Stone Age Skills:Manufacturing a hand axe / výroba pěstního klínu

In terms of evolution Stone Age represents the longest period of human history. Humans began to differ from other animals not only by walking upright and by occasional use of tools, but particularly by the deliberate production of tools.
Over millions of years, stone tools developed from primitive cobble choppers, through hand axes, long narrow blades, leaf spear points of various shapes and sizes to the Danish daggers.
Today I would like to introduce an instrument, which was due to its simplicity and multi-functionality used by our ancestors for incredibly long period of more than 1.5 million years. This tool is the hand axe, which could be called a Swiss army knife of the Paleolithic.Today I will try to make one.Here you can see a crack, which is a flaw in the stone. It is possible that the crack could eventually shorten the length of the finish product.Manufacturing a hand axe takes some time and one gets hungry while working. Well, this is not a mammoth, a well done sausage will do.According to one hypothesis, some hand axes, rather the archaic types, served as portable cores for detaching sharp flakes in situations when a finer instrument with fresh razor sharp adge was needed.There are other hidden defects in stone, two pockets of chalk.After about 2 hours I have finished and now I will show how a hand axe might have been used. I have intentionally knapped the base of the hand axe into a steeper angle so it can be used as a scraper for working raw hide.In conclusion, I would like to thank my friend and flintknapping teacher Petr Zitka not only for providing the stone material for knapping in this video, but mainly for everything he taught me about flintknapping. Check out his website www.jaknapazourek.cz, where you can find numerous beautiful knives, hand axes and spear points. It is definitely worth having a look.