Prehistoric Men

by Robert J. Braidwood

THE ROAD TO STANDARDIZATION

Reasoning from what we know or can easily imagine, there should have been three major steps in the prehistory of tool-making. The first step would have been simple utilization of what was at hand. This is the step into which the “eoliths” would fall. The second step would have been fashioning—the haphazard preparation of a tool when there was a need for it. Probably many of the earlier pebble tools, which I shall describe next, fall into this group. The third step would have been standardization. Here, men began to make tools according to certain set traditions. Counting the better-made pebble tools, there are four such traditions or sets of habits for the production of stone tools in earliest prehistoric times. Toward the end of the Pleistocene, a fifth tradition appears.