Kubrick could just as well have substituted the bone with a stone, and in doing so may well have been more accurate in his portrayal of seminal tool adoption. While stones and bones survive in the archaeological record of early prehistory, it’s hard to know, unless there are obvious diagnostic signs of wear or modification, if a bone has been used for adapted purposes. Wooden sticks present an even more challenging situation by virtue of the fact that, unless suspended in the extreme environmental conditions of desiccation or saturation, they decompose and turn to dust. Stones, on the other hand, survive the ravages of time and make it abundantly clear to us when they have been refashioned or altered by the human hand. Thus they provide the earliest evidence for the human use of tools and have come to define the way we understand the development of human societies from around 3 to 4 million years ago until at least the Bronze Age (circa 2500–800 B.C.).