How Human Craft Began

Nautilus

“This issue’s cover story has a simple thesis: Human craft, the building of things by hand, began with the wooden stick. This simplest and earliest act of construction changed the course of human evolution, the first in a succession of tools that would go on to reshape our habitats, diets, and bodies. The story’s author, archaeologist Alexander Langlands, paints a picture of an engineering revolution that is laughably simple, profound in its implications—and, crucially, slow.”