A Boy Found A Neanderthal Ax While Playing On A Beach
A nine-year-old boy from West Sussex, England, found a shiny carved object that is now on display at the Worthing Museum’s Stone Age exhibition in southern England.
Three years ago, when Ben Witten was just six-years-old, he came across a stone that stood out from the others while playing on Shoreham Beach. He took the rock home and kept it in his bedroom.
“I was looking around, and I saw this shiny flint rock,” Witten recalled. “I just thought it looked different [from] all the other different pebbles and stones.”
When he visited the museum recently, he was looking at some small axes that resembled his own rock. So later, he brought his find to the museum and had experts examine it.
They concluded that it was a Neanderthal hand ax that dates back to the Late Middle Paleolithic era between 40,000 and 60,000 years ago.
Neanderthals are the closest relative to modern humans. They became extinct about 40,000 years ago for reasons that are still not entirely clear. The discovery of the hand ax adds to a piece of Neanderthal history.
“We regularly have visitors bring in their finds from the local area. Mostly, these are other flint tools or Roman artifacts, but this is by far the oldest item shown to myself in 10-plus years,” said James Sainsbury, the curator of archaeology at Worthing Museum.
“Neanderthal hand axes are rare in Sussex. This is the first to be found in years. The nature of the find, being made by a young local boy on the beach, makes it doubly special.”
After Witten realized his stone might have historical significance, he and his mother emailed pictures of it to Sainsbury. He knew immediately that the stone was an important artifact.
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The ax is small enough to fit in the palm of a hand. It is the same on both sides and shows very little sign of wear and tear. Experts are not sure how it ended up on the beach.
It may have emerged from offshore river deposits during construction work to protect the beach from erosion. Or, perhaps a Neanderthal dropped it there all those years ago.
The coastline would’ve been farther back than it is today. The researchers don’t know exactly what the Sussex coast looked like back then.
Witten loaned the ax to the Worthing Museum, which offers free admission to guests. It will be returned to him in February.
Sainsbury hopes that the discovery will help people realize they don’t need special training to be able to find interesting artifacts.
It is crucial that all finds are reported to ensure that they are recorded properly, or else we risk losing that archaeological information forever.
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