What is a tool?
A: A tool is an object that can extend an individual's
ability to modify features of the surrounding environment.
Although many animals use simple tools, only human
beings, whose use of stone tools dates back hundreds of millennia, have been
observed doing what?
A: Using tools to make other tools.
Early tools, made of such materials as stone,
bone, and
wood, were used for what?
A: Preparation of
food, hunting, manufacture of weapons, and working of
materials to produce clothing and useful artifacts.
The development of metalworking did what?
A: It made additional types of tools possible.
Harnessing energy sources, such as animal power, wind,
or steam, allowed what?
A: Increasingly complex tools to produce an even larger range of items, with
the Industrial Revolution marking an inflection point in the use of tools.
The introduction of automation allowed tools to operate
with minimal what?
A: Human supervision, further increasing the productivity of human labor.
Anthropologists believe that the use of tools was an
important step in what?
A: The evolution of mankind.
Because tools are used extensively by both humans and
wild chimpanzees, it is widely assumed that the first routine use of tools
took place prior to what?
A: The divergence between the two species.
These early tools, however, were likely made of what?
A: Perishable materials such as sticks or consisted of unmodified stones
that cannot be distinguished from other stones as tools.
Stone artifacts date back to how far?
A: About 2.5 million years ago.
A 2010 study suggests the hominin species
Australopithecus afarensis ate meat by carving animal carcasses with what?
A: Stone implements.
This finding pushes back the earliest known use of
stone tools among hominins to about when?
A: 3.4 million years ago.
Finds of actual tools date back how far?
A: At least 2.6 million years in Ethiopia.
One of the earliest distinguishable stone tool forms is
what?
A: The hand axe.
Tools are the most important items that the ancient
humans used to do what?
A: To accomplish tasks that human bodies could not, such as using a spear or
bow to kill prey, since their teeth were not sharp enough to pierce many
animals' skins.
Based on marks on the bones at archaeological sites, it
is now more evident that pre-humans were doing what?
A: Scavenging off other predators' carcasses rather than killing their own
food.
Mesopotamians have been credited with the
invention of
what?
A: The wheel.
The wheel and axle mechanism first appeared with the
potter's wheel, invented in
Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) during what period?
A: 5th millennium BC.
This led to the invention of what in Mesopotamia during
the early 4th millennium BC.?
A: The wheeled vehicle.
The earliest evidence of pulleys dates back to where?
A: Mesopotamia in the early 2nd millennium BC.
The screw, the last of the simple machines to be
invented, first appeared in Mesopotamia during what period?
A: The Neo-Assyrian period (911-609) BC.
The Assyrian King Sennacherib (704–681 BC) claims to have invented automatic sluices and to have been the first to use water screw pumps, of up to 30 tons weight, which were cast using two-part clay molds rather than by the 'lost wax' process.[22]
The Jerwan Aqueduct (c. 688 BC) is made with stone
arches and lined with what?
A: Waterproof concrete.
The earliest evidence of water wheels and watermills
date back to where?
A: The ancient Near East in the 4th century BC.
This pioneering use of waterpower constituted the first
what?
A: Human-devised motive force not to rely on muscle power (besides the
sail).
Mechanical devices experienced a major expansion in
their use in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome with the systematic employment
of what?
A: New energy sources, especially waterwheels.
Their use expanded through the Dark Ages with the addition of what?
A: Windmills.