List of earliest tools

The following table attempts to list the oldest-known Paleolithic and Paleo-Indian sites where hominin tools have been found. It includes sites where compelling evidence of hominin tool use has been found, even if no actual tools have been found.

Stone tools preserve more readily than tools of many other materials. So the oldest tools that we can find in many areas are going to be stone tools. It could be that these tools were once accompanied by, or even preceded by, non-stone tools that we cannot find because they did not preserve.

Similarly, hard materials like bone or shell are more likely than softer materials to leave discernible cut marks on bone. Bamboo has been shown to leave cut marks on bone that are harder to see than cut marks by stone. So the earliest evidence of tool use that we are likely to find are often cut marks made on bone by stone or shell tools.

Since there are far too many hominin tool sites to list on a single page, this page attempts to list the 6 or fewer top candidates for oldest tool site within each significant geographic area. These are the geographic areas covered:


 * Africa
 * East Africa
 * North Africa
 * Southern Africa
 * West Africa
 * Americas
 * North America
 * South America
 * Asia
 * East Asia
 * Island Southeast Asia - Islands between Sunda Shelf and Sahul, not connected to either one during the Last Glacial Maximum
 * South Asia
 * Sunda Shelf
 * West Asia
 * Europe
 * Eastern Europe
 * Western Europe
 * Sahul - Australia and New Guinea

For much of the 20th century, a "Clovis first" idea dominated American archeology. Many sites with dates too old to be compatible with "Clovis first" were published, but these were mostly dismissed under the hegemony of "Clovis first." Meanwhile some indigenous archeologists insisted throughout the "Clovis first" era that the peopling of the Americas was much older than Clovis. Recent publications with very strong evidence for pre-Clovis sites seem to have ended the hegemony of "Clovis first."