The most characteristic Acheulian tools are termed hand axes and cleavers. Considerable improvement in the technique of producing hand axes occurred over the long period; anthropologists sometimes distinguish each major advance in method by a separate number or name. Early Acheulian tool types are called Abbevillian (especially in Europe); the last Acheulian stage is sometimes called Micoquian. Industries that existed at the same time and overlapped in geographic range, but specialized in flake tools and lacked hand axes, are known as Clactonian (England) and Tayacian (western and central Europe). Acheulian industries are found in Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia as far east as Calcutta (the Far East was characterized by a tool tradition called the chopper chopping-tool industry). The earliest hand axes, such as those found with Homo erectus in Bed II at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, were crude pointed bifaces: chips were removed from both sides of a core by rapping it against a set "anvil" stone to form a sinuous cutting edge all around. In the next step a hammerstone replaced the "anvil," and the whole surface of the core was flaked away to form an oval implement with relatively straight edges. Small flakes were sometimes removed from the edges to further straighten them. Later still, the hammerstone was replaced by bone or wood "hammers," which removed smaller, flatter flakes and resulted in a smoother tool with a sharp, straight edge. A sinuous edge could be produced purposefully, resulting in a "saw." In the late Acheulian, hand axes were pointed, and the butt end was often only roughly finished. Cleavers were large tools with one end squared off to form an axelike cutting edge.
In addition to hand axes and cleavers, the Acheulian industry included choppers and flakes. The latter were produced from a prepared core and could be used as knives without further change or could be chipped to make side-scrapers, burins, and other implements. Though bone and wood were probably also used as tools, little evidence of them remains, and no discussion of style can be attempted. At the beginning of the Fourth (Würm) Glacial Period, Acheulian industries were gradually replaced by (graded into) the Levalloisian stone-flaking technique and the Mousterian industry in Europe and Fauresmith and Sangoan industries in Africa.