# The Lower and Middle Paleolithic

History I · Prehistory · https://tryals.app/learn/history-i/the-lower-and-middle-paleolithic

## The Acheulean Handaxe

The **Acheulean handaxe** is a teardrop-shaped stone tool worked on both faces. It is **the longest-running product in human history**, remaining essentially unchanged for over a million years across Africa, India, and Britain.

Knapping this tool demands mental templates and teaching. The puzzle is not lack of intelligence, but **why so much competence with so little change?**

| Hypothesis | Implication |
| --- | --- |
| High-fidelity transmission | Copying without deviating |
| Sufficient design | Environment demanded no change |
| Social signaling | Symmetry advertised the maker's skill |

**Pitfall:** Do not confuse design stagnation with a lack of cognitive skill. Making one requires real planning.

## Fire and Neanderthals

**Fire control** is difficult to date because lightning causes natural burns. Archaeologists require patterns, not just occurrences, to prove control.

| Evidence | Site | Reading |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Burnt bone, ~1 Ma | Wonderwerk, S. Africa | Suggestive, deep in a cave |
| Hearths, ~780 ka | Gesher Benot Ya'aqov | Strong, structured burning |
| Ubiquitous, <400 ka | Across Eurasia | Uncontested, routine use |

**Neanderthals** were not brutish cavemen. They possessed bigger average brains, cold-adapted bodies, and hafted tools using birch tar. They cared for injured kin and buried their dead.

**The killer fact:** Most humans outside Africa carry 1 to 4 percent **Neanderthal DNA**. Extinction was actually absorption.

## Practice questions

6 of this lesson's 11 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app.

### 1. Neanderthals and modern humans made comparable tools, buried their dead and used pigment. Why did the older picture of them as brutish persist so long?

A. The comparison was based on a single site with unusually poor preservation
B. Their skulls are genuinely more primitive than modern human ones
C. The first skeleton was an arthritic old individual
D. The archaeological evidence for their behaviour was only discovered recently

**Answer:** C. The first skeleton was an arthritic old individual

**Why:** Boule's 1911 reconstruction of a severely arthritic individual set the image, and it endured because it agreed with what people wanted to be true about their own ancestry. Braincase volume actually exceeds ours on average, which was known and did not disturb the picture, a useful lesson about what evidence gets absorbed.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-i/the-lower-and-middle-paleolithic/neanderthals-and-modern-humans-made-comparable-tools-buried-their

### 2. Complete the account of the handaxe puzzle.

**Answer:** The Acheulean handaxe stayed essentially unchanged for over **a million** years, across at least two hominin species, so the puzzle is not stupidity but why so much **competence** produced so little **innovation**.

**Why:** High-fidelity copying with almost no deviation. Whatever cultural transmission was doing in the Lower Paleolithic, it was not doing what it does now.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-i/the-lower-and-middle-paleolithic/complete-the-account-of-the-handaxe-puzzle

### 3. Sort each trait: **Lower Paleolithic** (Acheulean world) or **Middle Paleolithic** (Neanderthal world)?

**Answer:**

- Lower Paleolithic: The symmetrical bifacial handaxe, A near-static toolkit for a million years
- Middle Paleolithic: Levallois prepared-core technique, Birch-tar hafted composite tools, Deliberate burial of some of the dead

**Why:** The Levallois technique is the tell: shaping a core so the flake comes off pre-designed means planning several steps ahead. The static million years ends here.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-i/the-lower-and-middle-paleolithic/sort-each-trait-lower-paleolithic-acheulean-world-or-middle

### 4. For roughly how many years did the Acheulean handaxe design remain essentially unchanged? **Set the slider (in millions of years).**

**Answer:** 1.2 (within ±0.4)

**Why:** Roughly 1.2 million years, from about 1.75 Ma to 0.5 Ma. Homo sapiens has existed for about a quarter of that, and in our version of that span we went from flint to satellites.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-i/the-lower-and-middle-paleolithic/for-roughly-how-many-years-did-the-acheulean-handaxe-design-remain

### 5. A layer of ash and burnt bone in a cave is sufficient evidence of human fire control.

**Answer:** False

**Why:** Lightning burns things. Burnt material proves burning, not control. Control is proven by structure — repeated hearths in one place, stone rings, selected fuel — the difference between an occurrence and a practice.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-i/the-lower-and-middle-paleolithic/a-layer-of-ash-and-burnt-bone-in-a-cave-is-sufficient-evidence-of

### 6. Which are well-supported findings about Neanderthals?

A. Inability to control fire or process pigment
B. Average brain size at least as large as modern humans’
C. Care for badly injured group members over years
D. Adhesive made by dry-distilling bark

**Answer:** B. Average brain size at least as large as modern humans’; C. Care for badly injured group members over years; D. Adhesive made by dry-distilling bark

**Why:** Birch tar requires distilling bark in a low-oxygen environment, not a simple recipe. And the Shanidar man survived years with a withered arm and damaged eye socket: somebody fed him. The brutish cartoon came largely from one arthritic skeleton, badly reconstructed.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-i/the-lower-and-middle-paleolithic/which-are-well-supported-findings-about-neanderthals