BRITAIN: THE HAPPISBURGH HAND AXE IS AT THE TOP OF 50 DISCOVERIES FOUND IN THE PAST 15 YEARS

Unearthed in 2000 on Happisburgh Beach, Norfolk, by Mike Chambers, a civil servant, the axe radically altered historians’s understanding of our past, revealing that Britain had been inhabited by human beings for 100,000 years longer than had been previously thought.

The flint hand-axe, which is on display at Norwich Castle Museum, was used by Britain's early ancestors as a butchery tool to carve flesh off skeletons between 500,000 and 700,000 years ago.