ABSTRACT
The first dated evidence for humans in Nubia during the Old Stone Age is possibly 300,000 years ago. By 70,000 BC the forerunners of modern man, Homo sapiens, would have been present. They are known only from the stone tools that have survived from that period, the most characteristic of which are known as Acheulean 'hand axes' (named from the town of Acheul in France where such tools were first found). These are large unspecialized tools, of roughly pear shape, whose exact use is not known, though we assume them to have had a range of function much of which would be concerned with the dismemberment and skinning of animals caught in the chase for food. These hand axes first appeared in Africa, the earliest in the world, about perhaps 1.5 million years ago, but reached the Nile valley much later. No doubt these early people also used wooden objects such as spears and clubs but no traces of them are known from Nubia and our knowledge of the first inhabitants of the Nubian Nile valley is derived solely from a study of the stone implements.
