Eolith

An eolith (from Greek "eos", dawn, and "lithos", stone) is a flint nodule that appears to have been crudely knapped.

Further discoveries of eoliths in the early 20th century – in the Red Crag Formation and Norwich Crag Formation of East Anglia by J. Reid Moir and E. Ray Lankester and in continental Europe by Aimé Louis Rutot and H. Klaatsch – were taken to be evidence of human habitation of those areas before the oldest known fossils.

The English finds helped to secure acceptance of the hoax remains of Piltdown Man.

Because eoliths were so crude, concern began to be raised that they were indistinguishable from the natural processes of erosion.

Marcellin Boule, a French archaeologist, published an argument against the artifactual status of eoliths in 1905,[1] and Samuel Hazzledine Warren provided confirmation of Boule's view after carrying out experiments on flints.