Hand-axe (on loan)

This hand-axe comes from the site of Attirampakkam, situated near a meandering tributary stream of the river Kortallaiyar, northwest of Chennai. This was one of the first Stone Age sites to be discovered in the world by the geologist Robert Bruce Foote in 1863. In 1999 excavations at Attirampakkam revealed startling new data indicating such stone tools could have been produced between 1.7 and 1.07 million years ago.