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Product Description
This is a classic Mode I Oldowan pebble chopper axe. It is made from an unusual green basalt. One side shows heavy calcite deposits while the other side is clean, indicating this pebble chopper lay undisturbed on one side, for thousands of millennia. The overall surface of the side that is clean (was facing up) shows a natural satiny sheen, a result of "desert varnish", caused by wind polishing from millennia of exposure to the Saharan wind. This is just an incredible tool to hold and not only fits in the hand perfectly but it has a masterfully made chisel end made by several opposing strikes. A Lower Paleolithic chopper axe such as this was ideally used to smash open bones to harvest nourishing bone marrow from hunted game animals. The natural cobble curved surface on the proximal end was purposely retained which makes for a very comfortable grip. Workmanship and form is superb.
African pebble tools are not common on the market compared to their much later Acheulian relatives. This specimen is part of a very limited collection we acquired. Despite the fact that there are probably more Oldowan tools in Africa compared to the European specimens we offer, very few African pebble tools are collected or available for public acquisition. This offering poses a rare opportunity to own an AUTHENTIC example of the first known tool type made by humans - a window into the mind and design thought process of our earliest ancestors.
No one can doubt the importance that pebble tools hold in the history of human development. Their very emergence in Africa nearly two million years ago allowed the earliest humans to butcher animals for their meat - the needed nourishment that allowed humans to survive and flourish to one day populate and rule the earth.
HISTORY
The Oldowan (or Mode I) was a widespread stone tool archaeological industry (style) in prehistory. These early tools were simple, usually made by chipping one, or a few, flakes off a stone (a core) using another stone. Oldowan tools were used during the Lower Paleolithic period, 2.9 million years ago up until at least 1.7 million years ago (Ma), by ancient Hominins (early humans) across much of Africa. This technological industry was followed by the more sophisticated Acheulean industry (two sites associated with Homo erectus at Gona in the Afar Region of Ethiopia dating from 1.5 and 1.26 million years ago have both Oldowan and Acheulean tools.
The term Oldowan is taken from the site of Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, where the first Oldowan stone tools were discovered by the archaeologist Louis Leakey in the 1930s. However, some contemporary archaeologists and palaeoanthropologists prefer to use the term Mode 1 tools to designate pebble tool industries (including Oldowan), with Mode 2 designating bifacially worked tools (including Acheulean handaxes), Mode 3 designating prepared-core tools, and so forth.
Oldowan pebble tools are THE FIRST recognized tools invented by the earliest of primitive humans from Africa. These tools are seldom seen in private collections or public exhibits. Oldowan sites exist in numerous regions of the continent but it takes a very knowledgeable collector to be able to weed out all the naturally-occurring rocks that litter the ground from an actual pebble tool specimen. As the origin of humanity and as the earliest of tool technologies, this African Oldowan specimen poses a very important potential addition to any advanced collection of Paleolithic artifacts. It was made by the African Homo erectus known as Homo ergaster.