Douglas Palmer* Palmer on the Sedgwick Museum's collection of 'the simplest scientific instruments'

摘要

Arguably, the geological hammer is by far the oldest professional tool. And surprising as it may seem, the first to use them were our extinct hominin relatives, living on the western shore of Lake Turkana, Kenya in early Pliocene times, around 3.3 million years ago. Recent discoveries of stone artefacts1 show that these 'proto-geologists' were already smart enough and had sufficient experience of rock materials - their hardness and fracture properties - to be selective in their choice of rock tools. They apparently preferred basalt and phonolite cobbles and knapped them on stone anvils with stone hammers to produce sharp-edged stone flakes. What exactly these flake tools were used for is unknown, but current thinking suggests that it may have been for cutting tough plant materials. Such well-developed cognitive abilities suggest that stone-tool use with rocky hammers, originated some considerable time before this.