Credited to Kenya. A site at Konso in Ethiopia (KGA6-A1) has a nearly identical age of about 1.75 million years, so the earliest Acheulean cannot be assigned to Kenya alone.
How it began
At the Kokiselei site complex near Lake Turkana in northern Kenya, researchers found teardrop-shaped hand axes in sediments dated to about 1.76 million years ago. The find was reported in 2011. The age was worked out from the geology of the sediment in which the tools lay. The makers were probably Homo erectus. Kokiselei 4 is cited in later reviews as one of the two earliest Acheulean sites.
Before it existed
Earlier toolmakers produced Oldowan tools, which were simple flakes and cores. A 2021 study of Kokiselei 6, an older site in the same complex dated to 1.8 million years ago, found both the production of flakes from two faces of a core and the first shaping of bifaces. Its authors concluded that shaping probably grew out of existing flaking methods, and that the change was gradual.
How it works
An Acheulean hand axe is a large stone worked on both faces to a planned, roughly teardrop form. The tools are larger than Oldowan tools and more systematically designed. They have been called the Swiss army knives of the Stone Age because they served many tasks, from chopping wood to cutting up meat. Making them involved striking large flakes and then shaping them.
What lasted
The Kokiselei date showed that hand axes were in use in Africa much earlier than had been thought. A review of Acheulean origins describes the appearance of this technology around 1.7 million years ago as a major transition in human evolution, linked with Homo erectus and with greater demands on planning and skill. The find also raised the question of why the technique took so long to spread with Homo erectus beyond Africa.
