Acheulean is the name given
to an archaeological industry of stone tool
manufacture associated with prehistoric hominins during
the Lower Paleolithic era across Africa and much of West Asia and Europe. Acheulean tools are typically found with Homo erectus
remains.
I picked this particular handaxe up on a public beach in
Cape Town. One of the local experts said
that the find had no particular scientific value because the origin of the
artifact could never be determined. Despite this expert opinion, removing it from South Africa would be illegal (subject to imprisonment). So,
it will make a nice paperweight. The
length is approximately 18cm and the handaxe is water-worn and smooth.
It was the dominant technology for the vast majority of human history and
more than one million years ago it was Acheulean tool users
who left Africa to first successfully colonize Eurasia. Their distinctive oval and pear-shaped handaxes have
been found over a wide area and some examples attained a very high level of
sophistication suggesting that the roots of human art, economy and social
organization arose as a result of their development. Although it developed in Africa, the industry
is named after the type site of Saint Acheul,
now a suburb of Amiens in northern France, where some of the first examples were identified in the nineteenth
century.
The Lower Paleolithic is the earliest subdivision
of the Paleolithic or
Old Stone Age. It spans the time from around 2.5 million years ago
when the first evidence of craft and use of stone tools by hominids
appears in the current archaeological
record, until around 100,000 years ago
when important evolutionary and technological changes (behavioral
modernity) ushered in the Middle
Paleolithic.
The earliest hominids, known as australopithecines
(personified by the famous find of Lucy by
Don Johansen (see recent photo of Don and Dr. Rebecca Rogers Ackermann) in Ethiopia) were
not advanced stone tool users
and were likely to have been common prey for larger animals. Sometime before 3 million years ago the first fossils that
may be called Homo appear in the archaeological record. They may have evolved from the
australopithecines or come from another phylogenetic
branch of the primates.
Homo habilis
remains, such as those from Olduvai Gorge, are
much more recognizable as humans. Stone-tool
use was developed by these people around 2.5 million years ago before they were
replaced by Homo erectus about
1.5 million years ago. Members of Homo habilis used Olduwan tools
and had learned to control fire to
support the hunter-gatherer method of subsistence.
Use-wear analysis
on Acheulean tools suggests there was generally no specialization in the
different types created and that they were multi-use implements. Functions included hacking wood from a tree,
cutting animal carcasses as well as scraping and cutting hides when necessary. Some tools may have been better suited to
digging roots or butchering animals than others however.
Alternative theories include a use for ovate hand-axes as
a kind of hunting discus to be hurled at prey. Puzzlingly, there are also examples of sites where hundreds of hand-axes, many
impractically large and also apparently unused, have been found in close association together. Sites such as Melka Kunturé
in Ethiopia, Olorgesailie in Kenya, Isimila in Tanzania and Kalambo Falls
in Zambia have
produced evidence that suggests Acheulean hand-axes may not always have had a
functional purpose.
Recently, it has been suggested that the Acheulean tool
users adopted the handaxe as a social artifact, meaning that it embodied
something beyond its function of a butchery or wood cutting tool. Knowing how to create and use these tools
would have been a valuable skill and the more elaborate ones suggest that they
played a role in their owners' identity and their interactions with others. This would help explain the apparent
over-sophistication of some examples which may represent a "historically accrued
social significance".
One theory goes further and suggests that some special
hand-axes were made and displayed by males in search of mate, using a large,
well-made hand-axe to demonstrate that they possessed sufficient strength and
skill to pass on to their offspring. Once
they had attracted a female at a group gathering, it is suggested that they
would discard their axes, perhaps explaining why so many are found together.
** Most of this text was extracted from www.wikipedia.org where more information may be found.
