URL: https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/stone-age-geniuses/
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, humans sometimes used fire, but with difficulty. Then, 500,000 years ago, technological change accelerated, as spear points, fire-making, axes, beads, and bows appeared.
Around 500,000 years ago in Southern Africa, archaic H. sapiens first bound stone blades to wooden spears, creating the spear point. Spear points were revolutionary as weaponry and as the first “composite tools”—combining components.
Four hundred thousand years ago hints of fire, including charcoal and burnt bones, became common in Europe, the Mideast, and Africa. It happened roughly the same time everywhere—rather than randomly in disconnected places—suggesting invention, then rapid spread.
Two hundred and seventy thousand years ago in Central Africa, hand axes began to disappear, replaced by a new technology, the core axe.
The oldest beads are 140,000 years old and come from what is today Morocco. They were made by piercing snail shells, then stringing them on a cord. At the time, archaic H. sapiens inhabited North Africa, so their makers weren’t modern humans.
The oldest arrowheads appeared in Southern Africa over 70,000 years ago, likely made by the ancestors of the Bushmen, who’ve lived there for 200,000 years. Bows then may have spread to modern humans in East Africa, to South Asia 48,000 years ago, on to Europe 40,000 years ago, and finally to the Americas 12,000 years ago.
The pattern seen here—single origin, then spread of innovations—has another remarkable implication. Progress may have been highly dependent on single individuals, rather than being the inevitable outcome of larger cultural forces.
That suggests the odds of hitting on a major technological innovation are low. Perhaps it wasn’t inevitable that fire, spear points, axes, beads, or bows would be discovered when they were.