Prompted by this article [https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/28/archaeologists-in-morocco-announce-major-stone-age-find](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/28/archaeologists-in-morocco-announce-major-stone-age-find)
In: Earth Science
We can [see](https://www.rawstory.com/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNzA3NzA0Mi9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzMzg0MjM5Nn0.N-Ep8MclXVJ72-jIs2JMLKBX5UAVw8vKhR2JN85B8gQ/image.png?width=1200&height=660) that the rock has been broken, it has bits chipped off the sides. It’s also broken in a very specific way: roughly symmetrical, and in a way that gives it a double-bladed edge. A rather specific way for a rock to break if it was just by chance, and exactly the kind of breakage you would expect from an individual deliberately trying to make a cutting instrument of some kind.
Stone tools have been deliberately chipped away at to make a certain shape. Stone-age humans did this by striking specific types of stone against other stones at specific angles to shatter the rock crystal in a way that makes a sharp, scalloped edge.
Finding a rock that has one of these scalloped strikes in it could very well be a coincidence from a past landslide. Finding one that has forty of them in a row to form a cutting edge is no accident.
The key is not just the shape of the rock, but also *how* it got that shape. You can tell by the way the rock faces are arranged if the shaping all happened in one shattering event or it it was meticulously chipped and polished.
Archaeologists look at few different things to tell if something is an artefact or is natural.
The first is where you find an object. If you find a lump of rock far away from where that rock is found naturally, it suggests that someone or something brought it there. Similarly if you find it around other evidence of human settlement, like fire ashes or other tools, it suggests human involvement.
The second big thing is what the object looks like. There are a lot of “types” of stone axes, and each has distinct shapes and features. Some, like the “boat shaped” axes of Europe are instantly recognizable as worked objects.
On a smaller scale, making anything out of stone leaves marks. If you grind stone, you get tiny grooves (striations) from the grinding surface all shaping your axe head in different directions. Natural striations will all or almost all go one way (from glaciers) or follow a recognizable pattern (like tumbling in a stream).
Knapped stone is even more obvious, just because of how hard it is to do. Nature makes big, random cleaves through rock, with little chips that break down any edge that’s formed. To actually form a knapped stone edge, you need to make hundreds of precise chips, all going the right direction.
Either of these processes usually leave behind waste and materials. Archaeologists can find grinding stones and stone chips that were part of the ordinary tools or garbage from the process.
Finally, these kinds of tools took a huge amount of effort and craftsmanship to make. They were extremely valuable, and people cared for them. If archaeologists find a suspected artefact in a safe place, or buried with someone or something important, it gives a lot of information about its value and purpose.
The age of the soil at the site it was buried in can be found by carbon dating, similar methods can be used to confirm the age at which the rock became chipped as chemical changes may occur at the surface.
There is the science as explained above, but there is also the art. An archaeologist or palaeontologist walking with you will spot stuff lying around that you would never recognise in a million years. Birders, game guides and so on have an eye trained for detail we ordinary mortals do not pick up on.
In short, we experimented in modern times with stones that would have been readily available to pre-history humans and made shapes in the form of axes and other tools. Using that as a template, we can tell what are tool-marks and what is natural breakage.
This is a popular research topic, we examine tool marks from ancient human civilizations with recorded history because things like the pyramids seem…improbable, for the time and place. By studying the marks left by the tools used in construction, we can figure out the process they used to make things that are still around today. Using what they have learned, we can examine prehistory artifacts and get a good idea of how they were chipped into shape.
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