Stone Age Handaxes: Art & Ritual

All is not always what is seems. History, as it has been presented for centuries, is riddled with stereotypes and fixed agenda, more so when it concerns prehistory and the ’Stone Age’. As the veils of obliviousness have been researched away though, four distinct species of humans, or hominins (the genus Homo), have so far been identified as once probably having inhabited the islands of what is now call Britain. The most ancient of these is known as Homo Erectus (or sometimes Homo Antecessor). These were a hominin group who were later followed by a species called Homo Heidelbergensis, who in turn came before Homo Neaderthalensis (known commonly as Neanderthals), all before we, Homo Sapiens, came along and took up residence. There are many indications that Homo Sapiens have been living on British shores, on and off, for at least 40,000 years, a time that clashes with the demise and ’extinction’ of our Neanderthal cousins in Europe, whose DNA we carry within us to this day. Stone Age ancestors of ours, these four groups of people might or might not have been but, technologically speaking, common to them all, there is much hard evidence to show that ornate handaxes, portable rock art, tools, wooden structures and handicrafts of different types were made and used by individuals and groups for differing reasons. This work details the art and ritual concerning their handaxes in the broadest sense.