When I take my dog for a walk, he finds the biggest stick he can, whether or not he can carry it.
When I was in high school I knew a kid that loved Braveheart so much he got a reproduction of the claymore, a sword that was easily ten inches taller than him.
I think some dudes, no matter the species, just like the big pointy stick.
Makes a lot of sense with larger creatures with tougher hides. Could they be big enough that 2 people would use it together? Wouldn't it be more probable the people at the time were smaller than us now?
Why couldn't they just have tied a stick to the axe? Is it just a handaxe because people didn't do real axes yet, or another reason? Seems occam's razor that if you can't hold it it wasn't held like that.
The article references Neanderthals but Neanderthals were way more recent than ~300kya? In fact even the earliest Neanderthals were closer in time to now than then…