A study of nearly 3,000 century-old stone tools reveals how skilled craftsmen and specialised labour shaped village life in Egypt before the rise of the. Giulio Lucarini, National Research Council (CNR); Federica Ugliano, National Research Council (CNR), and Lorena Lombardi, National Research Council (CNR) More than a century after they were excavated from beneath Cairo, almost 3,000 stone tools from Heliopolis show that specialised work was already reshaping village life before Egypt.