“EOLITHS”
But what sort of tools do we find earliest? For almost a century, people have been picking up odd bits of flint and other stone in the oldest Ice Age gravels in England and France. It is now thought these odd bits of stone weren’t actually worked by prehistoric men. The stones were given a name, eoliths, or “dawn stones.” You can see them in many museums; but you can be pretty sure that very few of them were actually fashioned by men.
It is impossible to pick out “eoliths” that seem to be made in any one tradition. By “tradition” I mean a set of habits for making one kind of tool for some particular job. No two “eoliths” look very much alike: tools made as part of some one tradition all look much alike. Now it’s easy to suppose that the very earliest prehistoric men picked up and used almost any sort of stone. This wouldn’t be surprising; you and I do it when we go camping. In other words, some of these “eoliths” may actually have been used by prehistoric men. They must have used anything that might be handy when they needed it. We could have figured that out without the “eoliths.”