The Seattle Times – John Higgins
“It’s not easy to carve a stone hand ax – a tool that the long-extinct cousins of our species were making nearly two million years ago. First, you’ve got to pick a suitable chunk of flint that will break the right way when you chip off pieces with another rock, bone or antler. You’ve got to strike it in the right place with the right force at the right speed, with little room for error. If you get it right, a two-faced, teardrop-shaped hand ax emerges like a sculpture chiseled from a block of marble. I saw a demonstration of this ancient art a few years ago at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and I wondered how such a complex skill could have spread from person to person, down through the generations.”(more)