A hand axe (or handaxe or Acheulean hand axe) is a prehistoric stone tool with two faces that is the longest-used tool in human history. It is made from stone, usually flint or chert that has been "reduced" and shaped from a larger … 展开

Hand axes are mainly made of flint, but rhyolites, phonolites, quartzites and other coarse rocks were used as well. Obsidian, natural volcanic glass, … 展开

With its flattened-teardrop symmetry, the Achulean handaxe has long invited cognitive explanations. It is the earliest hominid tool that seems "designed" in some modern sense. Yet, for most of the "Swiss Army knife" multipurpose suite of proposed uses (deflesh- … 展开

Experiments in knapping have demonstrated the relative ease with which a hand axe can be made, which could help explain their success. In … 展开

The four classes of hand axe are:
1. Large, thick hand axes reduced from cores or thick flakes, referred to as blanks
2. Thinned blanks. While form remains rough and uncertain, an effort has been made to reduce the thickness of the flake or core 展开

Most researchers think that handaxes were primarily used as cutting tools. The pioneers of Palaeolithic tool studies first suggested that bifaces were used as axes despite the fact that they … 展开

In 1969 in the 2nd edition of World Prehistory, Grahame Clark proposed an evolutionary progression of flint-knapping industries (also … 展开