The Evolutionary perspective of tool making and using in various ages

The Peking Men

Bhimbetka Cave, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh

Bhimbetka Cave

        It is often believed that some advanced primates may have used bones and stones as tools. But, with the coming of the Homo Sapions, tool making and tool using began in the true sense. Only then tools, as we know them, emerged. The human being is an animal that not only uses tools but also constantly improves upon them. It is this tool making ability that has brought us to the present stage. It is known that ‘Peking Man’ the first human being ever to have lived in a complete environment dates back to about 50,00,000 years.

Skull of The Peking Man

Peking Men

Bhimbetka Cave

     On the basis of the tool making ability of human beings, archaeologists have arranged human history into the following periods. They are: the Stone Age (old and new), the Bronze Age and the Iron Age.

                 

The Old Stone Age:-

    The Old Stone Age or the Paleolithic period began nearly 5,00,000 and 2,50,000 years ago. In the Old Stone Age, human beings lived entirely on hunting, fishing and gathering. The tools they fashioned from stone for this purpose were rudimentary in character. These tools only enabled them to live off nature and not to invest in it. Their requirements were met through trapping, hunting, plucking or digging. They had no control over nature rather they were dependent on it. In cultural evolution, this period is described as a stage of savagery as depicted by Morgan, a British anthropologist. Roughly-chipped flint served a variety of purposes from killing a prey, to removing the skins, to digging up roots and tubers.

The New Stone Age:-

     The New Stone Age or the Neolithic period began all about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. In this age human beings were able to increase and thus control to some extent, the supply of food. They did this by cultivating cereals and breeding animals. This period also provided us with the evidence for the existence of granaries or stone houses which imply that food was often produced in excess of current requirements. The cultural characteristics of this period correspond roughly with what Morgan called the Barbaric Age. It is during this period of Neolithic Revolution that pottery, the techniques of spinning wool, flax and cotton into threads cane into use. Finally, fashioned stone axes sharpened by grinding also made their appearance at this time.

The Bronze Age:-

    

  The next revolution in tool making came with the Bronze Age about 5,000 years ago, that is around 3,000 B.C. This period supported an urban population, skilled craftsmen, traders, priests and writers. Now the principal metals were used for making tools and weapons, this period is described as the Bronze Age.

   The revolutionary implications of the Bronze Age may not have been possible if human beings had not invented the ability to mold melt and fuse copper. By 3,000 B.C. not only was the technique of mixing copper and tin to make bronze known in India, Mesopotamia and Greece, but the wheel also had been discovered. The application of the wheel revolutionized transportation and two-wheeled and four-wheeled carts were being commonly used by this time for a variety of purposes.

   By this time wind too was being used as a source of energy primarily to aid water transportation. We find sail boats being used from Polynesia to Egypt. The ruins of Mohenjodaro and Harappa tell us of the application of kiln-fired bricks which meant a huge expenditure of fuel and ability to control high temperatures.

  In the Bronze Age, land was systematically reclaimed from swamp and desert and record quantities of food stuffs were being produced. Artificial waterways also helped to protect society against the vagaries of the weather.

The Iron Age:-

  

     Iron Age started at around 1200 B.C. Unlike copper and tin which are quite rare and hence expensive, iron is one of the commonest elements founding the earth’s crust. In the beginning, it was however a rare metal. The extraction of iron from its ore follows more or less, the same technique as with the extraction of copper. The secret of its production was however kept closely guarded and it took several years for this knowledge to seep slowly, through a variety of sources, before it was universalised across several cultures.

    

     In the period of the Bronze Age technology had emerged large empires in Greece, Asia Minor, Mesopotamia and Egypt. The invention of iron tools and weapons by the barbarians of Eurasia posed a major threat to these empires. Iron was used in India around 1000 B.C. and excavations show that iron weapons such as arrow heads, spearheads were used commonly in Western Uttar Pradesh from about 800 B.C.

    According to Gordon Childe, “Cheap iron democratized agriculture and industry and warfare too. Any peasant could afford an iron axe to clear fresh land for himself and iron ploughshares wherewith to break up stony ground”. In the past the superior tools and weapons were rare and expensive. The discovery of iron leveled these differences.