Neolithic Stone Tool - 10 cm - Neolithic axe (No reserve price)

Rare and authentic Neolithic polished stone axe with a smooth surface.
Excellent condition considering the millennia of alternating burial in sand and exposure to the elements and various natural factors. No pieces missing, a small mark on the domed face seems as old as the stone itself.
Its dimensions (10x8 cm) and weight (315 g) have made it suitable for multiple uses, being just as apt to be inserted and held in a branch or stave as to serve as a robust grinder or scraper.
Beautiful, regular, and balanced shape, attesting to the tool’s functionality: the edge is beveled on both sides and shows signs of percussion use; it also features a long, straight surface of plane, regular erosion due to scraper use.
The exceptional feature of this tool lies in the light, gentle depression that has been carved into the center of its flat face, a perfect anatomical shape that nests closely in the palm at the base of the thumb and allows it to be held firmly. An immemorial gesture, an moving trace of the constant pursuit of progress and improvement our ancestors demonstrated generation after generation, since the first roughly flaked flint tools. Specialists consider that the design and manufacture of such artifacts are technical feats largely comparable, given the means and eras in which they were made, to our most advanced industrial productions.
Acquired in the 1960s at an auction of the estate of a renowned Swiss archaeologist and ethnologist, who spent much of his life in Africa studying local prehistory civilizations and returned from his missions with numerous artifacts from various periods.