecus robustus. The Swartkrans artifacts are mainly relatively crude stone chopper cores, flakes, and scrapers made of quartzite and quartz, and some bone tools. The stone tools, including rough hand axes, are attributed to the Developed Oldowan. A second hominid is present, probably Homo erectus or habilis. Fire-blackened bones of 1.5-1 million years ago may be the oldest known direct evidence for the use of fire.

Tardiguet

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site on the Morocco coast near Rabat with early stone tools of simple Oldowan type. There are no hand axes; the commonest tools are choppers. They belong to Stage 1 of the Pebble Tool culture and are probably among the earliest cases of tool-making known.

Tasmania

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Island that was part of the Australian continent during the late Pleistocene, then separated by rising sea levels which formed Bass Strait about 9000 BC. Occupation of southwestern Tasmania by 30,000 bp is now well established. At the time of European contact, Tasmanian aborigines had a simple tool kit of stone flakes and core scrapers, pebble choppers, wooden pointed spears, digging sticks, clubs, and throwing sticks. They lacked all the post-Pleistocene tools known on the mainland. At sites on the northwestern tip, deposits are dated to c 6000 BC with bone points, stone scrapers, and pebble tools. Around 1000 BC, bone points disappeared and there is evidence of fish exploitation. Pecked engravings at Mount Cameron West resemble the Panaramitee style of central Australia. The arrival of Europeans was disastrous, with Tasmanians becoming almost extinct in the 19th century.

tool

CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Any existing physical object that is in some way fashioned or altered by humans and employed for a specific task or purpose. Tools made of stone included of axes, adzes, arrowheads, spearheads, daggers, knife blades, scrapers, borers, burins, picks, etc. The first tools date back to c 2,600,000 years ago, the beginning of the Paleolithic Age, and are different-sized pebble tools called choppers. The chopper was the only tool used by man for almost 2,000,000 years, until the appearance of the hand ax, a superior (and sharper) version of the chopper.

Vegas

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Sites in the Santa Elena peninsula region of southeast coastal Ecuador with unifacial stone gravers, denticulates, spokeshaves; cobble choppers and pestles c 5000 BC.

Yengema

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Town and cave site in eastern Sierra Leone with one of the few stratified sequences of Palaeolithic and Neolithic stone industries in that country. Crudely flaked picks, choppers, and flake-scrapers; hoe-like tools and backed blades have been found. In another phase, pottery and ground stone tools are found for the first time. Thermoluminescence tests dated the third-phase pottery at c 2000 BC.