For as long as humans have walked the earth, we’ve devised ways of making life easier for ourselves. Some tools remain unchanged throughout the ages—“no need to reinvent the wheel,” after all—while others are impossibly novel, becoming obsolete before they’re adopted into mass existence. The use of tools is “arguably the very thing that makes us human. Our ability to fashion the objects around us—be they bone, stone, wood, or flint—into the implements that first aided us in our attempts to hunt, eat, cook, make, and build, mark[s] a pivotal point in our evolution,” writes Hole & Corner editor Mark Hopper, in his new book, The Story of Tools (Rizzoli). “Once prehistoric man learnt to shape the world around him to his own needs, it marked our difference from all other animals.”