The Gray's Inn Lane Hand Axe is a pointed flint

hand axe A hand axe (or handaxe or Acheulean hand axe) is a prehistoric stone tool with two faces that is the longest-used tool in human history, yet there is no academic consensus on what they were used for. It is made from stone, usually flint or che ...

, found buried in gravel under

Gray's Inn Lane Gray's Inn Road (or Grays Inn Road) is an important road in the Bloomsbury district of Central London, in the London Borough of Camden. The road begins at the City of London boundary, where it bisects High Holborn, and ends at King's Cross and ...

, London, England, by pioneering archaeologist

John Conyers John James Conyers Jr. (May 16, 1929October 27, 2019) was an American politician of the Democratic Party who served as a U.S. representative from Michigan from 1965 to 2017. The districts he represented always included part of western Detroit. ...

in 1679, and now in the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

. The hand axe is a fine example from about 350,000 years ago, in the

Lower Paleolithic The Lower Paleolithic (or Lower Palaeolithic) is the earliest subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. It spans the time from around 3 million years ago when the first evidence for stone tool production and use by hominins appears in ...

period, but its main significance lies in the role it and the circumstances of its excavation played in the emerging understanding of early human history.

Discovery and history

John Conyers was present at the excavation in 1679 of the remains of a supposed

elephant Elephants are the largest existing land animals. Three living species are currently recognised: the African bush elephant, the African forest elephant, and the Asian elephant. They are the only surviving members of the family Elephantidae an ...

at Battlebridge in gravel;Levine, p. 141. the site was near

, opposite "Black Mary's", and the remaining tooth was later thought to be of a

mammoth A mammoth is any species of the extinct elephantid genus ''Mammuthus'', one of the many genera that make up the order of trunked mammals called proboscideans. The various species of mammoth were commonly equipped with long, curved tusks and, ...

straight-tusked elephant The straight-tusked elephant (''Palaeoloxodon antiquus'') is an extinct species of elephant that inhabited Europe and Western Asia during the Middle and Late Pleistocene (781,000–30,000 years before present). Recovered individuals have reac ...

.''British History Online''
/ref> A pointed flint

was found nearby, At the time, it was commonly thought that humans had been on earth for a relatively short period of time, and that stone tools were used by people who simply lacked the knowledge to create metal tools. Conyers was the first to argue that it was a human artefact. After Conyers' death, John Bagford (1650–1716) published the discovery, rejecting the idea that the assemblage of elephant bones and stone axe had originated from the time of Noah's flood, arguing instead for its origin in the Roman period under the

Emperor Claudius Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (; 1 August 10 BC – 13 October AD 54) was the fourth Roman emperor, ruling from AD 41 to 54. A member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, Claudius was born to Drusus and Antonia Minor a ...

; this was in a letter of 1715, in which Bagford accepted the human origin of the handaxe. With other items from Conyers' collection, the handaxe passed to the collection of

Sir Hans Sloane Sir Hans Sloane, 1st Baronet (16 April 1660 – 11 January 1753), was an Irish physician, naturalist, and collector, with a collection of 71,000 items which he bequeathed to the British nation, thus providing the foundation of the British Mu ...

, whose own collection was one of the founding collections of the British Museum. According to the British Museum website, the hand axe is now estimated to be about 350,000 years old. Elephants were living in Britain at this time, during a period in the

Ice age An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages and gree ...

when the climate was similar to that of today. The hand axe is currently displayed in the "Enlightenment Gallery" of the British Museum, which is housed in the

King's Library The King's Library was one of the most important collections of books and pamphlets of the Age of Enlightenment.British LibraryGeorge III Collection: the King's Libraryaccessed 26 May 2010 Assembled by George III, this scholarly library of over ...

References

*Joseph M. Levine (1977), ''Dr Woodward's Shield: History, Science and Satire in Augustan England''

Notes

{{reflist, colwidth=30em Prehistoric objects in the British Museum Lithics Axes Stone Age Britain Individual weapons

Discovery and history

See also

References

Notes