technology. Grasping the proximal surface, the hominid brought the distal surface down hard on an object he wished to detach or shatter, such as a bone or tuber. Experiments with modern humans found that knapping-naive participants can invent all four Oldowan knapping techniques, and that the experiment participants used the resulting Oldowan tools to access a money-baited box.

The earliest known Oldowan tools have been found at Nyayanga on the Homa Peninsula in Kenya and are dated to ~2.9 million years ago (Ma), as well as from the Gona