How Africa's prehistoric geniuses led a technological revolution

Peering into the past.

Nicholas R. Longrich
By Nicholas R. Longrich
Senior Lecturer in Paleontology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Bath

Published January 6, 2022

For the first few million years of human evolution, technologies changed slowly. Some 3 million years ago, our ancestors were making chipped stone flakes and crude choppers. Two million years ago, hand-axes. A million years ago, primitive humans sometimes used fire, but with difficulty. Then, 500,000 years ago, technological change accelerated, as spearpoints, firemaking, axes, beads and bows appeared.

This technological revolution wasn’t the work of one people. Innovations arose in different groups—modern Homo sapiens, primitive sapiens, possibly even Neanderthals—and then spread. Many key inventions were unique: one-offs. Instead of being invented by different people independently, they were discovered once, then shared. That implies a few clever people created many of history’s big inventions.

And not all of them were modern humans.

The tip of the spear



Serengeti spearpoint, author provided.

500,000 years ago in southern Africa, primitive Homo sapiens first bound stone blades to wooden spears, creating the spearpoint. Spearpoints were revolutionary as weaponry, and as the first “composite tools”—combining components.

The spearpoint spread, appearing 300,000 years ago in east Africa and the Mideast (pdf), then 250,000 years ago in Europe, wielded by Neanderthals (pdf). That pattern suggests the spearpoint was gradually passed on from one people to another, all the way from Africa to Europe.

More:
https://qz.com/africa/2110046/africas-prehistoric-technological-advances-changed-the-world/