I recently read a 2009 paper titled Cooperative hunting and meat sharing 400-200 kya at Qesem Cave, Israel.¹ For me the title was a little misleading because the paper primarily reported on the cut marks on 38 shattered long bones fragments from the Lower Paleolithic in Qesem Cave. Of great interest to me was the finding the authors called cut-mark “disorder.” Basically, the authors were saying the cut marks from the Lower were not as parallel to each other as the ones on the Middle and Upper Paleolithic bone fragments. The authors write:

“Cut-mark orientations in the Qesem faunas are indeed more chaotic than in later periods. The diverse cut-mark orientation at Qesem suggest that butchering postures, or the ways of holding a body part while cutting away the meat, may have been more varied as well. The cut-mark patterns on the Middle and Upper Paleolithic samples exhibit great regularity, with more consistent orientation of cut marks over small area of bone.”

The authors proposed that perhaps the butchering and/or food sharing behaviors in the Lower were different from those of the Middle and Upper Paleolithic.

So besides both occurring in the Lower Paleolithic, what is the connection between this cut-mark “disorder” and handaxes? To answer this question I point the reader to The Acheulean Handaxe paper I wrote in 2006. In this paper I proposed the handaxe was a large flake core, the by-product of flake extraction, and not a desired end-product. Additionally, because of its width-thickness ratio and large size, I wrote:

“Homo erectus did not select small cores from which to extract flakes (make handaxes). I propose he chose large cores because he did not have the manual dexterity to externally support them and, therefore, he had to rely on the inertial support.”

In different words, the mass of the core resisted the percussion blow and not the hand that was holding the core.

I know that most anthropologist believe the large handaxe is a cultural phenomenon and would see no relationship between it and this cut-mark “disorder.” That said, to me they represent the same thing, the lack of the manual dexterity that we modern humans have. Manual dexterity means not only thumb and fingers, but also eye and brain involvement.

1 – Stiner, Mary C., Ran Barkai, and Avi Gopher. 2009. Cooperative hunting and meat sharing 400—200 kya at Qesem Cave, Israel. PNAS 106(32) 13207-13212.