Cordate Axe

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, yet there is no academic consensus on what they were used for. It is made from stone, usually flint or chert that has been "reduced" and shaped from a larger piece by knapping, or hitting against another stone. They are characteristic of the lower Acheulean and middle Palaeolithic (Mousterian) periods, roughly 1.6 million years ago to about 100,000 years ago, and used by ''Homo erectus'' and other early humans, but rarely by ''Homo sapiens''.

Their technical name (biface) comes from the fact that the archetypical model is a generally bifacial (with two wide sides or faces) and almond-shaped (amygdaloidal) lithic flake. Hand axes tend to be symmetrical along their longitudinal axis and formed by pressure or percussion. The most common hand axes have a pointed end and rounded base, which gives them their characteristic almond shape, and both faces have been knapped to remove the natural cortex, at least partially. Hand axes are a type of the somewhat wider biface group of two-faced tools or weapons.

Hand axes were the first prehistoric tools to be recognized as such: the first published representation of a hand axe was drawn by John Frere and appeared in a British publication in 1800. Until that time, their origins were thought to be natural or supernatural. They were called '' thunderstones'', because popular tradition held that they had fallen from the sky during storms or were formed inside the earth by a lightning strike and then appeared at the surface. They are used in some rural areas as an amulet to protect against storms.

Hand axe tools were possibly used to butcher animals; to dig for tubers, animals and water; to chop wood and remove tree bark; and/or process vegetal materials. Other scholars have proposed that hand axes were used to throw at prey; for a ritual or social purpose; or possibly as a source for flake tools.

Terminology

Four classes of hand axe are:

# Large, thick hand axes reduced from cores or thick flakes, referred to as blanks
# Thinned blanks. While form remains rough and uncertain, an effort has been made to reduce the thickness of the flake or core
# Either a preform or crude formalized tool, such as an adze
# Finer formalized tool types such as projectile points and fine bifaces

While Class 4 hand axes are referred to as "formalized tools", bifaces from any stage of a lithic reduction sequence may be used as tools. (Other biface typologies make five divisions rather than four.)

French antiquarian André Vayson de Pradenne introduced the word in 1920. This term co-exists with the more popular ''hand axe'' (), that was coined by Gabriel de Mortillet much earlier. The continued use of the word biface by François Bordes and Lionel Balout supported its use in France and Spain, where it replaced the term ''hand axe''. Use of the expression ''hand axe'' has continued in English as the equivalent of the French ( in Spanish), while biface applies more generally for any piece that has been carved on both sides by the removal of shallow or deep flakes. The expression is used in German; it can be literally translated as hand axe, although in a stricter sense it means "fist wedge". It is the same in Dutch where the expression used is which literally means "fist axe". The same locution occurs in other languages.

However, the general impression of these tools was based on ideal (or classic) pieces that were of such perfect shape that they caught the attention of non-experts. Their typology broadened the term's meaning. Biface hand axe and bifacial lithic items are distinguished. A hand axe need not be a bifacial item and many bifacial items are not hand axes. Nor were hand axes and bifacial items exclusive to the Lower Palaeolithic period in the Old World. They appear throughout the world and in many different pre-historical epochs, without necessarily implying an ancient origin. Lithic typology is not a reliable chronological reference and was abandoned as a dating system. Examples of this include the "quasi-bifaces" that sometimes appear in strata from the Gravettian, Solutrean and Magdalenian periods in France and Spain, the crude bifacial pieces of the Lupemban culture ( 9000 B.C.) or the pyriform tools found near Sagua La Grande in Cuba. The word ''biface'' refers to something different in English than in French or in Spanish, which could lead to many misunderstandings. Bifacially carved cutting tools, similar to hand axes, were used to clear scrub vegetation throughout the Neolithic