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Acheulean

Acheulean
Spreading homo sapiens la.svg
Geographical range Afro-Eurasia
Period Lower Paleolithic
Dates 1.76 million years BP – 100 thousand years BP
Type site Saint-Acheul (Amiens)
Preceded by Oldowan
Followed by Clactonian, Micoquien
The Paleolithic

Pliocene (before Homo)

Lower Paleolithic
(c. 3.3 Ma – 300 ka)
Middle Paleolithic
(300–45 ka)
Upper Paleolithic
(50–10 ka)
Mesolithic
Stone Age

Pliocene (before Homo)

Acheulean (/əˈʃliən/; also Acheulian), from the French acheuléen, is an archaeological industry of stone tool manufacture characterized by distinctive oval and pear-shaped "hand-axes" associated with early humans. Acheulean tools were produced during the Lower Palaeolithic era across Africa and much of West Asia, South Asia, and Europe, and are typically found with Homo erectus remains. It is thought that Acheulean technologies first developed in Africa out of the more primitive Oldowan technology as long ago as 1.76 million years ago, by Homo habilis. Acheulean tools were the dominant technology for the vast majority of human history.

The type site for the Acheulean is Saint-Acheul, a suburb of Amiens, the capital of the Somme department in Picardy, where artifacts were found in 1859.

John Frere is generally credited as being the first to suggest a very ancient date for Acheulean hand-axes. In 1797, he sent two examples to the Royal Academy in London from Hoxne in Suffolk. He had found them in prehistoric lake deposits along with the bones of extinct animals and concluded that they were made by people "who had not the use of metals" and that they belonged to a "very ancient period indeed, even beyond the present world". His ideas were, however, ignored by his contemporaries, who subscribed to a pre-Darwinian view of human evolution.


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