Richard Leakey, Louis' son, moved the dates even further back to 3,000,000 years ago when he and his team made some important animal and hominid fossil finds some fifteen years later at Koobt Fora on the eastern side of Lake Turkana. Nothing much seems to have happened until, some 400,000 years ago, hand axes, large, pointed pieces of rock, clearly suitable for heavy work, appeared among the fossils. They were probably used to club animals, and perhaps other humans, to death. At that time many of the animals were similar to the ones we know today, but very much larger. Sheep were as big as buffaloes and pigs as large as cows.
Hand axes are more abundant in Kenya than anywhere else in the world.
Once the way of making them was found it seems to have spread fairly quickly from Africa to Asia and Europe. This hand axe culture began to give rise to civilizations with marked regional differences about 50,000 years ago. These differences probably developed as a result of the interaction of man's fast developing intelligence with the supplies of food, stone and other materials available in the different localities. In East Africa by this time the huge and more bizarre animals were becoming extinct and were being replaced by the species we see today. The tools became smaller and more diverse.