It must have been hard to make a living 400,000 years ago but butchering an elephant probably kept people going for a while. From ScienceDaily:

Early humans often relied on animal carcasses for meat and tools, but clear evidence of such activities is rare and challenging to interpret in the archaeological record. In this new analysis, Mecozzi and his colleagues examined the remains of an elephant found at the Casal Lumbroso site in northwest Rome. By comparing surrounding layers of ash, they determined that the remains date back roughly 404,000 years to a notably warm phase of the Middle Pleistocene Epoch.

At the site, researchers uncovered more than 300 skeletal fragments belonging to a single straight-tusked elephant, Palaeoloxodon, along with over 500 stone tools. Many bones showed fresh fractures caused by blunt impacts soon after the elephant’s death, indicating deliberate breakage. The absence of visible cut marks suggests that smaller tools were likely used to process soft tissue. Most of the stone tools measured under 30mm, possibly reflecting a scarcity of large stones in the area. Some elephant bones themselves were later reshaped into larger tools.

“Ancient humans in Italy butchered elephants and made tools from their bones,” October 12, 2025

From the open-access paper:

At many of these sites, elephant bones have also been used as raw material to produce various types of artifacts, especially when the local lithic raw material is not suitable for large tool production [4–7,15,16]. In the first place, the production of large tools would have been necessary, particularly due to their potential role in butchery, which would have required early humans to produce additional large tools during or after the butchery process.

From meat to raw material: the Middle Pleistocene elephant butchery site of Casal Lumbroso (Rome, central Italy). Mecozzi B, Fiore I, Giaccio B, Giustini F, Mercurio S, et al. (2025) From meat to raw material: the Middle Pleistocene elephant butchery site of Casal Lumbroso (Rome, central Italy). PLOS ONE 20(10): e0328840.

So, because the local stones were not suitable for making larger tools, the early humans took to using elephant bones instead.

The human mind has no history. There is no good reason to assume that human intelligence evolved from mud to mind via a long slow history. When we look at the human past, we see lights flashing on suddenly. Technology evolves but not the mind as such.