Why Make a Tool From Bone Instead of Stone? Different Material, Different Job
By the BrainSnail editorial team. How these articles are written and checked, and how to tell us when one is wrong.
Bone, antler and ivory were worked into tools across the whole of human prehistory, and they do things stone cannot. Recognising a worked bone from a broken one is the first problem.
What the material offers
Bone and antler differ from stone in ways that suit particular jobs. They are tough rather than brittle, so they bend and absorb impact rather than shattering, which makes them suitable for anything that must flex or take repeated shock. They can be shaped by grinding, scraping and polishing into smooth forms with fine points, which stone cannot achieve without enormous effort. They can be split lengthwise into strips and worked into elongated objects. Antler is tougher than bone and was preferred for anything struck. None of them holds a cutting edge as stone does, so they complement rather than replace it, and assemblages typically contain both with each doing what it does best.
What was made from them
The range of objects is wide and several have no stone equivalent:
- •Needles with drilled eyes, which made tailored sewn clothing possible
- •Awls and piercers for working hide
- •Harpoons and points with barbs, cut into the material in ways stone does not permit
- •Spear throwers, which extend the arm and increase velocity substantially
- •Pressure flakers of antler, used to work stone, so one material shaped the other
- •Musical instruments including flutes with finger holes
- •Beads, pins, fasteners and figurines
Telling worked from broken
Distinguishing a deliberately shaped bone from one broken by an animal, by trampling or by sediment is a real methodological problem and it has produced several long disputes. Cut marks from a stone tool have a characteristic V-shaped cross section under a microscope and differ from carnivore tooth marks, which are broader and rounded. Grinding and polishing leave directional striations. Drilled holes have particular profiles depending on the tool used. Deliberate breakage produces characteristic fracture patterns that differ from those caused by weight or by weathering. Experimental replication, breaking and working bone in known ways and comparing the results, is the standard method for establishing what a given trace means, and it has overturned several claimed early bone tool industries.
Why so much of it is missing
Organic tools survive far worse than stone, and the resulting gap distorts the whole picture of prehistoric technology. Bone and antler decay in acid soils and in anything wet and warm, so entire regions and periods yield stone tools and nothing else, which is not evidence that nothing else was used. Wood survives even worse, and the few waterlogged sites that have preserved wooden spears, digging sticks and hafts show a sophistication that was invisible beforehand, with a set of wooden throwing spears from a German site dated to around three hundred thousand years. Basketry, cordage, hide and adhesive survive almost never. The reasonable inference is that stone tools are a small and durable fraction of what people actually made, and that the record systematically favours one material.
The oldest ones
The record extends further back than the familiar late Palaeolithic examples. Bones with wear patterns interpreted as digging tools have been reported from African sites over a million years old, with the interpretation resting on experimental comparison. Deliberately shaped bone points appear in African sites well before they do in Europe. The elaborate needle and harpoon technologies of the European late Palaeolithic represent a substantial expansion rather than an origin. Neanderthal sites have produced specialised tools of a type still used by leather workers, made from rib bone and used to smooth hide, which is a specific and skilled application. And the flutes from central European caves, dated to over forty thousand years, are among the oldest musical instruments known and required considerable precision to make.
The takeaway
Bone and antler are tough rather than brittle and can be ground to fine points, which suits needles, barbed points and anything that must flex, while stone holds edges they cannot. Distinguishing deliberate working from natural breakage rests on microscopic traces and on experimental replication. Eyed needles made tailored clothing possible and shaped bone points appear in Africa long before Europe.