The first human technology emerged 1.5 million years ago and was the result of experimentation. Though many animal species have the capacity to experiment and learn.

 

 

Toltec-  Are you including Lithics in that aging?  If so you'd better tack on a mill or so.

 

 

 

For the animal angle google-  Bandit in your backyard.  It's probably on YT by now.

 

For the human angle, study the developement and progression of Ceramic tech.  Neolithic farmer/potters learned, or got their starting point for learning principles of combustion.  They learned about differences in firing atmospheres, kilns etc.  All from observations which stimulated experimentation.  Experimentation led to.............etc.

 

It's been going on like that since the start of whatever.  Science was first "Magic".  A good deffinition of this is "As soon as you understand how and why, it's no longer magic, it becomes science".

 

Many have challenged that the Baghdad battery was even a battery.  I can make a battery out of an orange, doesn't mean nature designed the orange to be be a battery.   So even if some could make the jar function as a very weak battery, that doesn't mean the Persians used it as such.

The Greeks were the first to rationally examine the world on a systematic basis, and come up with explanations bases on logical and rational explanations that didn't appeal to the supernatural.  Basis of Science.   Other cultures like the Chinese started doing something similar around the same time, but I don't think they were as broad in topic, but more important, they were not the source that the men who created modern science, men like Galileo and Newton, were inspired by and built upon.  Indian and Chinese early philosophers were unknown to the western scientist, and while the works of Galileo and Newton may have built upon the works of earlier Muslims, those Muslims in turn had built upon the works of the earlier Greeks.

AFAIR, a Neanderthal-made axe head was found which -  had been firmly affixed

to its shaft by 'artificial' glue - which required human application of complex

chemical processing steps - including understanding heat & pH values..

Yes, the idea that the Neanderthals were just dumb brutes is being challenged by recent finds.  Neanderthals appear to have been capable of making sophisticated tools, and abstract concepts.  

Although, how can we be absolutely certain who made the axe?  It is not like they wrote on it "Made by Neanderthals".