High-speed footage of hands making a stone tool by chipping flakes from a stone. This method produces small sharp flakes of rock, which can be used as tools themselves, and leaves a core from which a larger tool such as a hand axe can be produced. This technique was used in the widespread Acheulean technology, which was developed by the human ancestor Homo erectus in the old stone age (palaeolithic), and the earliest examples are more than 1.5 million years old. The technique was refined over time, and reached its peak with the Mousterian technology of the neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis), which existed between around 350, 000 and 30, 000 years ago. Examples of these tools have been found in Europe, Asia and Africa, with the later, more refined forms found around Europe, north Africa and the Levant, where they were made by anatomically modern humans