What it means: In archaeology, lithics refers to artifacts made of stone. Scientists used to think Homo sapiens was the only human species to make stone tools. But like many oversimplified stories about human evolution, this one turned out to be a bust. Humans in Indonesia were making sharp-edge stone flakes 1.5 million years ago, before our species even existed.
How to use it in a sentence: Lithics preserve well, so scientists base a lot of what we know about ancient civilizations on their stone tools, while artifacts such as textiles or leather rot away.
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