At https://dailygalaxy.com/2026/08/elephant-bone-reveals-ancient-human-skills/ … we have the strange story of an elephant bone hammer found at Boxgrove near Chichester. This site, subject to intermittent research over many years, is dated 500,000 years ago. It played a major part in the search for human origins as it is not clear if the site was occupied by Neanderthals or an earlier group such has Homo heidelbergensis. There is a considerable literature about Boxgrove as it was discovered quite a long time ago. The new research is published by Science Advances and represents a modern analysis involving 3D scanning technology and electron microscopy, in order to tease out the smallest details. The tool itself was quite small, just 11 cm in length, 6 cm wide and 3 cm thick. Its existence shows that early humans were able to make specialised tools a very long time ago. The bone was carefully shaped into a tool for a specific purpose. The bone is thought to be from an elephant, but its size makes that impossible to verify. It is a cortical bone, the thick layer of a large animal bone. It was not designed for powerful blows – so not strictly a hammer to thump things. It was designed to make controlled strikes on stone tools. As bone is softer than stone it would have removed small pieces from damaged edges without breaking the tool itself. It was used as a repair kit, to restore sharp blade edges on hand axes and cutting tools in general.
