#acheulean

An extraordinary Acheulean handaxe knapped around a fossil shell circa 500,000-300,000 years ago.

The maker appears to have deliberately flaked around the shell to preserve and place it in a central position. As a result this handaxe has been described as an early example of artistic thought.

From West Tofts, Norfolk.

By José-Manuel Benito Álvarez (España) —> Locutus Borg - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1605723

Named for Saint-Acheul in northern France, the Acheulean, or Mode II is characterized by pear-shaped and oval tools and lasted from about 1,950,000 through about 125,000 years ago, with pockets that continued until about 50,000 years ago. These dates are based on dating volcanic ash or by testing the magnetostratigraphy, that is checking the alignment of magnetic minerals deposited to find out where the north pole was at the time they were laid down, or dating of organic material in the same layers as the tools were found. Based on these techniques, it appears that Acheulean tools originated in Africa and spread through Eurasia by 800,000 years ago.

One of the major improvements of the Acheulean tools over the Oldowan is the use of a 'soft hammer' that could be made of wood, bone, or antler, allowing more control over how the tool is finished and allowing for dulled tools to be resharpened. The tools were worked on both sides, allowing large flakes to be processed into tools as well as the cores that the Oldowan used.

By I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following license:, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11656505

To make these tools, large flakes would be removed by a hammerstone, as with the Oldowan tools, but this would be taken a step further to work both faces of the core, with smaller flakes being removed, working to the soft hammer to remove thinner and smaller flakes to reach the desired shape. This would require the toolmaker to consider several steps ahead and to appropriately judge the flaws of the material they were using to successfully knap a tool.

Researchers have found collections of hundreds of tools, many too large to be used easily, and many unused, as far as we can tell. Knowing exactly why this happened is not possible, but researchers have a few theories as to why this happened. It might have been that these tools held some type of social clout. They might have played a part in identity or that they were a display of skill and prowess and were discarded once their purpose was met. This led one researcher to refer to these tools as 'the first commodity: A marketable good or service that has value and is used as an item for exchange'.

Stone Age Tools

As the Stone Age covers around 99% of our human technological history, it would seem there is a lot to talk about when looking at the development of tools in this period. Despite our reliance on the sometimes scarce archaeological record, this is definitely the case.

The Stone Age indicates the large swathe of time during which stone was widely used to make implements. So far, the first stone tools have been dated to roughly 2,6 million years ago. The end is set at the first use of bronze, which did not come into play at the same time everywhere; the Near East was the first to enter the Bronze Age around 3,300 BCE. It must be recognised that stone was by no means the only material used for tools throughout this time, yet it is the most stubborn one when it comes to decaying and thus survives a bit better than the alternatives.

Time Periods

It is important to realise that the ways chosen to divide up the Stone Age into bite-size chunks (see below) depend on technological development, and not on chronological boundaries. Because these developments did not occur at the same time in all areas, strict date ranges are out of the question. Of course, this method has some difficulties, as the characteristics defining each stone tool culture are determined by us. As with all such artificially constructed ways of classification, they oversimplify things and leave many grey areas, for instance when it comes to transition periods. However, as long as this is kept in mind it is still a useful way of adding some sort of structure to such a hugely long period of time.

The Stone Age is conceived to consist of:

the Palaeolithic (or Old Stone Age)

the Mesolithic (or Middle Stone Age)

the Neolithic (or New Stone Age)

The Palaeolithic spans the time from the first known stone tools, dated to c. 2,6 million years ago, to the end of the last Ice Age around 12,000 years ago. It is further subdivided into the Early- or Lower Palaeolithic (c. 2,6 million years ago - c. 250,000 years ago); the Middle Palaeolithic (c. 250,000 years ago - c. 30,000 years ago); and the Late- or Upper Palaeolithic (c. 50,000/40,000 - c. 10,000 years ago; some of these cultures persisted into the time when the Northern Hemisphere began warming up again). Furthermore, within these frameworks, various stone cultures are identified, some of which you will find below.

The Mesolithic saw humans adapt to the warmer climate, from around 12,000 BCE until the transition to agriculture, which happened at different times in different regions, the earliest of which was around 9,000 BCE in the Near East (which due to its lightning speed sort of skipped the Mesolithic altogether). At the other extreme, farming took until around 4,000 BCE to spread all the way to Northern Europe.

The Neolithic, then, has no clear chronological starting point either, but is defined by the move to a more settled way of life based on farming and herding. The introduction of bronze marks the end of the Neolithic, which gradually happened in various areas from around 3,300 BCE onward.

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An extraordinary c. 500,000-300,000 year-old Acheulean handaxe knapped around a fossil shell. The shell’s central placement has often been described as an example of early artistic intent. Handaxe knapped around a fossil shell, identified as the Cretaceous bivalve mollusc Spondylus spinosus, located centrally on one face.