How old is the oldest stone spear/knife? I seem to remember some TLC show that indicated it predated homo sapiens by a couple million years.
The way I see it, toolmaking defines mankind, to give pre-sapiens a couple million years seems generous. Unless the special theorized that non-hominids were making stone tools.
The use and manufacture of stone implements is what defines the transition of a population of Australopithines into Homo habilis about 2.5 million years ago. Earlier hominids used tools as they found them, but it took our clan to actually make specialized tools.
H. habilis was around a good two million years before H. sap.
Of course, the stone choppers made by habilis were, well, primitive compared to the hand axes made by erectus. IIRC, nothing as delicate or finely worked as a knife blade or spear point was produced until archaic Homo sapiens.
So, a better answer is that stone tools predated Homo sapiens by a long shot, but our species was the first to make what you may think of as “museum quality” tools rather than just sharp or pointy rocks.
(As an aside, there seem to be very few stone tools from Asian populations. The most likely explanation is that Asian peoples found bamboo to be useful almost as soon as we moved into that neighborhood. So early man in Asia went through a “Bamboo Age” rather than a “Stone Age”.
Always remember, people have been making tools out of things since we first tried to pick termites out of a rotting log. Even chimps still select and modify grass stems to do that. We find stone tools because very few of the wood, bone, and sinew tools have survived long enough to be found by museum collectors.)