The Beginnings of Technology

The beginnings of technology can be traced to what is known as Paleolithic or old stone age, when the earliest men made tools of flint, wood and bone, such as axes, knives, needles, spears and bows. The Paleolithic age was succeeded, about 5000 B.C., by the Neolithic or new stone age, in which men still used mainly store-for their tools, but turned from hunting to agriculture. Neolithic man indented textiles to clothe himself, instead of skins, and produced the first primitive machines for spinning thread and weaving cloth. Some time in the millennium before 3000 В. C, the smelling and easting o1 metals were discovered. By heating certain types of stone with charcoal, copper was produced and later it was found that the addition of a small quantity of tin to copper gave rise to a harder metal, bronze.