Ancient Humans Made Millions of These – We Don’t Know Why (opens in new tab)

I don't get it, isn't 'handaxe' pretty suggestive of its primary use?

Sure a lot of them don't have noticeable wear but frequent sharpening seems like a plausible enough explanation, I don't see why more is needed.

> The Acheulean handaxe was the most common tool of early humans, but we still don’t know what the heck they used it for

I like the Sci fi "evolution" (Stephen Baxter, 2002) theory that making good hand axes was a bowerbird like breeding show ritual, with no intent to use: the value is proving you CAN.

He probably had good inputs from his sources to fictionalise this.

Can anyone recommend a good fast YouTube video summarising approach? 2x speed play only goes so far.

If it’s ancient and you can’t figure out what they are for, there’s a high probability that’s either used for spiritual rituals (aka just getting high on some drugs), or something has to do with humans’ reproduction, sexual or maternal labour/delivery.

How comes they’re found around the world.

This could suggest that it is something people were using before they left Africa.

Either that or they all found a common use for the same sort of thing.

You throw it at the prayer/topic board...