The Acheulean handaxe:More like a bird’s song than a Beatles’ tune?

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to provoke debate about the nature of an iconic artifact—the Acheulean handaxe. Specifically, we want to initiate a conversationabout whether or not they are cultural objects. The vast majority of archeologistsassume that the behaviors involved in the production of handaxes wereacquired by social learning and that handaxes are therefore cultural. We willargue that this assumption is not warranted on the basis of the available evidenceand that an alternative hypothesis should be given serious consideration.This alternative hypothesis is that the form of Acheulean handaxes was at leastpartly under genetic control