How a handful of prehistoric geniuses led humanity’s technological revolution

For the first few million years of human evolution, technologies changed slowly. Some three million years ago, our ancestors were making chipped stone flakes and crude choppers. Two million years ago, hand-axes. A million years ago, primitive humans sometimes used fire, but with difficulty. Then, 500,000 years ago, technological change accelerated, as spearpoints, firemaking, axes, beads and bows appeared.

This technological revolution was not the work of one group of people. Innovations arose in different groups – modern Homo sapiens, primitive sapiens, possibly even Neanderthals – and then spread. Many key inventions were unique: one-offs. Instead of being invented by different people independently, they were discovered once, then shared. That implies a few clever people created many of history’s big inventions.

And not all of them were modern humans.

Tip of spear

In southern Africa, primitive Homo sapiens first bound stone blades to wooden spears, creating the spearpoint 500,000 years ago. Spearpoints were revolutionary as weaponry, and as the first “composite tools” – combining components.

The spearpoint spread, appearing 300,000 years ago in East Africa and the Mideast, then 250,000 years ago in Europe, wielded by Neanderthals. That pattern suggests the spearpoint was gradually passed on from one people to another, all the way from Africa to Europe.

Catching fire

Hints of fire, including charcoal and burnt bones, became common in Europe, West Asia and Africa 400,000 years ago. It…

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