The Genealogy of Tools

For organisms, their shape is the phenotype, which is created by the genotype – the DNA. A true family tree is ultimately based on DNA. There is no exact equivalent for man made things, however some objects are more like the phenotype and others more like the real DNA, tools vs the things that make them.
The Midnight Moses explains what I am getting at better: “Every single manufactured object was created using a tool or set of tools, and every single tool itself was manufactured using a tool or set of tools, and so on. Every single manufactured object, therefore, possesses a vast and complicated ‘family tree’ that pares and branches back through time”.
Wouldn’t it be fun to be able to trace the family history of Large Hadron Collider back to a flint axe. Ironically, since the LHC is a demolition tool for making sub atomic particles, you could potentially go full circle.
How could this be done.
First you need to separate what a tool is from any other type of object. A tool is something that can make another object. Some tools make objects that in turn cannot make another object (this is like having infertile offspring). Some tools make objects that have already existed before, and some tools can make new objects that have never existed before. A chain of tools that can make new tools that can make new tools that couldn’t have been made before, is the most interesting one from a genealogical perspective.
The process is similar to genealogy but with three differences: (1). a tool can have components with different sets of parents for each (parents being the tools that are needed to make it), for human beings, the same parents make the arms as the legs, body, liver, head etc. (2). each component can have more than two parents (there might be three of more tools that needed to exist before something could be made). (3) Tools potentially keep having offspring forever (they don’t die), a simple axe might be needed to develop something new, today.