The Spirit in Human Evolution - Waldorf Research Institute

completeness of a biface. Just as the basic tool elements of point, cutting edge, lever and
hammer, whilst being represented by individual specialized stone flake-tools, are all
combined in the hand-axe, the truly universal tool, so too a cognitive archetype of spatial
orientation evolved of which the biface itself is the fullest expression.
It has often been observed that large numbers of bifaces litter the sites where
they are found. It seems that they were produced in large numbers and discarded before
they were “worn out.” A recent report on the Boxgrove site in Sussex describes exactly
this situation: “They did not bother to use previously discarded tools, all of which were
perfectly sharp. Instead, they seem to have preferred making fresh ones. When they had
finished butchering, they appear to have thrown them away. The rationale behind this
wasteful behavior is a mystery. The raw material for manufacturing cutting equipment,
flint, was plentiful and it could well be that the act of making cutting tools was regarded
as such an integral part of the eating ritual that tool manufacture occurred irrespective of
whether it was strictly necessary or not the handaxes were discarded at a rate of one or
more per square meter.” 31 The hominids who made these tools were not Homo erectus
but probably Homo heidelbergensis, but the point about the repetition of activity is
valid. Whether it had anything to do with eating rituals is beside the point. What comes
to expression through this apparently unnecessary activity relates to a more profound
inner need.
We know from modern studies of neural development in children, that such a
process of orientation corresponds to a mental framework which is based on a neural
substrat, a network of neural connections fixed and reinforced through the myelinization
process in which the connections between related neurons are strengthened through the
growth of a fatty sheath along the axons linking the neurons. Children create and perfect
this mental framework through regular repetition and practice of specific movements,
by endlessly moving around, stooping, standing up, repeating manual skills , building
towers of play-blocks, letting them fall and starting again. The spatial relationships
are explored and practiced with a devotion and repetition rare at any other age. The
spatial-exploring, orientation phase of childhood corresponds well with the Homo
erectus stage of humankind, which is not of course to imagine erectus people as threeyear-old
toddlers , they would not have lasted long on the savannah. At an imaginative,
qualitative level there is an element of recapitulation , though in the modern child at a
higher metamorphosed level. The similarity lies at the level of will activity. Here we can
experience the formative, creative forces working to shape and structure the cerebral
instrument that later, with the emergence of the individualized soul faculties, will give
expression to thoughts and ideas. As such the biface is something quintessentially human,
an archetypal form expressing, perhaps, the as yet undifferentiated, three-dimensional
unity of the human soul.
A New Technique Appears on the Scene
The curious thing is that around 250,000 years ago the descendants of erectus,
Homo heidelbergensis or Neanderthals, began to make bifaces with much the same form
but with a radically different method. Instead of choosing a suitably sized blank and
knocking off the flakes around the edges until the desired shape was arrived at, the flakes
themselves, instead of being seen as waste, became the basis for the tools themselves
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31
See report in Independent, August 27, 1995.
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