The Earliest Tools and Cultures of Hominins

Abstract

This chapter critically discusses the earliest tools and cultures of hominins—the species most closely related to humans. It starts with an inferred organic tool age that would have already existed before the split of hominins from the ape lineage. It then examines the two currently fully established earliest instances of the stone tool age—the Oldowan and Acheulean. Contrary to prevalent assumptions, the cultural status of the Oldowan and most or all of the Acheulean (and the organic tool age) may have been that of ‘minimal culture’. Minimal culture shares with modern human culture and animal culture influences of some social learning types—for example, on frequencies of behaviours and tools—but, unlike human culture, it excludes cultural transmission of novel—supra-individual—behavioural and/or artefact know-how. If true, cumulative cultural transmission of know-how to supra-individual levels would then have started much later than is currently presumed.