The following readings are taken from Making Silent Stones Speak: Human Evolution and the Dawn of Technology by Kathy D. Schick and Nicholas Toth (1993). This reading should provide you with some sense of what Archaeologists are learning about not only the use of "simple" stone tools but also about the makers and users of those tools.
(Pages 166-170)
HOW TO CARVE AN ELEPHANT
....A recurrent pattern at some of the world's oldest archaeological sites is the presence of carcasses of "megafauna" (elephants, hippopotamuses) along with simple stone artifacts. For instance, two archaeological sites from Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania have yielded elephant skeletons (an Elephas recki in Bed I and a Deinotherium, an extinct form with downward curving, digging tusks, in lower Bed II). At each of these sites, dated between 1.7 and 1.5 million years ago, an array of Oldowan artifacts was found. At Koobi Fora in northern Kenya as well, parts of a hippopotamus carcass dating to 1.9 million years ago were found with simple stone tools.
Two major questions have emanated from such evidence. First of all, is there a causal relationship between these giant animal bones and these crude stone artifacts, or are these coincidental associations, places where humans discarded artifacts and these large mammals died independently, perhaps near the edge of a drinking spot along a water course or under the cool shade of a stand of trees? Second, if there could be cause or meaning connecting these stone artifacts and these pachyderms, what possible role could the stones have played? How could the world's simplest stone tools be used to process meat from animals weighing many thousands of pounds, with skins that can be over an inch thick?
We have had two opportunities to put stone artifacts to the ultimate test-to butcher elephants (which had died of natural causes). Somewhat daunted, we approached our task equipped with simple lava and flint flakes and cores, which looked more and more paltry as we got closer to the impressive body. Initially, the sight of a twelve-thousand-pound animal carcass the size of a Winnebago can be quite intimidating-where do you start? We had never seen a field manual on pachyderm butchery, and they aren't like smaller animals: you cannot move the body around (for instance, flip it over to get a better vantage)without heavy power machinery. You have to play the carcass where it lies. In fact, once the upper side has been filleted, most of the lower half remains untouched and almost inaccessible unless you dismantle the skeleton of the animal, a positively arduous task. Butchering the world's largest terrestrial mammal with the world's simplest flaked stone technology: using a stone flake, Kathy Schick and Ray Dezzani cut through the one-inch-thick hide of an African elephant that died of natural causes. Most scavengers cannot or will not attack a fresh elephant carcass, so early Stone Age hominids might have moved into an "open niche" through the exploitation of such resources. To get a sense of the task required, imagine cutting through a car tire with a razor blade.
Despite the success of our tools in dozens of other butcheries, we were not really sure they were up to this task. We were amazed, however, as a small lava flake sliced through the steel gray skin, about one inch thick, exposing enormous quantities of rich, red elephant meat inside. After breaching this critical barrier, removing flesh proved to be reasonably simple, although the enormous bones and muscles of these animals have very tough, thick tendons and ligaments, another challenge met successfully by our stone tools.
Throughout these and many other butcheries, our tools soon became strewn around the carcass, as we used one for slitting here, another for filleting over there, and another for hacking at a tough muscle attachment. It was always simple enough to grab another tool or knock another flake off a nearby core. It was easy to see how artifacts would become lost and engulfed in the task, to be left behind with any animal remains ultimately abandoned.
Although we feel that the butchery of such pachyderms was probably a rare event in the early Stone Age, and probably resulted from scavenging rather than hunting, such experiments demonstrate that the simplest stone technologies can be used to process even the largest terrestrial mammals. Cut marks from stone tools have been found on some Elephas bones at Olduvai, which indicate that stone tools had some causal relationship with the carcass. Since modern scavengers normally do not eat a dead elephant until it has decomposed for several days, such carcasses may have provided occasional bonanzas for early Stone Age hominids, at least until chased away by larger scavenging social carnivores.
Simple Flakes, Powerful Tools
In many considerations of Oldowan tools, the flake has been treated simply as waste, something removed in order to make the presumed core tool. But our experiments in butchery drive home an important realization: with a simple flake a hominid could open up a whole world of possibilities.
BONE BREAKING
In our own culture, consumption of significant amounts of animal fats has become anathema to most people, due to strong association with the growing problems of obesity, cholesterol buildup and heart disease, and various cancers. But this is not the case among modern hunter-gatherers, nor was it likely the case in our prehistoric past.
In The Paleolithic Prescription, authors Eaton, Shostak, and Konner contrast our genetic adaptation to a hunter-gatherer diet in our Paleolithic past with the gross excesses, abuses, and strange new aspects of life, diet, and health in modern society. Among modern African hunter-gatherers, animal fats are considered a highly prized food. Their typical diet is basically high in complex carbohydrates, fiber, moderate in proteins, but low in fat (wild game meat contains about one-seventh the total fat of supermarket beef and several times more polyunsaturated fat). In fact, fat is in fairly short supply among those living off the land. The vital addition to the diet of bone marrow, which is predominantly fat, can help balance the protein-to-fat ratio ( a minimum fat intake must be maintained in order to process protein properly) and serve as a great source of energy as well.
It is likely that finding marrow through scavenging or hunting was important to our hominid ancestors at this time....