Week 3           Biological Anthropology

Chimps can use tools, and it is likely that with slightly larger brains and hands made free by bipedality that early Australopithecus used tools, but they did not leave any stone tools behind. The first stone tools come at abotu 2.5 million years, and the earliest tool use is associated with a for of Australopithecus , but early Homo is much more consistently associated with tools than later Australopithecus. In fact, there is no clear association of late-existing robust Australopithecus with a tool industry. Many think that tool use was one of the key adaptations of our genus, Homo.