This flint single-platform core is from the Lower Palaeolithic period in  Ukraine.  The core dates to about 400,000 BP (Marine Isotope Stage 11) and is from Layer III in the area called ‘main excavation’ at Medzhybizh 1.

The artefact is curated by the Institute of Archaeology, The National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, database ID MJ1/04/III/90.

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This small core was made on a flat pebble of flint.  It was extensively reduced by freehand percussion, and the angles of the earlier percussion scars suggest several series of flakes were removed from the pebble.  It appears that the pebble was rotated and an attempt was made to remove a flake from the opposite edge of the core.  The right-angle break may suggest that the pebble was supported on an anvil when this blow was struck.

See the annotations for technological details about this stone tool.

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Hominins first moved beyond the Carpathian Mountains into Ukraine by 1.2 million years ago.  They likely spread across the continent from warmer Mediterranean regions, attesting to their ability to adapt their technology to survive in colder northern conditions.  Burned bone at Medzhybizh 1 and possible hearth features at Medzhybizh A suggests that these hominins used fire.  They used a simple flaking technology to produce their stone tools, consisting of a combination of freehand percussion, anvil-supported percussion, and bipolar percussion.  Most stone-flaking was done on small cobbles or pebbles of locally-available material.  At Tunel Wielki Cave in Poland, larger flakes were themselves reduced as small cores.  The edges of cores and flakes were used as tools to butcher animals, and faunal evidence from Medzhybizh 1 suggests that the hominins may have actively hunted deer.  The hominin species may have been Homo heidelbergensis, although the early stone technology in these eastern regions lacks the handaxes thought to have been made by this hominin species in western parts of the European continent.  The stone technology shares similarities with tools found in association with Eurasian Homo erectus hominin skeletons at the famous site of Dmanisi in Georgia, located to the east and south.  Dmanisi dates to between about 1.77 and 1.85 million years ago.