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During the course of human evolution, lithic technology became a critical element of hominin foraging ecology and a contributor to feedback loops selecting for increasingly sophisticated tool use, cognition, and language. Here we review the first million years of technology, from 3.3 million years ago (Ma) to 2.3 Ma. This time interval includes the two oldest archaeological industries (the Lomekwian and the early Oldowan) known exclusively from Africa, which collectively overlap with four genera of hominins (human relatives and ancestors). These Early Stone Age (ESA) industries focused on the production and use of sharp edges for cutting, as well as the use of larger, sometimes unworked stones for pounding. We review our current understanding of these technologies, where they were found, how they were made, what they were used for, and the hominins that could have produced them, and consider them in the context of nonhuman primate archaeology. 

The adaptive shift that favored stone tool–assisted behavior in hominins began by 3.3 million years ago. However, evidence from early archaeological sites indicates relatively short-distance stone transport dynamics similar to behaviors observed in nonhuman primates. Here we report selective raw material transport over longer distances than expected at least 2.6 million years ago. Hominins at Nyayanga, Kenya, manufactured Oldowan tools primarily from diverse nonlocal stones, pushing back the date for expanded raw material transport by over half a million years. Nonlocal cobbles were transported up to 13 kilometers for on-site reduction, resulting in assemblage patterns inconsistent with accumulations formed by repeated short-distance transport events. These findings demonstrate that early toolmakers moved stones over substantial distances, possibly in anticipation of food processing needs, representing the earliest archaeologically visible signal for the incorporation of lithic technology into landscape-scale foraging repertoires. 

The use of stone hammers to produce sharp stone flakes—knapping—is thought to represent a significant stage in hominin technological evolution because it facilitated the exploitation of novel resources, including meat obtained from medium‐to‐large‐sized vertebrates. The invention of knapping may have occurred via an additive (i.e., cumulative) process that combined several innovative stages. Here, we propose that one of these stages was the hominin use of ‘naturaliths,’ which we define as naturally produced sharp stone fragments that could be used as cutting tools. Based on a review of the literature and our own research, we first suggest that the ‘typical’ view, namely that sharp‐edged stones are seldom produced by nonprimate processes, is likely incorrect. Instead, naturaliths can be, and are being, endlessly produced in a wide range of settings and thus may occur on the landscape in far greater numbers than archaeologists currently understand or acknowledge. We then explore the potential role this ‘naturalith prevalence’ may have played in the origin of hominin stone knapping. Our hypothesis suggests that the origin of knapping was not a ‘Eureka!’ moment whereby hominins first made a sharp flake by intention or by accident and then sought something to cut, but instead was an emulative process by hominins aiming to reproduce the sharp tools furnished by mother nature and already in demand. We conclude with a discussion of several corollaries our proposal prompts, and several avenues of future research that can support or question our proposal.