Acheulean

alternative Acheulian

1. not comparablearchaeologyOf or pertaining to a lower Paleolithic period characterized by the presence of flaked bifacial hand axes.

   When early modern humans – the ones who would eventually become us – started to move out of Africa something over a hundred thousand years ago, Acheulean tools were the technology of choice.

   2003, Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything, BCA, published 2003, page 402

   1 more example

   Assuming that language ability extends back to the hominids, we see a slow process of cultural development over millions of years, and then in the Acheulean period of Homo erectus, about three hundred thousand years ago, we find the first engraved tool.

   1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 95

alternative Acheulian

1. archaeologyA lower Paleolithic period characterized by the presence of flaked bifacial hand axes.