Object 2: Olduvai stone chopping tool (made 1.8 million years ago) found in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, East Africa

Dead meat
Rank
On the vast Savannah.
Leopard's leftovers,
Spilt gore:
Food for a forager,
Food for the brain,
White ribs of marrow wilting in the bright African sun
Two million years ago.

Stone on the ground,
Stone in the hand,
Stone in the brain of Savannah man;
Curious eyes examining a fist of stone,
Turning it around,
Feeling its weight,
Seeing the possibilities within...

And then the slap of stone on stone:
Two hands, two stones, two eyes
Click an echo of labour at the cliffs of the great Olduvai Gorge...
Two million years ago.

And death is always in the air,
Death is always an instant away:
Hunger gnawing at bones,
The snarl in the long grass, the deep throaty grunt in the dead of night,
Claws flexing in anticipation of a kill.

But the stone is growing an edge as his eyes narrow -
Four strikes, five, turn it around - another chip sharpens a line,
It will do the job, but a spark of thought chips another possibility -
Seven, eight strikes and there in his hand is a tool.

While the leopard and lion sleep in the heat of the day,
Savannah man is kneeling over the torn carcase of their abandoned meal.
Stone cuts flesh from bones; stone severs sinews and butchers meat,
Stone shatters a bloody femur and reveals the nourishing marrow within -
Greedy mouths suck at the sticky substance of life:
Lick the liquid brain food that their tool has revealed,
Devours the rich protein that feeds the mind,
That gives them the imagination to see beyond instinct,
That grows the thought in the rich loam of the cerebellum,
To make tools to give them the edge
In the deep scar of earth one thousand miles long,
Baking in the blaze of an African sun
Two million years ago.

And we are all Africans,
Bonded in the struggle to live,
Bred in the fierce ritual of survival,
Savannah people with the marrow of invention rich in our bones:
Our ancestral DNA, a bequest from someone with a stone in his hand,
Beginning a journey that would lead us... where?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/ykHw5-oqQEGFnvat1gavxA