Top 10 Oldest Known Objects Made by Man and
his Ancestors 10. Ice Age “Batons” (Approx. 28,000 years old) Yes, we know what you’re thinking. Something along the lines of: “Gee, these
ice age batons sure look like a certain part of the male anatomy.” So before we go any further, let us just categorically
state that, yes, these batons do indeed look like a bunch of comedy-sized wangs. And there’s a good reason for that. Wanna guess what it is? That’s right, far from being immature, you’ve
hit on what these probably were. You’re looking at an image of a stone age
sex toy. Known euphemistically as ‘batons’, these
proto-Ann Summers toys have been found in a number of Ice Age sites, no doubt leading
to many awkward conversations among archeologists. The oldest of all is from Germany, specifically
a place known as Hohle Fels Cave. Now, pay attention, because you’re gonna
be hearing that name again and again in this article. Hohle Fels contains one of our best-preserved
collections of Ice Age artifacts anywhere in the world. In 2003, it also turned out to contain the
oldest baton yet found. The one you see above dates from around 28,000-30,000
B.C. Just think about that, for a second. This ancient – ahem – toy is older than
Stonehenge, Machu Picchu and yo momma combined. Not that it was all dirty. According to those who found it, the tool
was also used for “knapping flints” (whatever the heck that is). 9. Animal Figurines (30,000-40,000 years old) Sometimes, the world just likes to drop something
incredible in our laps, presumably just for the fun of watching us collectively freak
out. The ancient figurines found at Hohle Fels
(that place again) are one of those somethings. Among the oldest sculptures ever found, they
depict miniture birds, horses’ heads, and half-animal humans in jaw-dropping detail. Did we mention the detail? When they were made public, in late 2003,
archeology expert Dr Anthony Sinclair declared: “They are as good as anything you will see
thousands of years later – from 3-4,000 BC.” Suck it, Ancient Greece. But even these works of genius have nothing
on the oldest figurine we’ve yet found. Discovered in the same cave of wonders as
the figurines was the Venus of Hohle Fels. A tiny carving of a woman, the Venus may also
be the earliest extant work of erotica. The carving has improbably large breasts,
a big backside, and exaggerated genitals. She’s also a lot fatter than we’re guessing
any Ice Age human ever was, unless there’s a prehistoric McDonalds waiting to be found
in Hohle Fels somewhere. This suggests she may have been a fantasy,
an example of Ice Age man’s longing for a well-stacked, fleshy woman. Nice to see some things never change. 8. Neanderthal Cave Art (40,800 years ago) Yeah, Neanderthals aren’t human. Well, get used to it. We’re gonna be leaving homo sapiens for
good in a little while to go gallivanting around the world of Homo erectus and all his
extinct pals. But first, let’s just pause and take a breather,
and admire the view of one of the oldest expressions of abstract art ever found. Discovered in a Spanish cave in 2012, this
image dates back a staggering 40,800 years in time. Imagine the incredible amount of time that
exists between you and Julius Caesar or Jesus Christ. Now times that unimaginable distance by ten. Now double it, and then give up and throw
the whole concept of picturing this away, because you’re never gonna be able to really
grasp just how stupidly long ago this was. Back then, ‘popping out for a bite’ meant
stepping outside and being swallowed by a sabretooth tiger. It was a world so unimaginably different from
ours as to be… well, unimaginable. Yet the not-quite-humans who inhabited this
space still felt moved to do something uniquely human. They created art, using the only things they
had: their hands and some plant pigment. And we think that’s just swell. 7. Ancient Flutes (42,000 years old) The Aurignacian culture is the coolest thing
you’ve probably never heard of. A bunch of early humans who started doing
their thing in the Upper Paleolithic era, the Aurignacians mark the point where art
and music and specialized tools began to emerge. So, yeah, pretty much everything you take
for granted today started here. At one point, scientists thought this period
of intense change started no earlier than 40,000 years ago. Then someone stumbled across a 42,000 year
old bone flute in yet another German cave and the dates had to be revised upwards. If the thought of an ancient flute doesn’t
send a chill down your spine, you may want to quickly double check and make sure you’re
not in traction. These finds mean the earliest European humans
were creating music from almost the moment they arrived on the continent. Just imagine. It’s dark. You’ve just come back from a long day’s
woolly mammoth punching, or whatever the heck Stone Age man used to do. The only light in your cave is from the flickering
of the fire. You sit around, staring into its shifting
flames. And then, slowly, someone pulls out a flute
and starts to play… See what we mean? Magical. This is the dawn of human emotion we’re
witnessing here, and we’ve still got well over a million years of history left to go. 6. Aterian Beads (110,000 years old) Grotte des Pigeons is a cave in Eastern Morocco
that for ages wanted nothing more than for people to forget it had such a stupid name. Then, sometime in the mid-20th Century, some
archeology guys came along and decided, hey, this looks like a pretty good spot to dig. So they dug and they dug and they dug until
suddenly everyone was too busy exclaiming over all the crazy awesomeness in Grotte des
Pigeons to concentrate on its stupid name. There were ashes and tools and carved rocks
and all sorts of treasures. But the biggest treasure of all may have been
the beads. Made of shells with perforated holes, some
still with traces of red ochre on them, the beads were likely the earliest examples of
jewelry we have. The researchers dated them to an impossibly-distant
110,000 years ago, a time when the wheel was a far-off dream, and the concept of agriculture
was like witchcraft. Yet our ancestors were still making jewelry. Even in a world of unrelenting danger, bear
attacks and lifespans of under 30 years, we still just wanted to look good. We can’t tell if that’s shameful or the
coolest thing ever. 5. Bone Awls (200,000-400,000 years old) OK, from here on in, the dates get vague and
the periods of time involved become utterly incomprehensible. If you’re cool with that then stick with
us, because this is also where we’re gonna find the coolest stuff. For this entry, that means bone awls. A feature of the Middle Stone Age (MSA), bone
awls were little sharpened bits of bone, probably used for piercing holes in hide and making
clothes. As such, they show our ancestors moving on
from just wrapping themselves in the skin of a dead zebra to actually creating their
own garments. Like most of the stuff in the MSA, bone awls
were likely invented in Africa and then taken to Europe along with the first early humans. Good job, too, as Europe back then was likely
freezing. Honestly, we complain if we get stuck without
heating for half a day during a mild winter. Imagine having to huddle round a fire in a
cave for warmth AND design your own clothes using only sharpened bits of bone and the
flesh of whatever you’d killed. There are residents of Jersey Shore who live
more-fulfilling lives than that (kidding. No they don’t). 4. Projectile Points (200,000-400,000 years old) This is where the MSA really hit its stride. Before early humans perfected projectile points,
killing an animal meant charging at it with a kamikaze yell, waving an axe above your
head and hoping it didn’t eat you (it frequently did). With the advent of sharpened projectile points,
the equation changed dramatically. Now you didn’t have to get within eating-distance
to kill your dinner. Humanity’s time at the top of the food chain
had survived. Stop and think about this for a second, about
all the stuff we take for granted. Before projectile points were invented, the
only time you got to eat a fast moving animal like a bird was when it dropped dead of kidney
failure right in front of you. Suddenly having spears and arrows allowed
humans to expand their diets. It allowed them to create small stockpiles
of food and defend themselves from a distance. Some have even suggested formulating complicated
hunting plans using these tools helped us develop modern human intelligence. Of course, our ancestors did plenty of hunting
before the invention of spears and arrows. But, still. Their coming was a gamechanger that reorganized
our entire species. 3. Hand Axe (1.76m years old) Long before the Aurignacian came along with
their music and painting and liberal hippy art stuff, the hottest culture in human history
was the Acheulian. Occurring sometime around 1.76 million years
ago, this stone age revolution saw our ancestors discard the simplistic tools they’d been
using up until then, and start crafting complex weapons unlike anything ever seen before. Stones with specially-sharpened ends that
were wielded by hand, these ‘hand axes’ saw early humans able to easily kill other
animals for the first time in history. For a long time, scientists thought the Acheulian
revolution started around 1.4 million years ago, the period a number of hand axes found
in Ethiopia dated from. Then 2011 came along and turned all that on
its head. That was the year that archeologists digging
on the muddy banks of Lake Turkana in Kenya uncovered hand axes dating from 1.76 million
years ago. That’s a difference of 360,000 years; equivalent
to the distance in time between you reading this on your tablet and our ancestors’ creation
of stone projectile points. Those who created and used these hand axes,
by the way, definitely weren’t human. They were probably Homo Erectus, the guys
who decided walking on two legs was the way to go. 2. Oldowan Tools (Around 2.5m years ago) Unlike the hand axes of the Acheulian revolution,
no non-experts today would be able to recognize Oldowan Tools as even being tools. They were pebbles and rocks that had been
crudely chipped to give one serrated edge, likely for cutting, chopping and scraping. We’re talking the absolute most basic of
basic implements, here. This was the dawn of the Paleolithic era,
the point in time when hominids realized you could get more done with implements than you
could with your teeth. It sounds simple to us now, but back then
no-one had ever even thought of it. How could they? They were little more than apes at this point. Despite the mind-blowing chasms of time between
us and the first Oldowan tools, they’ve been found all over the world. At least, all over the world as it would have
been back then, which basically means ‘Africa’. At this point, Europe and Asia were as alien
to these tool makers as planet Weezigg-Cloop is to you (we’re gonna discover it in about
4,000 years. It’s gonna be awesome). Interestingly, some scholars think those using
these tools may have been vegetarian, hence their being content with not developing better
tools for like 700,000 years. Who needs an animal-killing hand axe when
you don’t eat animals? 1. Contents of the Lake Turkana Toolbox (3.3m
years old) And then we have the Lake Turkana Toolbox. To be clear, the Lake Turkana Toolbox shouldn’t
exist. Digging it up and dating it to 3.3m years
ago is like opening Tutankhamun’s Tomb to find a Boeing 747 inside. In fact, scratch that. The distance of time is so vast that it would
be like opening Tutankhamun’s Tomb to find a Sci-fi device that won’t be invented for
another 796,000 years. One that does stuff we in backward old 2017
can’t even imagine. 3.3m years ago is meant to be a time when
no species existed that was capable of making tools. And yet, in 2015, scientists discovered that
this was exactly what the apes hanging around Lake Turkana had been doing. To be sure, they don’t look like tools. They look like sharp rocks. But, like the Oldowan Tools above, the point
is that someone – or something – made them sharp. Whatever that pre-human creature was, it was
starting Earth’s sentient species down a path that would eventually lead to hand axes,
then projectile points, then beads, then art, then music, then sculpture… and so-on right
the way up to the tablets and spacecraft and 3D printers of today. When you look at it like that, you gotta admit
these dull old rocks are secretly kinda cool.
Looks like it was all about the rocks for several million years. Who knew the Flintstones were that accurate?