Acheulean Industries Hand-Axe, Homo erectus, Lower Paleolithic 750,000 - 790,000 ya, Gesher Benot Ya'aqov (Bnot Ya'akov Bridge), Israel

Provenance: From the Archaeological dig in and around Gesher Benot Ya'aqov (Bnot Ya'akov Bridge), Israel and sourced from a private collection.

Age: (c) 750,000 to 790,000 ya - Middle East Acheulean Industries (Lower Paleolithic). It is typically Acheulean bi-facial in that the maker left part of the original surface of the rock intact.
Size: Approx: 4.5 cm x 7.5 cm. This is a much smaller hand-axe than the one I have from the Acheulian Industries of France some 500,000 years later. This hand-axe fits neatly into a smallish hand. The bulb of percussion fits neatly and indeed comfortably into the ball at the base of my own thumb.

Condition: Excellent. Deposit acreations are evident including around the edges. 

This is easily the most wonderful item in my collection. Its not about the value, its about a proto-human, that is another type of human being - holding it in his or her hand, seeing the potential in the stone, applying their mind to conceive a finished object and then using it in the way they intended it to be. And the human who made this? He or she was not a modern human being. The Acheulean industry spanned an incredible amount of time in human history - approx: 1 million years. Acheulean tools were not made by fully modern humans (Homo sapiens) although, transitional modern humans did ie:  Homo sapiens idaltu as did the proto-Neanderthal's. 

Acheulian is most notably and almost exclusively used by a human species Homo ergaster or, early Homo erectus whose Later, the related species Homo heidelbergensis (the common ancestor of both Neanderthals and Homo sapiens) used it extensively ie: Boxgrove in England.

Facsimile of Homo erectus (from skeletal remains)

Excavations at the Bnot Ya'akov Bridge site where this hand-axe was found, located along the Dead Sea rift in the southern Hula Valley of northern Israel, have revealed evidence of human habitation in the area from as early as 750,000 - 790,000 years ago.Archaeologists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem claim that the site provides evidence of "advanced human behavior" half a million years earlier than has previously been estimated. Their report describes an Acheulian layer at the site in which numerous stone tools, animal bones, and plant remains have been found.

I will be adding more to this story in coming days.