List of Tools & Weapons From Stone

Hammer Stones

• Early humans did not so much craft hammer stones as they did select them for size, strength and weight. As the University of California San Diego notes, these massive tools were used to create other tools, such as choppers, which was accomplished by whacking hammer stones against other stones, to chip off flakes of material.

Choppers

• Choppers are roughly spherical stone tools with one sharp edge, which humans fashioned by knocking out a few large flakes. They are some of the earliest stone tools and date back to the Oldowan technological period, which lasted from approximately 2.5 million to 1.2 million years ago, according to the University of Missouri. Humans used choppers for cutting up plants as well as for killing, skinning and cutting up animals.

Hand Axes

• Hand axes were similar to choppers, with one sharp side, but were much larger. They typically had a pear or teardrop shape; workers created their sharp sides (blades) by removing several small flakes, as opposed to a few large ones. As the University of Missouri notes, hand axes began showing up during the Acheulean technological period, which lasted from about 1.6 million to 200,000 years ago. Humans used them for cutting up plants and sturdy tree matter, butchering animals and digging into soil.

Scrapers and Blades

• Scrapers and blades are stone tools from the Acheulean period. Instead of manufacturing them from a core piece of stone, early humans fashioned them from the smaller, flatter flakes that resulted from creating hand axes. As the University of California San Diego mentions, scrapers had long, slightly curved cutting edges, which humans used for scraping animal skins and innards, as well as for processing plant matter. Stone blades, which showed up later archeologically, are modified or improved scrapers that were longer and more slender, allowing humans to fasten them to handles. These primitive knives were used for butchering animals and cutting through trees and other materials, but they also became some of the earliest weapons. Although the materials and construction methods used for modern knives have changed drastically, this basic blade-on-handle design has not.