Science Festival: ‘Let’s get to grips with prehistoric tools’

A workshop was organised as part of the Science Festival for primary school pupils by David Hérisson (CNRS, UMR 7041 ArScAn, AnTET team) and Roxane Rocca (University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, UMR 8068 TEMPS).

Prehistory is a very long and ancient period, dating back more than 3 million years! To try to understand how humans lived in the Palaeolithic era, prehistorians (researchers studying prehistory) often only have stone tools at their disposal. These tools have been preserved in archaeological sites after being made and used. When we try to make copies of these tools and use them, we realise that they were not so different from our current tools after all! In this workshop, we presented some of these prehistoric tools. We used copies made from different materials to try to reproduce some of the actions and activities that humans may have carried out in the past.