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In-Depth Information
the “hunting hypothesis,” prompting also a reevaluation of two earlier finds that
had once been seen as spears, and later discounted. (A spear tip found
inside an elephant carcass at Lehringen, for example, and a wood fragment
found at Clacton had both been reinterpreted as “digging sticks” or “snow
probes” in the 1970s and 1980s). The new finds have also been used to suggest
a previously undocumented depth of foresight and planning. See Hartmut
Thieme, “Palaeolithic Hunting Spears from Germany,”
Nature
385 (1997): 807.
27. Kathy D. Schick and Nicholas Toth,
Making Silent Stones Speak: Human
Evolution and the Dawn of Technology
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994),
258-260.
28. See Schick and Toth,
Making Silent Stones Speak
, 258-259. The Kariandusi
Museum in Kenya has a nice series of posters attempting to explain the uses of
hand axes, said to include “butchering,” “digging up roots,” “scraping animal
hides,” and so forth. For a critique, see William H. Calvin,
A Brain for All
Seasons
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).
29. See Bob Holmes, “The Ascent of Medallion Man,”
New Scientist
, May 9,
1998, 16.
30. Most hand axes are so old as to have experienced substantial weathering,
including river tumbling, wind faceting, and deposition of desert varnish (if
exposed). It is therefore difficult to gauge edge wear. See Lawrence Keeley,
Exper-
imental Determination of Stone Tool Uses: A Microwear Study
(Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1980).
31. Steven Mithen,
The Prehistory of the Mind
(London: Thames and Hudson,
1996). There are many other proposed uses for hand axes, ranging from ground
mounting to hurling at birds, using slings; see the literature cited in John C.
Whittaker and Grant McCall, “Handaxe-Hurling Hominids: An Unlikely Story,”
Current Anthropology
42 (2001): 566-572.
32. Eileen M. O'Brien, “The Projectile Capabilities of an Acheulian Hand-Axe
from Olorgesailie,”
Current Anthropology
22 (1981): 76-79, and “What Was
the Acheulean Hand Ax?”
Natural History
93 (July 1984): 20-24.
33. Calvin's theory can be found in his “Rediscovery and the Cognitive Aspects
of Toolmaking: Lessons from the Hand-Axe,” http://faculty.washington.edu/
wcalvin/2001/handaxe.htm. Calvin also claims to have confirmed O'Brien's
earlier observations that thrown axes shift to vertical spinning, but my tests were
not so clear-cut. It is not hard to throw such a tool to ensure a vertical spin,
however. A recent critique of Calvin's theory can be found in Whittaker and
McCall, “Handaxe-Hurling Hominids.”
34. Figuier reports one hand ax from St. Acheul exhibited in the
galerie préhis-
torique
of the
Exposition universelle
of 1867 that was twenty-nine centimeters
long and thirteen centimeters wide (
L'homme primitif
, 3rd ed., 64). The small-
est-known Acheulean axes may be those found at Beeches Pit in England, which
are four to five hundred thousand years old and only about two inches long (John
Gowlett, personal communication).
