In Search of the Acheulean Hand Axe

Imagine a multifunction tool that remained in use, more or less unchanged, not for decades, but one and a three-quarter million years. The earliest-known examples of the teardrop-shaped Acheulean stone hand axe are 1,760,000 years old and the most recent examples are around 55,000 years old. Ubiquitous in the archaeological record of Africa and western Eurasia, this most distinctive of prehistoric...