OK, here are two objects with a 52mm lens cap for scale. The one on the right is a typical hand axe on the larger end of the normal range. The smaller object is the one with a handle and a single acute bevel. (edit: these photos were too big and have been resized in the following post.) They were found at the same site, and appear to be from the same culture. The tool is quite obvious in possible uses, but the hand axe, while versatile, does not have an obvious application, yet is a form that shows much less variation than the tools. Tool like objects vary much more than what is seen in the hand axes.
The other pictures show the tool with the original natural patterns in the rock cortex that may have been chosen by the maker with an aesthetic of some sort and a medium sized hand axe from the same site.
Homo erectus did not have any cloth or rope that we know of, and did not put hafts on the lithics. The Neolithic objects shown in the last post would all be recognizable as knife like objects to pretty much anyone in the last 40,000 years. Why don't we recognize the hand axes so easily?
Josh
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19th April 2012, 03:21 PM
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