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Oldowan

American

[ohl-duh-wuhn, awl-] / ˈoʊl də wən, ˈɔl- /

adjective

Archaeology.

of or designating a Lower and Middle Pleistocene industrial complex of eastern Africa, characterized by assemblages of stone tools about two million years old that are the oldest well-documented artifacts yet known.

Oldowan Scientific

/ ōl′də-wən,ôl′- /

Relating to the earliest recognized stage of Paleolithic tool culture, dating from around 2.5 to 1.5 million years ago and characterized by crude cores of quartz or basalt from which flakes were removed with blows from a hammerstone. Both the flaked cores and the flakes themselves were probably used as tools for such tasks as chopping, cutting, and scraping. Oldowan tools are associated with early Homo habilis sites at Olduvai Gorge, in Tanzania, and other East African locations; they may also have been made by late australopithecines. Oldowan tools show little change during the million years they were in use, and were gradually replaced by the Acheulian tools associated with Homo erectus.

Etymology

Origin of Oldowan

1930–35; Oldow ( ay ) ( German spelling of Olduvai ) + -an

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

Oldowan

At the Namorotukunan Site, an international team of researchers uncovered one of the earliest and most enduring records of Oldowan stone toolmaking, dating between roughly 2.75 and 2.44 million years ago.

From Science Daily ● Nov. 4, 2025

Far thinner and sharper than the Oldowan tools, hand-axes were even better at the cutting, scraping, and chopping tasks for which they were designed.

From Textbooks ● Apr. 19, 2023

That difference shows up when the collection of macaque tools and flakes are compared with tools from Lomekwian or Oldowan sites.

From Scientific American ● Mar. 10, 2023

They found the macaque’s flakes were smaller and thicker than their Oldowan counterparts, yet they “fall within the range of variation” of early humanmade flakes, they write.

From Science Magazine ● Mar. 9, 2023

Scientists had previously thought that Oldowan tools, a kind of simple stone implement, were only used by ancestors of Homo Sapiens, a grouping that includes our species and our closest relatives.

From BBC ● Feb. 10, 2023

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023