As a failed flintknapper, I say that the most-surprising thing about stone tools is how intellectually demanding it is to make them well. I’ve spent at least 30 hours, spread out across one year, with 3 different instructors, trying to knap arrowheads from flint, chert, obsidian, and glass (not counting time spent making or buying tools and gathering or buying flint); and I all I ever made was roughly triangular flakes and rock dust. You need to study the rock, guess where the fracture lines run inside it, and then make a recursive plan to produce your desired final shape. By “recursive” I mean that you plan backwards from the final blow, envisioning which section of the rock will be the final produce, and what shape it should have one blow before to make the final blow possible, and then what shape it should have one blow before that to make the penultimate blow possible, and so on back to the beginning, although that plan will change as you proceed. It’s like playing chess with a rock, trying to predict its responses to your blows 4 to 8 moves ahead.
So if I were to speculate on what abilities humans might have evolved on account of stone tool-making, I would think of cognitive ones, not reflexes or manual dexterity.
(I might be tempted to speculate on how the evolution of knapping skills interacted with the evolution of sex or gender roles. But the consensus on to what degree stone knapping was sexed is in such a state of flux that such speculation would probably be futile at present.)
There’s already a lot of experimental archaeology asking what the development of stone tool technology over time tells us about the evolution of human cognition. I haven’t noticed anyone ask whether tech development drives cognitive evolution, in a cyclical process; the default assumption seems to be that causation is one-way, with evolution driving technology, but not vice-versa.
Caveat: I’ve only done a fly-by over this literature myself.
Dietrich Stout 2011. Stone Toolmaking and the Evolution of Human Culture and Cognition. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 366(1567):1050–1059. Analyzes different lithic technologies into action hierarchies to compare their complexity; also graphs the slow polynomial or exponential increase in the number of techniques needed by each lithic technology over 3 million years. Only covers the Olduwan, Acheulean, and Levallois periods.
Antoine Muller, Chris Clarkson, Ceri Shipton, 2017. Measuring behavioural and cognitive complexity in lithic technology throughout human evolution. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 48:166-180.
Stone toolmaking difficulty and the evolution of hominin technological skills. Antoine Muller, Ceri Shipton, Chris Clarkson, 2022. Nature Scientific Reports 12, 5883 (2022). This study analysed video footage and lithic material from a series of replicative knapping experiments to quantify deliberation time (strike time), precision (platform area), intricacy (flake size relative to core size), and success (relative blank length).
FWIW I currently think it’s bad practice to paste LLM output in a forum. It’s like pasting the google search results for something. Anyone can ask an LLM, and the reason I’m here reading comments on a forum is to talk to humans, who have separate identities, reputations, and tons of cultural context of the forum.
I didn’t paste LLM output directly. I had a much longer interaction with 2 different LLMs, and extracted the relevant output from different sections, combined them, and condensed it into the very short text posted. I checked the accuracy of the main points about the timeline, but I didn’t chase down all of the claims as thoroughly as I should have when they agreed with my pre-existing but not authoritative opinion, and I even let bogus citations slip by. (Both LLMs usually get the author names right, but often hallucinate later parts of a citation.)
I rewrote the text, keeping only claims that I’ve verified, or that are my opinions or speculations. Then I realized that the difficult, error-laden, and more-speculative section I spent 90% of my time on wasn’t really important, and deleted it.
I think, if you’re going to do it, good form on LW is to put it in a collapsible section.
Here’s an edited version of what Microsoft Copilot says about the amount of planning involved in some lithic technologies:
Acheulean Handaxes (~1.7 – 0.3 Ma)
Characterized by bifacially flaked “handaxes” with broadly symmetrical shapes.
Crafting a handaxe required the knapper to visualize a final form, select an appropriate flint or chert nodule, and execute a sequence of removals to achieve symmetry and thinness.
Used mainly by H. neanderthalensis and H. sapiens.
The Levallois method involves preparing a tortoise-shaped core in several hierarchical stages so that a single, predetermined flake detaches as the final step.
Achieving that predetermined flake shape demands extensive forward planning—mapping core geometry, platform angles, and flake dimensions before any major removal.
Experimental studies show Levallois knapping is more intricate than discoid or basic handaxe manufacturing, requiring deliberate sequences and precision that attest to advanced cognitive organization.
Homo sapiens popularized prismatic blade production: long, standardized flakes struck from carefully prepared cores.
Blade knapping ranks highest in required dexterity, precision, and hierarchical planning, as each blade relies on strict core geometry and a series of carefully controlled blows.
Some late Acheulean sites hint at intermediate “proto-Levallois” strategies around 500 ka, suggesting a gradual cognitive shift rather than a sudden leap. Moreover, experimental archaeology today uses metrics like deliberation time, platform precision, and flake‐to-core ratios to quantify the cognitive demands of each technique—offering a window into the planning capabilities of our ancestors (1).
Stout, D. & Semenov, V. N. “Flake-to-Core Ratio and Efficiency in Levallois and Blade Knapping: Experimental Perspectives.” Journal of Archaeological Science, 33(6): 782–796. (2006)
Nadel, D. & Cochrane, E. “Timing and Planning in Lithic Reduction: A High-Speed Video Analysis of Stone-Tool Making.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 17(2): 233–242. (2007)
Rots, V. “Facet Count and Platform Precision in Prehistoric Knapping: A 3D-Scanning Study of Levallois and Blade Cores.” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 18(4): 345–362. (2011)
Clarkson, C. “Quantifying Sequence Complexity in Lithic Reduction: Blade Versus Point Production.” Antiquity, 83(319): 998–1015. (2009)
Rots, V. & Fischer, A. “Error Rates and Correction Strategies in Prehistoric Knapping: Experimental Insights from Mousterian and Aurignacian Contexts.” Journal of Human Evolution, 73: 65–79. (2014)
As a failed flintknapper, I say that the most-surprising thing about stone tools is how intellectually demanding it is to make them well. I’ve spent at least 30 hours, spread out across one year, with 3 different instructors, trying to knap arrowheads from flint, chert, obsidian, and glass (not counting time spent making or buying tools and gathering or buying flint); and I all I ever made was roughly triangular flakes and rock dust. You need to study the rock, guess where the fracture lines run inside it, and then make a recursive plan to produce your desired final shape. By “recursive” I mean that you plan backwards from the final blow, envisioning which section of the rock will be the final produce, and what shape it should have one blow before to make the final blow possible, and then what shape it should have one blow before that to make the penultimate blow possible, and so on back to the beginning, although that plan will change as you proceed. It’s like playing chess with a rock, trying to predict its responses to your blows 4 to 8 moves ahead.
So if I were to speculate on what abilities humans might have evolved on account of stone tool-making, I would think of cognitive ones, not reflexes or manual dexterity.
(I might be tempted to speculate on how the evolution of knapping skills interacted with the evolution of sex or gender roles. But the consensus on to what degree stone knapping was sexed is in such a state of flux that such speculation would probably be futile at present.)
There’s already a lot of experimental archaeology asking what the development of stone tool technology over time tells us about the evolution of human cognition. I haven’t noticed anyone ask whether tech development drives cognitive evolution, in a cyclical process; the default assumption seems to be that causation is one-way, with evolution driving technology, but not vice-versa.
Caveat: I’ve only done a fly-by over this literature myself.
Learning to think: using experimental flintknapping to interpret prehistoric cognition. https://core.tdar.org/document/395518/learning-to-think-using-experimental-flintknapping-to-interpret-prehistoric-cognition [Abstract of a conference talk. You can find references to her later work on this topic at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nada-Khreisheh]
Dietrich Stout 2011. Stone Toolmaking and the Evolution of Human Culture and Cognition. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 366(1567):1050–1059. Analyzes different lithic technologies into action hierarchies to compare their complexity; also graphs the slow polynomial or exponential increase in the number of techniques needed by each lithic technology over 3 million years. Only covers the Olduwan, Acheulean, and Levallois periods.
Antoine Muller, Chris Clarkson, Ceri Shipton, 2017. Measuring behavioural and cognitive complexity in lithic technology throughout human evolution. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 48:166-180.
Stone toolmaking difficulty and the evolution of hominin technological skills. Antoine Muller, Ceri Shipton, Chris Clarkson, 2022. Nature Scientific Reports 12, 5883 (2022). This study analysed video footage and lithic material from a series of replicative knapping experiments to quantify deliberation time (strike time), precision (platform area), intricacy (flake size relative to core size), and success (relative blank length).
FWIW I currently think it’s bad practice to paste LLM output in a forum. It’s like pasting the google search results for something. Anyone can ask an LLM, and the reason I’m here reading comments on a forum is to talk to humans, who have separate identities, reputations, and tons of cultural context of the forum.
Yeah, probably. Sorry.
I didn’t paste LLM output directly. I had a much longer interaction with 2 different LLMs, and extracted the relevant output from different sections, combined them, and condensed it into the very short text posted. I checked the accuracy of the main points about the timeline, but I didn’t chase down all of the claims as thoroughly as I should have when they agreed with my pre-existing but not authoritative opinion, and I even let bogus citations slip by. (Both LLMs usually get the author names right, but often hallucinate later parts of a citation.)
I rewrote the text, keeping only claims that I’ve verified, or that are my opinions or speculations. Then I realized that the difficult, error-laden, and more-speculative section I spent 90% of my time on wasn’t really important, and deleted it.
I think, if you’re going to do it, good form on LW is to put it in a collapsible section.
Here’s an edited version of what Microsoft Copilot says about the amount of planning involved in some lithic technologies:
Acheulean Handaxes (~1.7 – 0.3 Ma)
Characterized by bifacially flaked “handaxes” with broadly symmetrical shapes.
Crafting a handaxe required the knapper to visualize a final form, select an appropriate flint or chert nodule, and execute a sequence of removals to achieve symmetry and thinness.
Prepared-Core (Levallois) Flake-Making Techniques (~300 – 100 ka)
Used mainly by H. neanderthalensis and H. sapiens.
The Levallois method involves preparing a tortoise-shaped core in several hierarchical stages so that a single, predetermined flake detaches as the final step.
Achieving that predetermined flake shape demands extensive forward planning—mapping core geometry, platform angles, and flake dimensions before any major removal.
Experimental studies show Levallois knapping is more intricate than discoid or basic handaxe manufacturing, requiring deliberate sequences and precision that attest to advanced cognitive organization.
Upper Paleolithic Blade Technologies (~50 – 10 ka)
Homo sapiens popularized prismatic blade production: long, standardized flakes struck from carefully prepared cores.
Blade knapping ranks highest in required dexterity, precision, and hierarchical planning, as each blade relies on strict core geometry and a series of carefully controlled blows.
Some late Acheulean sites hint at intermediate “proto-Levallois” strategies around 500 ka, suggesting a gradual cognitive shift rather than a sudden leap. Moreover, experimental archaeology today uses metrics like deliberation time, platform precision, and flake‐to-core ratios to quantify the cognitive demands of each technique—offering a window into the planning capabilities of our ancestors (1).
Rots, V. & Fischer, A. “Error Rates and Correction Strategies in Prehistoric Knapping: Experimental Insights from Mousterian and Aurignacian Contexts.” Journal of Human Evolution, 73: 65–79. (2014)Learning to think: using experimental flintknapping to interpret prehistoric cognition. https://core.tdar.org/document/395518/learning-to-think-using-experimental-flintknapping-to-interpret-prehistoric-cognition [Text unavailable, but you can find references to her later work on this topic at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nada-Khreisheh]
Stout, D. & Semenov, V. N. “Flake-to-Core Ratio and Efficiency in Levallois and Blade Knapping: Experimental Perspectives.” Journal of Archaeological Science, 33(6): 782–796. (2006)
Nadel, D. & Cochrane, E. “Timing and Planning in Lithic Reduction: A High-Speed Video Analysis of Stone-Tool Making.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 17(2): 233–242. (2007)
Rots, V. “Facet Count and Platform Precision in Prehistoric Knapping: A 3D-Scanning Study of Levallois and Blade Cores.” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 18(4): 345–362. (2011)
Clarkson, C. “Quantifying Sequence Complexity in Lithic Reduction: Blade Versus Point Production.” Antiquity, 83(319): 998–1015. (2009)