Did Making Stone Tools Get People Talking? (Where Are We Headed Today?)

As we began to develop simple tools, our brains changed further. A study conducted by the University of California, Berkeley, on the craft of flint-knapping made another surprising revelation: our toolmaking abilities — simple tasks such as chiseling stones into wedges may have given birth to language itself. Learning language even in contemporary times has shown to significantly increase the size of the brain with stimulated activity in the hippocampus and motor cortex — a crucial point in our own development as infants, when we learn to process the meaning of words and the voices of those who speak them. It’s integral to the brain’s ability to form connections — not being exposed to spoken words early enough could permanently impair one’s ability to speak.

According to Thomas Morgan, one of the lead authors of the study and postdoctoral researcher in psychology at UC Berkeley, “Our findings suggest that stone tools weren’t just a product of human evolution, but actually drove it as well, creating the evolutionary advantage necessary for the development of modern human communication and teaching.”

The study suggests that much earlier than previously thought, we moved from making simple directional calls to using actual words in order to create crude stone knives as a group. In fact, the first phrase ever spoken in any language may have been words to the effect of “You’re doing it wrong,” or “Pass me that large rock.” Morgan’s study included more than 180 college students who were then broken up into “chains” consisting of five to 10 members each. The leaders of these chains were given a demonstration on how to break large pieces of an obsidian (a volcanic glass) into flakes.

Following the demonstration, they would show the piece to the next person in their chain, who then worked and taught the next person down the line. As the students worked, it soon became clear that verbal cues were the most effective way for the group to communicate what they learned, rather than through any physical demonstration alone. Not only did words provide precise details on what they did wrong, but speaking was also a way for them to engage with their teachers effectively. Stone flakes were used for about 700,000 years, but afterward technology began to move much more quickly with the advent of axes and knives carved from stone — suggesting a move from simple grunts for “Yes” and “No” to eventual words and phrases that could be easily remembered by the group.

The collection continued to grow as we built bigger and better things, transforming the land around us into cities. We think of the migration from the veldtland of Africa as an ancient and forgotten journey, rather than a continuous one. I like to recall a scene from my favorite film, “2001: A Space Odyssey” by Stanley Kubrick, when the furry hominin who has learned to use a bone as a weapon triumphantly tosses it into the air, and in that instance the tool dissolves into a vast, white space station. He doesn’t know it yet, but his descendants are hardly bound to this Earth — one day they’ll be stepping onto new worlds.

Nearly half a century ago, it was the moon. Now we dream of reaching Mars in another two decades. The obstacles are many. A great concern is whether people are psychologically prepared for prolonged periods of space travel — particularly on journeys that could take two to three years in isolation. The Mars500 mission studied some of these potential problems — a six-man Russian-European crew showed changes in perception of time and more reluctance to share negative feelings with the group. Technology is not quite there yet either — as communications systems back to Earth would be delayed up to 44 minutes. As technology continues to advance, however, so does the ever-growing field of neuroscience, and with it the power of human creativity. As distant as it may seem, the answer lies within our own brains, waiting to be unlocked.

This article was originally published in the Summer 2017 issue of Brain World Magazine.

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