The production of the earliest stone tools has now been bushed back to 2.6 million years ago, before the homo genus even evolved, and half way back to our split from chimpanzees! (although this split is a very vague date). Chimps have also recently been shown to use spears to hunt other mammals.
The vast amount of time between then, and 50K BCE when we started doing all the other interesting human things we are so proud of, is staggering – what were we doing for two and a half million years?! Probably chilling.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/20/worlds-oldest-stone-tools-kenya_n_7072766.html
(Image source: http://www.jay-matternes.com)
