What each country gave the world

Kenya · c. 3.3 million years ago

Stone cores, flakes and anvils made 3.3 million years ago at Lomekwi 3 in West Turkana. They are the oldest known stone tools and predate the genus Homo.

Ethiopia · c. 2.6 million years ago

Sharp-edged stone flakes and cores from Gona in Ethiopia's Awash Basin, dated to about 2.6 million years ago, were the first abundant, securely dated record of deliberate stone toolmaking.

Tanzania · c. 2.6 million years ago; identified 1930s

The earliest widely accepted stone tool tradition, defined and named from tools excavated at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania.

Kenya · c. 1.76 million years ago

Large, deliberately shaped stone hand axes about 1.76 million years old from Kokiselei in West Turkana. They are among the earliest known tools of the Acheulean tradition.

Zambia · c. 476,000 years ago

Two logs joined by a cut notch, found at Kalambo Falls and dated to at least 476,000 years ago. It is the oldest known evidence of wood being shaped and fitted together to build a structure.

Zambia · c. 400,000 to 266,000 years ago

At Twin Rivers in central Zambia, early humans collected iron-rich minerals and ground them into colored powder between about 266,000 and more than 400,000 years ago. It is among the oldest evidence of systematic pigment use.

Morocco · c. 142,000 years ago

Perforated sea snail shells worn as ornaments at Bizmoune Cave in western Morocco at least 142,000 years ago. They are the oldest shell beads yet recovered and the earliest known evidence of this form of human signaling.

Morocco · c. 120,000 to 90,000 years ago

Shaped bone tools from Contrebandiers Cave on Morocco's Atlantic coast, 120,000 to 90,000 years old, used to work leather and fur. With skinned carnivore bones, they are the earliest archaeological evidence pointing to clothing.

Mozambique · c. 103,000 BCE

Stone grinders and scrapers from a cave near Lake Niassa carry starch from wild sorghum, the earliest direct evidence of people processing cereal grains, about 105,000 years ago.

South Africa · c. 100,000 years ago

A 100,000-year-old workshop at Blombos Cave where people ground ochre, mixed it with bone, charcoal and liquid, and stored the compound in abalone shells. It is early evidence of planned mixing and of containers.

Democratic Republic of the Congo · c. 88,000 BCE

Barbed harpoon points carved from bone about 90,000 years ago on the Semliki River, among the earliest known specialized fishing tools.

Slovenia · c. 58,000 BCE

A pierced cave bear thighbone from a cave near Cerkno, dated to 50,000 to 60,000 years ago and presented by the National Museum of Slovenia as a Neanderthal flute, the oldest known musical instrument.

El Salvador · Before the 16th century

A method of drawing aromatic resin from Myroxylon trees by wounding and scorching the bark and soaking it up in cloths, practiced on El Salvador's Balsam Coast.

Philippines · By the 16th century

Baybayin is the pre-Spanish script of the Tagalogs, a system in which each character stands for a consonant with a vowel. It was widely used on Luzon in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Italy · 1501

A slanted, cursive printing type modeled on handwriting. First cut in Venice in 1501, it remains a standard part of typography.

Poland · c. 1508 to 1543

A mathematical model of the heavens that places the Sun, not Earth, at the center of planetary motion. It opened the Scientific Revolution.

Romania · 1529 to 1569

A 16th-century treatise kept in Sibiu that describes multistage rockets, delta-shaped fins and bell-shaped nozzles, about a century before the description once thought the first.

Yemen · 16th century (settlement older)

A walled city of sun-dried mud-brick tower houses up to seven or more stories on a grid plan, one of the oldest examples of urban planning based on vertical construction.

Portugal · 1542

A system of concentric scales that let an astrolabe or quadrant be read to fractions of a degree. Pedro Nunes devised it in 1542, and it led to the vernier scale.

Portugal · c. 1550

The curve a ship follows when it holds one compass bearing, which spirals toward the pole instead of tracing a great circle. Pedro Nunes identified it, and it became the basis of the Mercator chart.

Italy · 16th century

A four-stringed bowed instrument whose standard form was set by makers in Cremona in the 16th century. The Cremonese design is still the model for the violin family.

Mexico · 1554

A method of extracting silver from ore with mercury, first used at scale at Pachuca in 1554. It replaced smelting as the main silver process in Spanish America.

Mozambique · By 1560

A tuned wooden xylophone with gourd resonators made by the Chopi of Inhambane province and played in orchestras of five to thirty instruments.

The Netherlands · 1594

A windmill that drives saw blades up and down through a crankshaft, built by Cornelis Corneliszoon of Uitgeest in 1594. It made sawing logs into planks about thirty times faster.

Rwanda · Traditional; undated

The agaseke is a tightly coiled Rwandan basket with a tall conical lid, woven by women from natural fibers. Long used to store and carry food and gifts, it became a national emblem and an export craft after 1994.

Kyrgyzstan · Traditional, date unknown

A tall white felt hat for Kyrgyz men, sewn from four felt panels and embroidered. UNESCO lists the craft of making it as intangible heritage.

Morocco · Traditional, date unknown

The method developed by Amazigh women of southwest Morocco for obtaining oil from the kernels of the argan tree by cracking, roasting, grinding and kneading. It supplies a food and cosmetic oil now sold worldwide.

Uzbekistan · traditional; flourished 19th century

Resist-dyed warp ikat cloth, silk atlas and silk-cotton adras, whose threads are bound and dyed before weaving to give blurred vivid patterns. Margilan in the Fergana Valley is its historic center.

Canada · Before European contact

A light boat of birch bark over a cedar frame, built by Indigenous peoples of the Eastern Woodlands. It was the main craft of inland travel and of the fur trade in Canada.

Mali · Traditional, date unknown

A handmade Malian cotton cloth dyed with fermented, iron-rich mud. The technique became a symbol of Malian identity and a worldwide export.

Peru · Colonial era to 19th century

A wooden box drum the player sits on and slaps with the hands. Enslaved Africans on the coast of Peru made it from crates when their drums were banned, and it later spread worldwide through flamenco.

Uruguay · 18th to 19th century

A set of three barrel-shaped wooden drums, the chico, repique and piano, played together while walking in street processions. They were created by people of African descent in Montevideo.

Tajikistan · traditional, date unknown

A Tajik needlework tradition, centered on the Khatlon region around Kulob, that stitches bright symbolic motifs of nature and cosmos onto cotton or silk dresses, curtains and household textiles.

Zambia · Precolonial; described in 1939

Chitemene is a shifting cultivation system of the Bemba of northern Zambia in which branches cut from a wide area are burned on a small plot. The ash makes acidic woodland soil fit for finger millet and other crops.

Comoros · Early 20th century to present

Steam and hydro distillation of ylang-ylang flowers into graded essential oil for perfumery. The Comoros produces around 70 percent of the world supply, making the craft a national symbol.

Chad · Traditional; undated

Dihé is the traditional method of the Kanembu women of Lake Chad for skimming wild spirulina from brackish pools and drying it on sand into cakes. It is one of the few long-standing human uses of this protein-rich blue-green alga as food.