Hand Tools

Hand tools can be as easily found as made, and the earliest tools used by people included sticks and rocks picked up and used as projectiles, or to pound or dig. The earliest fashioned hand tools date back to the Stone Age. Currently new technologies make hand tools that are battery-powered, so they are still portable, yet easier to use than their precursors.

Tools are an extension of human limbs and teeth, and were first inspired by human limitations. Things which would be torn by an animal with its teeth required less well-equipped humans to use sharp rocks or sticks as knife edges. Sticks could also dig out what human hands could not pull out. They could be used as noisemakers or be thrown at intruders as an intimidation tactic. Even today monkeys and apes use found objects in these ways, so it is not hard to imagine early humans exhibiting this same ingenuity.