Fertile Crescent: Europe: Africa: Siberia: The Oldowan (or Mode I) was a widespread stone tool archaeological industry (style) in prehistory.

[4][5] However, more recent classifications of Oldowan assemblages have been made that focus primarily on manufacture due to the problematic nature of assuming use from stone artefacts.

Early Homo erectus appears to inherit Oldowan technology and refines it into the Acheulean industry beginning 1.7 million years ago.

[9] The oldest known Oldowan tools have been found at Nyayanga on the Homa Peninsula in Kenya and are dated to ~2.9 million years ago (Ma).

[11] The use of tools by apes including chimpanzees[12] and orangutans[13] can be used to argue in favour of tool-use as an ancestral feature of the hominin family.

By 1.8 Ma early Homo was present in Europe, as shown by the discovery of fossil remains and Oldowan tools in Dmanisi, Georgia.

The discovery of stone tools that predate the Oldowan, dated to as early as 3.3 Ma, at the Lomekwi site in Kenya, was announced in 2015.

[24] There are articles that address how some Oldowan tools may have been found as stones with naturally occurring shapes that dictate their ideal use, or formed as such.

Complaints that artifacts could not be distinguished from naturally fractured stone have helped spark careful studies of Oldowan techniques.

The label Abbevillian prevailed until the Leakey family discovered older (yet similar) artifacts at Olduvai Gorge and promoted the African origin of man.

[29] This leads to current anthropological thinking in which Oldowan tools were made by late Australopithecus and early Homo.

[30] There is presently no evidence to show that Oldowan tools were the sole creation of members of the Homo line or that the ability to produce them was a special characteristic of only our ancestors.

[31] Findings from fossil evidence and experimental replication of stone-tool users and manufacturers suggest the presence of physical characteristics of hand morphology for precise stone tool making.

[clarification needed] In the mid-1970s, Glynn Isaac touched off a debate by proposing that human ancestors of this period had a "place of origin" and that they foraged outward from this home base, returning with high-quality food to share and to be processed.

Over the course of the last 30 years, a variety of competing theories about how foraging occurred have been proposed, each one implying certain kinds of social strategy.

Lewis Binford first noticed that the bones at Olduvai contained a disproportionately high incidence of extremities, which are low in food substance.

[33] Recent excavations have yielded tools in association with cut-marked bones, indicating that Oldowan were used in meat-processing or -acquiring activities.

[37] and in 2015 excavations led to the discovery of the earliest Oldowan stone tool technology in association with Paranthropus fossils and butchered hippo remains from Nyayanga.

[10] The numerous Koobi Fora sites on the east side of Lake Turkana are now part of Sibiloi National Park.

[40] A common theme among sites in West Turkana is the high percentage of small flake tools gathered in the assemblages.

[40] Acheulian stone tools have been known about at Kilombe Main site in the central rift of Kenya since the 1970s with excavations by John Gowlett for his PhD.

These findings were cited as being from the location of the Vaal River, at Vereeniging, and Breuil noted the distinct absence of a significant number of cores, suggesting a "portable culture".

At the time, this was considered very significant, as portability supported the conclusion that the Oldowan tool-makers were capable of planning for future needs, by creating the tools in a location which was distant from their use.

Oldowan is found in Member 1 Lower Bank at 2.2-1.8 Ma in association with Paranthropus robustus and a single fossil attributed to Homo .

The archaeological layer in which the human remains, hundreds of Oldowan stone tools, and numerous animal bones were unearthed is dated approximately 1.83-1.6 Ma.

[citation needed] Ainikab-1 [ru] and Muhkay-2[51] (North Caucasus, Daghestan) are the extraordinary sites in relation to date and the culture.

Geological and geomorphological data, palynological studies and paleomagnetic testing unequivocally point to Early Pleistocene (Eopleistocene), indicating the age of the sites as being within the range of 1.8 – 1.2 Ma.

In the Czech Republic tools have been found in ancient lake deposits at Przeletice and a cave site at Stranska Skala, dated no later than 500 ka.

[53] The presence of numerous fish and beaver fossils near the stone tools indicate the existence of a body of water at the site.

The predominant theory that early hominins traveled along the Mediterranean, through what is now Israel, into Europe has been challenged, as the presence of these Oldowan tools indicate that an alternate route may have been taken.