[josh stout]

Good Chinese swords have left my price range, so I have been looking into a much older weapon/tool form, the stone hand axe. They were produced for well over a million years in the Lower Paleolithic/Old Stone age, but, in my opinion, they never disappeared, and continued to be produced into relatively modern times. As a collector, the chaos in north Africa is offering new opportunities for reasonably priced artifacts surface collected in the Sahara. This is a bit problematic, but, I would not consider this looting because surface collected items are largely un-datable and outside of an archaeological context.

Even more interesting, North American handaxes, which are not supposed to exist, are very reasonably priced, and quite common. They are called everything from chipped celts to axe blanks, but are, in my opinion, all the same thing. These were the original knives, and the most fruitful search term is "archaic knife". Look for the rough, slightly crude, examples, and you have a handaxe.

Neolithic examples are generally smaller, thinner, and more finely worked, but there is no absolute rule. I believe there is a link between shape and function (strangely this is debated in the archaeological community). Just as we recognize knives of many shapes as being the same thing, it is possible to recognize handaxes from many times and regions, well outside the region and period to which they are supposedly restricted.

They have shaped us more than any other thing, because they are what we have shaped more than any other thing.
Josh

A large handaxe from Northern California sold as a "hoe" and the same one next to a small million year old Moroccan example.