Testing Differences in the Cutting Precision of Flakes and Handaxes: Implications for Hominin Tool Selection during the Lower Paleolithic

Investigating the factors that drove hominin stone tool selection and manufacture is central to understanding human and technological evolution. Lower Paleolithic hominins engaged in cutting tasks with differing precision. Different tools might have been less precise and thus avoided for certain tasks. We experimentally tested whether precision exerted a functional demand on Lower Paleolithic tool forms. Flakes and two differently sized sets of handaxes were tested in cutting tasks with differing precision levels. No significant differences were detected. This suggests that cutting precision, as measured here, would not have exerted differing selective pressures. Furthermore, this demonstrates a greater “precision cost” is not automatically invoked when using handaxes, potentially highlighting why they were a favored technology across broad geographic and temporal swathes. However, “precision” is potentially a threshold variable, only invoked in specific cutting behaviors or materials. Our results highlight the importance of future experiments that measure and define precision differently.