These stone tools generally consisted of sharp flakes battered off a stone core, but early hominids also did more sophisticated flaking and retouching to sharpen and straighten their blades.
Its most far-reaching implications are still unknown but the tools have the potential to ease fuel shortages and ecological threats that are now in such sharp focus.
These early tools closely resembled the knives we use today, consisting of a piece of metal that was sharp on one end--the blade--and dull on the other--the tang.