A child found a 50,000-year-old Neanderthal tool on the beach (4 photos)

Three years ago, a six-year-old boy named Ben found an unusual stone on a beach in Sussex, England. He took it home and forgot about it for a long time. Now the object has been identified: it is a 50,000-year-old Neanderthal axe.





When James Sainsbury, curator of the Worthing Museum of Archaeology, received a letter about the find, he did not expect the object to be so unique.

"I often get letters about finds on the beach, but usually they're just funny-looking pebbles," he said. "But this was a Neanderthal hand axe from the Upper Paleolithic! A truly incredible find."



Neanderthal hand axes were typically relatively small pieces of flint, sharpened on both sides.

Sainsbury explained: "It's from the very last period of Neanderthal life, when their days were numbered in Europe and Britain. It's a real rarity in Sussex. We only have one in our museum. They're very rare because they probably had a very low population density."





On November 24, Ben and his family brought the artifact to Worthing Museum, where Sainsbury confirmed that it was indeed a Neanderthal axe. Judging by its undamaged appearance, it had spent most of its history underwater.

"I think it was brought along with tons of pebbles to shoreline either from the English Channel, more precisely from the river bed, which is now flooded, or from the North Sea, in the Doggerland area," the expert suggested.

Doggerland is a land mass now flooded by the North Sea, which was inhabited by prehistoric people about 8,000 years ago.

Sainsbury and his colleagues are trying to find out when the last batch of pebbles were brought to Shoreham beach.



Ben has loaned his find to Worthing Museum. Within an hour of meeting Ben's family, the axe was put on public display. This amazing exhibit will delight visitors until February.