For hundreds of thousands of years, humans relied on simple tools such as hand axes and wooden spears. The next big breakthrough came when they learned to make more complex and effective tools and weapons, enabling them to hunt a wider range of prey species. Finally, having adapted to many different environments, humans began to reverse the process, adapting their environments to suit themselves.
Thrusting spears made entirely of wood had probably been in use since the start of hunting (see here ). These required the hunters to come into close proximity with their prey, which in the case of larger animals could be dangerous. Projectile weapons, those that could be thrown from a distance, lowered the risk to the hunter, and further broadened the range of prey species. A thrown spear also has a higher impact, especially if it has a heavier stone tip attached to its wooden shaft.
Stone points manufactured for spears appear in South Africa about 500,000 years ago, in sites occupied by the common ancestor of Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, Homo heidelbergensis . These may have been thrusting spears. It had been thought that only Homo sapiens , modern humans, were intelligent enough to devise such weapons, but analysis of pointed artefacts made from obsidian (volcanic glass) found in Ethiopia and dating from nearly 280,000 years ago suggests that these were the tips of projectile spears, again the work of Homo heidelbergensis .
It was not until the emergence of modern humans in Africa around 200,000 years ago that our ancestors began to adopt a broader subsistence strategy. The great range of tools they left behind suggests that they hunted a wider size range of animals than earlier humans. They also fished. The way such tools were manufactured grew increasingly complex: stone knives made in Europe around 30,000 years ago involved nine different stages and a total of 250 blows to produce. By this time modern humans were making many tools, such as fish hooks and barbed harpoons, out of bone. They also began to make nets, not only for fishing but also to trap small game animals. Bone sewing needles appear upwards of 30,000 years ago. The oldest known bows come from Denmark around 11,000 years ago, but some stone weapon tips of the Magdalenian period, around 20,000 years ago, are so small and light that they may have been made for arrows.
Meat was an important part of the diet, but there was still a reliance on collecting edible vegetable matter such as roots, leaves, nuts and berries, as well as items such as eggs. Modern humans living on coasts also started to exploit shellfish. Contemporary hunter-gatherers allocate more than half of the time spent acquiring food to hunting, over a quarter to foraging, and the rest to processing the food. Until the arrival of agriculture, food processing would have been confined to simpler methods such as grinding, pounding, scraping, roasting and baking. During the last ice age (see here ), our ancestors also learned how to store vegetable foods for consumption through the harsh winters.
Modifying the environment
Even before the beginning of agriculture as we know it, humans had begun to modify their environment to increase its food yield. In temperate regions they burned down woodlands to encourage the growth of grasslands, which could support larger herds of prey animals. In tropical regions, people practised ‘forest gardening’, protecting the most valuable food species and weeding out the inedible ones.