Fig. 10. An Acheulean handaxe from St-Acheul, France. Probably about 350 kyr 
old, although implements of the same design in Africa go back to around 1.5 myr 
ago. Scale is | cm. 
those their predecessors had made for almost a million years, and it 
is not until about 1.5 myr ago that we begin to find a significantly 
new kind of tool. This is the ‘“‘Acheulean’’ handaxe (fig. 10), an 
implement consciously and symmetrically fashioned on both sides 
to a deliberate shape. For the first time, toolmakers were making 
tools to a “‘mental template” held in their minds, rather than simply 
going after an attribute—a cutting edge (see Schick and Toth, 1993). 
Yet another cognitive advance. But we know little if anything about 
how this innovation affected the lifestyles of the toolmakers. These 
hominids presumably lived in small, mobile groups that moved con- 
sistently around a landscape shared with a variety of other hominid 
species. Most likely they gained the greater part of their sustenance 
from plant materials or scavenged animal carcasses; few archaeol- 
ogists today would argue that they were accomplished hunters of 
anything other than small animals. 
After about 1.4 myr ago the paleoanthropological focus shifts out 
of Africa, if only for reasons of geological sampling. We find the 
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