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Lecture 2

Week 1 / 1st November
Professor Clive Gamble

Handaxe

The most distinctive stone tools in deep-human-history are the handaxes. The oldest are almost two million years old from East Africa. They are exceptional because of their symmetry and their consistency in design. Handaxes are found from Britain to South Africa and from West Africa to India. They persisted for over a million and a half years at a time when the brains of our ancestors were expanding rapidly. They served a multitude of tasks in a multitude of environments. Continue reading →

Fire

The control of fire transformed the lives of our ancestors. Fire extended the length of the day making it possible to use the night-time for social activity; fire kept predators at bay; fire played a vital role in cooking food which allowed human evolution to take the pathway of larger brains which needed quality foods. However, the evidence for fire is elusive and deciding if it was truly controlled or the result of a lightning strike often difficult for archaeologists to determine. Continue reading →