Axe Factory

This is a photograph I took in a place that inspired one of the Sacred Sites of the Iyes in my Warriors of the Continuum Trilogy. It is a landscape shaped by millennia of erosion, but particularly so during the ice ages. The last, the Devensian, peaked around 20,000 years ago. Some time after the ice had left – in the Neolithic c. 5500 years ago – skilled makers utilised a prized greenstone volcanic tuff from this site to craft axe blades.

Here’s a picture of one from the British Museum.

Polishing these axes made them stronger by removing defects that could focus stresses. These polished axes have been found across the country, likely traded.

In Arrival, Jessica, Beth, and Lanky are cast back in time to a location close to this. They are then taken to this specific site and there is a scene where Lanky and Jessica climb up to this vantage point to get a better idea of where they are.

Of course, they are cast back into the last stages of the Upper Palaeolithic, and in the academic understanding of this area, there’s no evidence of the Axe factory being active then. But axes have been worked for hominids for hundreds of thousands of years, the oldest pushing 1.5 million years ago. So, it’s not too much effort to imagine a maker at this site working an axe 12000 years ago.

Especially not in this Continuum of ours!