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stone tools like hand axes were not well suited for combat. For example, war clubs the dominant weapon of choice in every stone age culture I know of, despite using hand axes for work and spears for hunting.

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I don't think there's much physical evidence for the use of war clubs in the stone age except a few skulls with blunt force trauma that could have also been caused by hand axe - it's mostly based off ethnographic studies of the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample [1].

IMO any culture that participated regularly in warfare would have figured out that sharp spears with long reach are far more effective than clubs unless that combat was largely symbolic. Clubs would make sense because they're not as lethal.

[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12110-023-09445-3

Spears are easily parried and its really difficult to recover an attack posture afterwards since you need to quickly retreat the full length of the spear. Someone wielding a short one handed weapon has a major advantage because they can move in quickly, parry with their weapon or free hand and then make multiple strikes to an opponent who can only defend at that range and can’t attack. They’re only really effective in formation with a lot of other soldiers which is not a tactic you would expect from a group without military discipline.

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