g from 400,000 years ago, were found at a site in Germany. But the primary evidence of H. erectus' technology and mode of existence derives from sites at which flaked stone tools have been discovered, many times with the bones of H. erectus' kills.
Over the course of the Lower Paleolithic era stone tools evolved "by hardly perceptible gradations" from "the most primitive pebble-tools" to the most characteristic example of the era "the Middle Pleistocene hand-axe" (Clark and Piggott 45). Earlier tools, such as "crude scrapers and choppers" were somewhat haphazard in form but the hand ax, in its finest forms, "was an artifact with converging edges, which met at a point" (Fagan 89). In order to create such objects it was necessary that the maker envisage its finished form prior to beginning and use "carefully directed hammer blows" in place of the "opportunistic blows" that produced the older tools (Fagan 89). The hand ax undoubtedly filled a variety of functions--ranging from cutting roots and working wood to scraping hides and butchering kills.
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