Man the toolmaker

The Long News: stories that might still matter fifty, or a hundred, or ten thousand years from now.

It used to be thought that what defined us as human is the fact that we make tools. But in the past few decades, toolmaking has also been observed in chimpanzees, dolphins, elephants, otters, octopuses, and several kinds of birds. Still, no other species manipulates matter as relentlessly as humans do. And over the long term, our tools are getting smaller and more sophisticated as we learn...