A six-year-old boy unexpectedly found an extremely rare Neanderthal Mousterian hand ax on a beach in Sussex.
For three years, Ben Witten kept a shiny rock in his room that he picked up on Shoreham Beach never expecting that he held a truly precious object.
Coincidentally, he went to the Worthing Museum for a Stone Age exhibition which exhibited items that closely resembled what he thought to be just a cool-looking rock on the shore. Luckily, he attended the show at the museum, so his family contacted the museum curator, James Sainsbury, who wasn’t expecting much.
First, once Sainsbury saw the photograph, he recognized it immediately as an expert as Neanderthal axes have a distinct shape: small and dark two-sided flints, he explained to Furthermore, and even more astoundingly, this unassuming stone is not just any ax, but a Mousterian hand ax used to smash bones to extract the nutritious bone marrow. This tool, in particular, dates back to a special moment in their history just before they famously faded out of existence.
“Ben found the flint axe in the upper shingle at Shoreham beach, so it is very difficult to say with confidence whether the axe was originally lost there or whether it was dredged up from offshore river deposits during work to strengthen the beach defenses,” Sainsbury stated in aBen agreed to loan his priceless find to the Worthing Theatres and Museum so they could put it on display until February. And the young boy’s finding is even attracting more visitors.
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