article_snippet: It is hard for scientists to say precisely when humans started making tools because the more primitive remains look like a natural object rather than a human artefact.
article_snippet: The oldest-known instruments are the Oldowan stone tools from Ethiopia, which date back about 2.6 million years.
article_snippet: The Acheulean tool technology period - up to 1.76 million years ago - featured large stone hand axes made from flint and quartzite.
article_snippet: About 50,000 years ago more refined and specialised flint tools were made and used by Neanderthals and it is believed it was at tools were constructed out of bone.
article_snippet: Cut marks have found on animal bones that have been dated to be 3.4 million years old - around the time that a squat ape-like ancestor called Australopithecus afarensis - known as Lucy - roamed Africa.
article_snippet: Making stone tools, however, dates back more than two million years, and little research has been done on the impact of this activity. '
article_snippet: Although stone tool manufacture dates back at least 2.5 million years, The researchers limited the estimate to one million years.
highlights_snippet: Tools are thought to have been made 500,000 years ago in the Pleistocene .
  