Object 3: Olduvai handaxe (made 1.2 - 1.4 million years ago) found in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, East Africa

Savannah man stands upright,

Bright inquisitive eyes contemplating the horizon -

The line of possibility where the sun dips daily,

Whetting a knife edge of earth,

A sharp keen blade of Savannah plain slicing into the sky

To let in the night

With its mystery of stars and planets;

Its sparkling messengers that march across the black sleep of wonder,

And make you dream of walking across the sky.

And the stars have marched across the memory of men and women long gone:

Each life a step forward, each death a legacy of learning,

Bequeathed to a growing family of people like us...

Our ancestors in Africa have outgrown their home.

The hot Savannah air stirs with the melody of life:

The cicada's relentless chirp,

The morning chorus with its territorial army of birds;

Proclaiming their existence with a song,

The bellowing roar of the killer cats, stalking their prey,

The delicate timpani of dry grass moving a murmur in the warm wind...

And the percussive 'tap, tap, tap' of people making tools.

There in the hand of Savannah man is a teardrop of stone:

An evolution of an idea melded from the family memory of generations long gone:

A practical handaxe, reassuringly perfect:

Two sharp edges that will cut trees, cut meat,

Scrape bark from branches, skin from flesh

To make a second skin to wear when the cold winds blow,

And a sharp point that can drill a hole

So that deft hands can loop sinews through dried skins, stitch and tie,

Explore the industry of imagination

That sparks a fusion of neurons, lights a fuse in the brain,

Plants ideas in the restless mind of a restless man.

And the ideas have a sound: a grunt in the throat, a noise in the mouth

That becomes a word -

Savannah people are speaking... there is language in the land.

Families sit together, chipping at stone, sharing thoughts and ideas,

Talking about food and shelter, talking about how to make the perfect axe,

Wondering what the coming day will bring, what food can be found,

What woman is heavy with child, what man is wild and unruly,

What time of the season will the fruit ripen and be ready to eat,

And what would happen to a man if he were to walk away from here,

Follow that unknown path the great blinding sun takes daily, 

Where vision ends and dreams endure?

And then one day someone picks up an axehead,

Weighs it in his hand; its usefulness is reassuring,

Its secure purpose, a fact -

Here is a tool to travel with; here is a tool that a man will need

On a journey to a place where no other man has ever trod.

And so he walks and they watch, awe struck

As he crosses the horizon's blade and disappears from sight,

Taking the daylight with him.

And as the stars once again sprinkle the night sky with a blessing of dreams,

Someone is thinking, 'When will I go?'

Because once someone has begun a journey, someone else is bound to follow.

And stone is moving, stone is cutting,

Stone is seeding the landscape with the language of stone:

Savannah man has grown up and left home to walk a wilderness of wonders

For a million years...

With a teardrop in his hand.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/I3I8quLCR8exvdZeQPONrw