Chopping tool

In archaeology a chopping tool is a stone tool. Stone tools are usually dated by determining the age of the find context e.g. by carbon-14 dating and potassium–argon dating. The oldest stone tools are about 3 million years old. Chopping tools mainly occur in the Olduwan (2.9 to 1.6 million years ago). The oldest object in the British Museum is a chopping tool found in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. Usually naturally occurring rather flat pebbles were used to produce a chopping tool. At one end flakes were removed by hard hammer percussion in an alternating manner i.e. from one flat surface and then from the other to produce a sharp edge at the ridge between the two surfaces. The most frequent raw material ('type of rock') is volcanic rock e.g. basalt, but other rocks exhibiting conchoidal fracture were used as well. The use of the chopping tool varied from place to place just like any other archaeological artifact, depending on what the maker of the chopping tool made or ate depended on what the chopping tool was used for. Most commonly the chopping tool was used for food purposes. They could be used for cutting down tree branches to get to fruits or to cut large plants that could be used for food. Anything that requires a knife today could have been replaced with a chopping tool. They were also used to help assist the maker in cutting the meat of the animals. Just like butchers today, skinning and cleaning of all the meat that we eat is needed. The chopping tool helped assist hunters gather the meat, especially from large animals that were hard to carry back to the location they were staying at, and make it edible for them to consume. Another use for the chopping tool...