Oldowan industry: Did you mean...?

The appearance of simple stone tools, widely known as Oldowan tools or the Oldowan industry, marked the beginning of our technological revolution. To our knowledge, these artifacts appeared around 2.6 million years ago in the savannahs of...

Stone tool chopper belonging to the Oldowan tool industry (c. 2.6-1 million years ago). Oldowan tools overlap in terms of time with Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis, and Homo erectus, as well as with later Australopithecines, and it is possible...

Homo habilis ("handy man") is an extinct species of human that lived in East and South Africa between 2.3 and 1.5 million years ago and plays an interesting role in the discussion surrounding the dawn of our genus of Homo, which is thought...

During the Industrial Revolution (1760-1840), textile production was transformed from a cottage industry to a highly mechanised one where workers were present only to make sure the carding, spinning, and weaving machines never stopped. Driven...

As the Stone Age covers around 99% of our human technological history, it would seem there is a lot to talk about when looking at the development of tools in this period. Despite our reliance on the sometimes scarce archaeological record...

Bangkok was once more commonly known as the Venice of the East due to the intricate network of waterways that crisscrossed the city in the 19th century CE. There were few roads in the 1800s CE so the city's inhabitants travelled and traded...

The production of steel during the British Industrial Revolution became cheaper and more reliable thanks to the Bessemer converter, a type of blast furnace that removed undesirable impurities from pig iron. The superior strength and durability...

The Palaeolithic ('Old Stone Age') makes up the earliest chunk of the Stone Age – the large swathe of time during which hominins used stone to make tools – and ranges from the first known tool use roughly 2,6 million years ago to the end...

Chopper made from basalt by early humans between 1,8 and 2 million years ago. It belongs to the Oldowan stone tool industry, was found in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania - the place the industry is named after. Its dimensions are length: 9.29 cm...

An example of an Oldowan stone chopper tool. From the Atlantic-Saharan region. (National Archaeological Museum, Madrid)