The acheulean handaxe: More like a bird's song than a beatles' tune?

Raymond Corbey; Adam Jagich; Krist Vaesen; Mark Collard

doi:10.1002/evan.21467

The acheulean handaxe: More like a bird's song than a beatles' tune?

Raymond Corbey, Adam Jagich, Krist Vaesen, Mark Collard

Archaeology

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

74 Citations (Scopus)

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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 conversation about whether or not they are cultural objects. The vast majority of archeologists assume that the behaviors involved in the production of handaxes were acquired by social learning and that handaxes are therefore cultural. We will argue that this assumption is not warranted on the basis of the available evidence and that an alternative hypothesis should be given serious consideration. This alternative hypothesis is that the form of Acheulean handaxes was at least partly under genetic control.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	6-19
Number of pages	14
Journal	Evolutionary anthropology
Volume	25
Issue number	1
Early online date	22 Jan 2016
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.21467
Publication status	Published - Feb 2016

Bibliographical note

© 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

KV is supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific
Research. MC is supported by the Canada Research Chairs Program,
the Social Sciences and Humanities Research of Canada, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the British Columbia Knowledge Development Fund, and Simon Fraser University

Keywords

Acheulean handaxe
cultural transmission
social learning
genetic transmission

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10.1002/evan.21467Licence: CC BY

The acheulean handaxe: More like a bird's song than a beatles' tune?
© 2016 The Authors Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Final published version, 549 KBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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The acheulean handaxe: More like a bird's song than a beatles' tune?

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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