Once upon a Hobbit - The Fossil Chronicles - page 80

But the significance of these tools must be interpreted in light of the
fact that great apes use tools. Chimps from the Ivory Coast, in Africa,
for example, famously use rocks to crack open nuts. Another group of
chimpanzees, from Tanzania, is well known for making “fishing” poles
by trimming blades of grass before poking them into termite hills to
catch snacks. 21 Despite their impressive use of these and other tools,
no wild apes have been seen deliberately modifying rocks into tools.
Remarkably, hominins were making stone tools by at least 2.6 million
years ago, even though the sizes of their brains were within the range for
modern apes. Presumably, it took more intelligence than a chimpanzee
has to shape rocks into tools, although different hominins did so in dif-
ferent ways. For this reason, the stone tools on Flores are significant for
assessing intelligence in Homo floresiensis.
Mark Moore, of the University of New England, in Australia, directed
an extensive analysis of artifacts from different strata that spanned the
last 95,000 years at Liang Bua . 22 One of his team's goals was to recon-
struct exactly how Homo floresiensis produced (knapped) a large variety of
stone tools, including flakes that were retouched on one or more edges,
blades, and perforating tools (figure 10). They also investigated the dif-
ferent kinds of rocks that were used to make tools, their sources, and
whether hobbits had produced the tools inside or outside the cave. In
addition, they wanted to learn whether the kinds of tools at Liang Bua
and the methods for producing them changed over time.
To knap a stone tool requires good hand-eye coordination and knowl-
edge about how particular kinds of rocks fracture when struck in dif-
ferent ways. The essence of knapping consists in striking rocks with
other stones or with bones until they fracture into two or more parts.
In this manner, the original rock is reduced to smaller useful pieces (or
flakes), which may be further modified into other tools by delivering a
series of additional blows using a variety of methods. Skilled knappers
know exactly how to adjust the intensity of strikes delivered to stone
tools in order to change their contours or strengthen their edges. Some