Great article Jim - thanks.

The following bit will resonate with some of us on TMA methinks ;-)

"Mutch and Durbidge are unpaid and answerable to no one. Without them, the flints might never have been found. In our regulated, budget-driven world, it turns out that it's still possible for the independent visionary to rewrite history."

The time scale when these early humans were about and knapping flints is mind boggling -

"And what were these early humans like? Well, they predate Neanderthals by hundreds of thousands of years, but still would have been much more like us than our closest living relatives today, the chimpanzees. At Boxgrove in West Sussex a few fossils have been found of Homo heidelbergensis, dating from 500,000 years ago. Pakefield hominins may be their ancestors, and ultimately the Neanderthals' too - it's thought that, some 15,000 years ago, the lineage died out."

I'm holding in my left hand a small axe reputably made by Homo heidelbergensis, and in my right hand my wirless mouse; the distance between them is just a couple of foot - the time scale between them is anything from 15,000 to 500,000 years. In shape and feel the axe and the mouse actually don't look that different. I once asked someone what little miracle of man's ingenuity she thought might be sitting here in half a million years' time. She replied, "Something floating..."

I like that :-)