The Lower Paleolithic (or Lower Palaeolithic) is the earliest subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. It spans the time from around 2.5 million years ago when the first evidence of craft and use of stone tools by hominids appears in the current archaeological record, until around 100,000 years ago 'when important evolutionary and technological changes (behavioral modernity) ushered in the Middle Paleolithic. '

Early species

Homo habilis remains, such as those from Olduvai Gorge, are much more recognisable as humans. Stone-tool use was developed by these people around 2.5 million years ago before they were replaced by Homo erectus about 1.5 million years ago. Members of Homo habilis used Olduwan tools and had learned to control fire to support the hunter-gatherer method of subsistence.

Southeast Asia

Archaeologists have found stone tools in Malaysia which have been dated to be 1.83 million years old.

Europe

The Olduwan tool-making culture moved into Europe from Africa, where it had originated. In the north the Olduwan tradition (known in Europe as Abbevillian) split into two parallel traditions, the Clactonian, a flake tradition, and the Acheulean, a hand-axe tradition. The Levallois technique for knapping flint developed during this time.

The carrier species from Africa to Europe undoubtedly was Homo erectus. This type of human is more clearly linked to the flake tradition, which spread across southern Europe through the Balkans to appear relatively densely in southeast Asia. Many Mousterian finds in the Middle Paleolithic have been knapped using a Levallois technique, suggesting that Neanderthals evolved from Homo erectus (but, perhaps, Homo heidelbergensis (see below)).

Also in Europe appeared a type of human intermediate between Homo erectus and Homo sapiens, typified by such fossils as those found at Swanscombe, Steinheim, Tautavel, and Vertesszollos (Homo palaeohungaricus). Although it is unwise, given the current state of knowledge, to assume an exclusive association of any type of human with any specific type of tool, the intermediates seem responsible for the hand-axe tradition. Such an association does not imply that they necessarily evolved in Europe. The intermediate may have been Homo heidelbergensis, held responsible for the manufacture of improved Mode 2 Acheulean tool types, in Africa, after 600,000 years BP.

Flakes and axes coexisted in Europe, sometimes at the same site. The axe tradition, however, spread to a different range in the east. It appears in Arabia and India, but more importantly, it does not appear in southeast Asia.

At the site of Monte Poggiolo, near Forlì, in Italy, thousands of stone handaxes have been found that date from 800,000 years ago.