ABSTRACT
There is a continuous tradition of tool-making and tool-using behaviours back through the early hominids, to Homo habilis of two million years ago (Bradshaw & Rogers, 1993); that taxon, moreover, is known from the pattern of successive flaking in the manufacture of its stone tools to have been dextral like ourselves (Toth, 1985). Indeed, tool using is common among our nearest relatives, the chimpanzees; they also appropriately select and trim branches and twigs (Brewer & McGrew, 1990) for a particular purpose, and even coach their young in the proper deployment of tools (Boesch, 1991). Praxis therefore probably antedates language, though it is probably no evolutionary accident that both functions share closely adjacent structures in the left sides of the human brain.
