THE ACCIDENTAL UNDERWATER DISCOVERY THAT CHANAGE ARCHAEOLOGY FOREVER
On 4 February 1995, Dr Bruno Werz was diving on the wreck of the Waddinxveen – one of two Dutch East India Company (VOC) ships that sank near Milnerton in a violent storm on 24 May 1697 – when he made an astonishing discovery. At the bottom of a four-metre-deep hole he’d dug into the seabed to study the local stratigraphy, he found a fist-shaped piece of rock that he immediately recognised as a prehistoric hand axe, used by early hominids between 300 000 and 1.6 million years ago.
The Acheulean tool (named after the site
