Stone Tools in Europe Were Misinterpreted

For hundreds of years Europeans appear to have been oblivious to the existence of stone tools. Presumably many people saw them. At least it is hard for me to believe that no stone axes, spear points, or arrowheads turned up in plowed fields, dried streambeds, or eroded hillsides. But, as William Stiebing observes, there is no mention of them prior to the 16th century. People apparently “did not notice them. To them such things were just so many more rocks.”3 Writings from the 16th century...

 The Difficulty of Reconstructing Our Forager Ancestor's W...

We obviously have no written records from the age of foragers, and the archaeological evidence consists mainly of fossilised bones and stone tools. Artefacts made of more perishable materials – such as wood, bamboo or leather – survive only under unique conditions. The common impression that pre-agricultural humans lived in an age of stone is a misconception based on this archaeological bias. The Stone Age should more accurately be called the Wood Age, because most of the tools used by an...