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Many of us involved in A History of the World often use the phrase 'the power of objects', whether it's the power to physically connect us with the people of the past, or the power to tell stories. But this week we've seen a real demonstration of this power in the shape of this handaxe from Norfolk.

It currently resides in Norwich Castle Museum, but was found on a Norfolk beach 10 years ago by a man walking a dog. What it did back in 2000 was alert archaeologists to the fact that this part of East Anglia might hold some interesting secrets.

So, a team from the British Museum, Natural History Museum, and many other institutions and elsewhere started digging down on the beach near the village of Happisburgh (that's pronounced Haze-boro by the way). They uncovered remains that have literally revolutionised the way we think about the .

It turns out Happisburgh was home to northern Europe's earliest known inhabitants who shared their beach with mammoths, elk and hyaena's among other flora and fauna, some 800,000 years ago.

The handaxe that started it all was described by the British Museum's Nick Ashton in the History of the World programme about our handaxe from Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. In that broadcast Neil MacGregor explained how the handaxe was one of the first great tools to be made by us humans. He also described the way its revolutionary usefulness ensured that it spread from Africa into Europe and Asia. Well, we now know that it made it as far north as Norfolk as long as 800,000 years ago.

You can see a video about Happisburgh and its amazing discoveries on the . And there's a great piece in the Guardian written by Mike Pitts, Editor of British Archaeology, describing what would have been like.

Some of the finds can be seen in close-up on the and there's an of a scanned object at the Natural History Museum.

Such finds truly bring not only the very ancient past, but also the subtle, painstaking craft of archaeology to vivid life. The team behind this discovery spent years sieving, scraping, dusting, digging, scanning and analysing the objects they found. And it's their efforts that enable us to make radio programmes and write object labels that state with certainty what we know our ancient ancestors were like and how they lived.

Once again, I'm going to have to sit back in awe at the power of objects - and the dedication of the people who study them.