A hand axe, today often known by the more neutral term biface, is a stone tool with two faces typical of the lower (Acheulean) and middle Palaeolithic (Mousterian), and is the longest-used tool of human history.
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“But, when to Sin our byast Nature leans,
The careful Devil is still at hand with means;
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The Good Old Cause, reviv’d, a Plot requires,
Plots, true or false, are necessary things,
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—John Dryden (1631–1700)
“I had an old axe which nobody claimed, with which by spells in winter days, on the sunny side of the house, I played about the stumps which I had got out of my bean-field. As my driver prophesied when I was plowing, they warmed me twice,—once while I was splitting them, and again when they were on the fire, so that no fuel could give out more heat. As for the axe,... if it was dull, it was at least hung true.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)