Page 100 - Contribution To Phenomenology

THE BODY AS PAN-CULTURAL UNIVERSAL 93

reference to stone tools—"a continuous anterior cutting blade" replaces a
slicing and grinding instrument; in other words, starting at the back teeth
as originally suggested, one readily observes that molars give way to
incisors.^^
Now edges either stand out in relief, as with molars and core tools,
or they define contour, as with incisors and flake tools. In either case,
however, whatever has an edge has power. Understandably, then, the
critical character of a stone tool in the beginning was not that it have a
definite, set shape but that it "have an edge." The beginnings of stone
tool-making were in consequence not a matter of flaking stones in
specific ways; rather, early hominids took whatever edges resulted from
flaking. A concern with shape becomes evident at a later stage, namely,
in Acheulian handaxes. (Acheulian handaxes were general purpose tools
that were widely used in Africa, Southwest Asia, and Europe.) Where
edges are not created as surface properties of an object but a single all-
over edge dominates, the surfaces of the object are likely to be perceived
as sides, and this because the same edge that defines simple contour ipso
facto defines sides. Our hands are a paradigmatic instance of this
relationship. In fact, where sides are not accidents of flaking but are
created in their own right, the stone has been shaped by turning it over,
the knapper working the edge first from what will ultimately be one face,
then what will ultimately be the other face, then from the first, and so
on. Rather than jagged edges, "evenly trimmed sides" result.^^ In effect,
a three-dimensional act eventuates in a two-sided object. As with the
Acheulian handaxes, the visual character of such a tool is prominent;
shape in the form of an all-over contoured edge is a strikingly notable
feature. Just so with our hands whose shape is perceived as an all-over
contour and whose sides are readily in evidence by turning them over.
Furthermore, just as the entire stone is a tool, so our entire hand is a
tool as in gripping and striking. Analogical thinking is thus again clearly
evident.^^ Acheulian handaxes are conceptually linked with hands in the

^^ David Pilbeam, The Ascent of Man (New York: Macmillan, 1972), 59.
^^ Andre Leroi-Gourhan, Prehistoric Man (New York: Philosophical Library,
1957), 66.
^^ There is a single recent reference in the literature—by British anthropolog-
ist K. P. Oakley—to a correspondence between Acheulian handaxes and hominid
hands. The correspondence was originally suggested by German archaeologist R. R.
Schmidt (See his superimposed drawing of a hand on the outline of an Achuelian
handaxe in his The Dawn of the Human Mind [London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1936],