Assessment Questions 5.2

The Levallois stone-tool industry typifies premodern Homo sapiens and involves a shift in emphasis from the production of core tools to the production of flake tools. Unlike the Acheulean handaxe, which sculpted a single, large, multipurpose tool from a stone nodule and used only the waste flakes that happened to fit a given need, the Levallois technique focuses on the production of consistently shaped flakes from carefully prepared cores. The stone nodule or core is no longer shaped into a tool but becomes the source from which flakes of predetermined and consistent size and form are produced. The flakes serve as blanks to be refined into tools intended for specific tasks.

The Levallois technology offers advantages over the Acheulean handaxe technology in terms of tool efficiency and versatility. Acheulean hand axes are described as convenient but not especially efficient, similar to a person described as "A Jack of all trades, a master of none." The Levallois technology involves the production of differently configured flakes serving as blanks for tools designed for different tasks. This strategy allows for the efficient production of tools with specialized functions like cutting, piercing, or perforating. The Levallois technique is noted for its efficiency in using stone, producing a greater amount of sharp, usable edge per unit weight of core compared to Oldowan or Acheulean technologies. Replicative studies have shown that multiple consistently shaped flakes can be removed from a single Levallois core, contributing to its efficiency.