Stone Tool 1.83M Years Old Discovered In Malaysia

goran72 writes with news out of Malaysia that archaeologists have announced the discovery of stone tools more than 1.8 million years old — the earliest evidence of human ancestors in South-east Asia. Researchers believe the tools were made by members of the early human ancestor species Homo erectus. The tools actually date as slightly older than the earliest H. erectus fossils, which came from Georgia and China. No bones of that antiquity have so far been found in Malaysia. "The stone hand-axes were discovered last year in the historical site of Lenggong in northern Perak state, embedded in a type of rock formed by meteorites which was sent to a Japanese lab to be dated."

Comments

when does a stone become an axe

[wjh31]

at what point does a stone that happens to have been eroded/chipped naturally into the rough shape of an axe-head become a stone that has been intentionally crafted by (pre)human hands. How likely is it that these things are a case of seeing things because we want to, c.f the face in the rocks on mars

Re:when does a stone become an axe

[DiegoBravo]

> Neither of the natural patterns are likely to lead to the organised pattern of chips that a worked stone would exhibit.

It depends. Up to this day there is a big number of inconclusive cases where archaeologists "discovered" sets of "older stone tools" but there is no clear consensus but acid disputes.

Of course when you have the nice bifacial spearpoints depicted in most books your argument is valid, but in a lot of "unifacial industries" typically oriented to cutting wood and plants, there are no such clear traces of chipping you allude. In several areas, a lot of originally "non interesting" stones are being reevaluated (always with several levels of controversy); the case is that probably most of the "stone age" tools and cultures are of this "ugly" kind.

Re:when does a stone become an axe

[canadian_right]

Some stone tools were naturally formed and used "as is" by ancient peoples. A trained archeologist can tell the difference due to a number of distinguishing marks that tools purposely made will have.

These methods are pretty standard things to learn:
Archaeological Laboratory Methods By Mark Q. Sutton, Brooke S. Arkush

Pretty standard stuff, and a question that was asked and answered a long time ago.

Huh?

[Webs 101]

I have no problem with the imterpretation that these are stone tools from 1.8 MYA (and you can tell by my pretentious use of the "MYA" abbreviation that I was once on the road to related Ph.D.).

But I don't understand this:

The stone hand-axes were discovered last year...embedded in a type of rock formed by meteorites....

How or why were these tools embedded in rock formed by meteorites? This rock was either formed before or after the tools. If formed before, they could only have been embedded manually, by H. erectus miners, I guess.

If the rock formed later, then these tools survived intact a meteorite strike, which seems unlikely. (Or was the rock formed by meteorite splash sediments?)

There is one other possibility, but it's so unlikely that I reject it: that the tools and rocks were thrown up in to the air and the whole mess coalesced and solidified.

I wish the article had more info, or I could find the original paper, although here is an AP article with a photo of the rocks.

Re:Huh?

[jd]

Possibly, but we're talking almost a million years older than the oldest known organized religion for which any evidence exists. We're talking so early that many anthropologists reject outright that such people had the mental capacity for complex ritual.

(I suspect the anthropologists are wrong on that, but the lack of any evidence of ritual worship older than about 800,000 years ago takes precedence over my personal feelings on the matter.)

That's news to me.

[jcr]

Also rather surprising, since I've seen examples of flint tools made by modern researchers by striking edges. Got a link?

-jcr