The Acheulean Tradition is an Old World Lower and Middle Paleolithic culture, dated from 1.4 million years ago to 100,000 years ago. Characterized by a stone tool assemblage dominated by handaxes, the Acheulean tradition originated in Sub-saharan Africa, such as at the Olduvai Gorge.
The dominant theory is that early forms of Homo (such as H. ergaster) spread the culture out of Africa into the near east, southern and western Europe, and the Indian subcontinent; while similarly-dated Mousterian Tradition tools are generally considered the toolkit of the Neanderthals.
Sources
This definition is part of the About.com Guide to the Lower Paleolithic.
Bar-Yosef, Ofer 1975 Early man in the Jordan Valley: Excavations at Ubeidiya. Archaeology 28: 30-37.
Bordes, Francois 1972 A Tale of Two Caves. New York: Harper and Row.
Bordes, Francois and Denise de Sonneville-Bordes 1970 The significance of variability in paleolithic assemblages. World Archaeology 2(1):61-73.
Kleindienst, Maxine R. 1961 Variability within the Late Acheulean assemblage in Eastern Africa. South African Archaeological Bulletin 16:35-52.
Mora, Rafael and Ignacio de la Torre 2005 Percussion tools in Olduvai Beds I and II (Tanzania): Implications for early human activities. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 24:179-192.
Ronen, Avraham 2006 The oldest human groups in the Levant. Comptes Rendu Paleovol 5:343-351.
Sharon, Gonen 2009 Acheulian Giant-Core Technology. Current Anthropology 50(3):335-367.
