Jamie Stevenson was walking with his dog along Portsmouth beach (Hampshire, England) when he stumbled across an axe head dating back to the stone age. The discoverer said: "My dog Woody likes chasing stones when I skim them on the water, and so I just happened to pick it up. It felt different and looked different. It moulded nicely into my hands. When I looked at it more closely I saw that the edges were cut to be sharp."
     Mr Stevenson took the stone he found on Prinsted Beach to Havant Museum and it was forwarded to Kay Ainsworth, the keeper of archaeology at Hampshire Museums Service. She said: "This is a very nice example of a flint Mesolithic era axe. The general shape suggests that it was used as an adze – a stone-age carpentry tool." Mr Stevenson said: "The museum dated it to around 8,500BC."
     The axe head was returned to Mr Stevenson, who plans to keep it safe.

Source: Portsmouth Today (27 March 2004)