Flint Flakes - An Introduction to Lithic Identification. The Raw Material - Flint Humans have evolved to their present state, as the result of an interaction between brain, hands, and tools, that has taken place since the first people appeared some two million years ago or so.
Tools are an extension of the physical self.
But the earliest tools were shaped from stone, wood, bone, antler, and organic materials. Whenever humans moved onto areas of chalkland, they came into contact with a particularly useful raw material. These layers are frequently disturbed by the forces of nature, such as the ice sheets and meltwaters of past ice ages - resulting in scatters of broken flints in the top soils, even outside of the chalk bed areas. Rivers, streams, and seas cut through the beds, and the broken flints are frequently rolled into the form of pebbles in the water. In Britain, the chalk bed areas are mainly resticted to the lowlands of Southern and Eastern England.