Polished stone axe
Hacha de piedra pulida
- Date
- c. 8000 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Beidha and Jericho, southern Levant, Jordan / West Bank
- Credited to
- PPNB communities of the Levant
- Field
- Tools
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A hard-rock axe (basalt, jadeite, flint) smoothed by abrasion, with a resilient edge that does not chip when striking wood. It is the tool that made large-scale forest clearance and construction timber-working possible.
Ground-edge axes are documented in Australia from about 44,000-49,000 years ago (a fragment from Carpenter's Gap, Kimberley, dated to around 46,400 years), older than the one from Nawarla Gabarnmang (Arnhem Land, about 35,400 years), now considered the second oldest known; in Japan dates of c. 30,000 BCE hold; in western Eurasia the polished axe becomes widespread with the Neolithic.
What it led to
- Deforestation and field clearance: the agrarian landscape
- Structural carpentry: beams, dugout canoes, posts
- Long-distance exchange of prestige greenstone (Alpine jadeite reaching as far as Scotland)
Built on
- Chipped (flaked) axe
- Bead abrasion and polishing techniques
Made possible
- Wetland drainage horticulture (taro, banana)c. 8000 BCE
- Dugout canoe and paddlec. 8000 BCE
- Polished stone hoec. 7000 BCE
- Sledgec. 6500 BCE
- Pile dwellingc. 5700 BCE
- Basalt adze of the Linear Pottery culturec. 5100 BCE
- Megalithic architecture (passage grave and menhir)c. 4800 BCE
- Underground flint miningc. 4300 BCE
- Timber trackway (constructed road)3807 BCE
- Ard (scratch plough)c. 3800 BCE
- Megalithic templec. 3600 BCE
- Wheel and wheeled vehiclec. 3500 BCE
- Toki (Polynesian polished stone adze)c. 1300
- Post house and pile dwelling
- Copper axe