Making Silent Stones Speak: Human Evolution and the Dawn of Technology
"Tools are us," assert the authors, anthropologists at Indiana University, referring to the pivotal role that tool making and tool use played in transforming apelike hominids into modern humans. In East Africa, Schick and Toth learned to duplicate and use Stone Age-like tools for woodworking, animal butchery and other tasks. Drawing on this experimental fieldwork and on the fossil record, they conclude that approximately two million years ago, early hominids turned to flaked stone tools as part of a decisive adaptive shift stressing deliberate planning and manipulation of the environment. This development, they argue, set in motion a "circular feedback loop," with advantageous tool use favoring a large brain to plan even more tool use, which in turn fostered social interaction and intelligence. Illustrated with 100 photographs and drawings, this lucid primer is an exciting exploration of the world's most ancient technologies, of human origins and of controversies in paleoanthropology. BOMC, QPB and History Book Club alternates.Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.