Acheulean Industries Bifacial Hand Axe, c.750,000 - 790,000 BCE Gesher Benot Ya'akov Israel

Provenance: Archaeological dig,Gesher Benot Ya'akov Israel

Age: (c) 750,000 to 790,000  years old

Size: 100mm in length

Condition: Excellent patina with accretions on the original face.
Maker:  Homo Erectus ( now Extinct)

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.

Acheulian Hand Axe - (Acheulian Industries - Homo Erectus) Lower Paleolithic before 200,000 BC

Provenance: Found in a 1969 expedition and recently purchased from a private collection in the United Kingdom.
Age: 200,000 years old
Size: approx: 16cm

Condition: Excellent with wind burnish

This is by far the oldest hand made object in my collection of pre-historic tools made by a Hominid in Africa before the rise of modern hominids - us.
This handaxe is a typical African Acheulian shape, bifacial worked into a sharp cleaver point on the distal end and a worked rounded base. Continuous retouches evidenced on the edges meaning that the tool was carried for some time before discarded.  The handaxe shows a perfect typical brownish patina and wind polished surface. In mint, near perfect condition with no modern or old damage and intact.

The artefact was discovered in 1967 at Erg Belfelfoul, Algeria. Handaxes with exact site location are extremely rare. 

Acheulean (pron.: /əˈʃuːliən/; also Acheulian) (from French acheuléen, a term based on the name Saint-Acheul, a suburb of Amiens, the capital of the Somme department in Picardy, where hand-axes of this period were found in 1859), is the name given to an archaeological industry of stone tool manufacture associated with early humans during the Lower Palaeolithic era across Africa and much of West Asia, South Asia, and Europe. Acheulean tools are typically found with Homo erectus remains. It is thought that they first developed out of the more primitive Oldowan technology as long ago as 1.76 million years ago, by Homo habilis.

It was the dominant technology for the vast majority of human history starting more than one million years ago. Their distinctive oval and pear-shaped handaxes have been found over a wide area and some examples attained a very high level of sophistication. Although it developed in Africa, the industry is named after the type site of Saint-Acheul, now a suburb of Amiens in northern France (not to be confused with the rural commune of Saint Acheul), where some of the first examples were identified in the 19th century.