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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."
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"The stone hand-axes were discovered last year ...embedded in a type of rock formed by meteorites"
Since the earth is only 6000 years old, the simplest explanation (Occams razor) must be these stone axes must have been created by some stone-age aliens in their big granite spaceships.
"So that's where I left my hand axe. Clumsy me!" said Dorthy Dinosaur before proceeding to eat more children from the front row at the Wiggles concert.
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... homo erectus tool :-D
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
Stone stools AKA coprolites are actually pretty common, human or not.
This stone tool is clearly a relic left behind from the Jurassic Elves, whose reign over Earth was ended almost two million years ago by the collision of the Shield of Immortality with the Sword of Penetrating Awesomeness. The world was torn asunder and all evidence of these majestic elfy creatures was lost to the massive geological events spanning between then and now, which simultaneously wiped out the Dark Dwarves of the Deep (having set up their vast cavernous cities under dormant volcanoes and all).
Unless the talking snake people are right and was infact placed by a monotheistic/polytheistic combo deity to fool everyone into thinking he doesn't exist, so that he can punish said people with eternal suffering.
It could also have belonged to the Migit, the first being to be crafted by his Noodliness' divine appendage. RAmen.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, watch it -- I'm huge!
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.
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"Experts say the result has a margin of error of 610,000 years and the find has to be approved by other experts as well, AP reported."
I think this piece of info is worth mentioning.
The only site with a decent image.
A little more info
Some more bits of info
As can be seen from the first link, the object is not fractured along natural lines and is definitely axe-shaped. It is not some irregular thing that could have been formed by a boulder smashing down a river.
The material is not flint. I am not certain what it is, but it's not a flint.
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Well, they do have previously discovered examples of Lower Paleolithic tools to compare this find with. I think the original finds were pretty thoroughly (and skeptically) reviewed.
I don't think the comparison to Intelligent Design is very useful. In Intelligent Design, we know nothing about the Designer, the Designer's methods or the Designer's goals. There is no real experimental work being done.
In contrast, we have a pretty good idea of who made (or who would have made) these tools, what their goals were and what their methods were. Based on this, we can do quite a bit of experimentation to figure out what we don't know (or even whether or not they're tools at all).
Also rather surprising, since I've seen examples of flint tools made by modern researchers by striking edges. Got a link?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I meant it merely as a rhetorical example, of people who are so motivated to find or justify a particular thing that it will pervert how they interpret what they find or observe. That type of personality is not absent in scientific disciplines, though it certainly should be. It all hinges on whether and how much a person becomes emotionally invested in some idea or thing. Remember the story of the Piltdown Man hoax? Even after the hoax was revealed, there were some "scientists" who for a time stubbornly clung to its veracity. I have a hard time granting such a person the title of scientist at all.
Carbon dating is not the only dating technique. There are actually perhaps 30-35 different common dating techniques with useful time range from a matter of decades to billions of years, tens of billions of years infact.
Another common one is radiometric dating which gives you a range of 700 million to 50 billion years (!). In a way Carbon 14 dating is radiometric dating, it's just using one particular isotope. In reality there a many different isotopes that may be used to suit the range you need.
Since the stone tool is not organic matter, carbon 14 would not be useful. Carbon dating gets too inaccurate after 50,000 years.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Ok, fine, you find a tool that the ROCK that it is made of dates back to 1.8 million years. So what? Does this mean that the composition of the rock changed at the time it was formed into a tool? Wouldn't the carbon dating stay the same before and after the "chipping away" of the portions that that were removed to form the tool? So the rock is 1.8 million years old, who is to say that the TOOL is not only 750 years old?
Am I missing something here?
It's unclear these days where erectus begins.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/20/science/20fossil.htm
The Dmanisi specimens were quite different. Their skull sizes indicated that their brains were not much larger than the brain of a chimpanzee. Their brains were closer in size to those of Homo habilis, a poorly understood earlier ancestral species.
In the last few years, however, the researchers collected more extensive, well-preserved skeletal remains of an adolescent and three adults. Some of the fossils resembled those of later erectus specimens in Africa. The lower limbs and arched feet reflected traits "for improved terrestrial locomotor performance," the team reported.
Over all, the fossils were "a surprising mosaic" of primitive and evolved features. The small body and small craniums, the upper limbs, elbows and shoulders were more like the earliest habilis specimens.
Carbon dating gets too inaccurate after 50,000 years.
Carbon dating doesn't just become inaccurate after 50,000 years... it becomes impossible to distinguish between measurable C14 decay and background radiation. It's completely inapplicable at that age.
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I am a professional early stone age archeologist, so naturally this has my attention. Unfortunately, as long as the stuff is not properly published, there is no way to ascertain the reliability of the claim. The latter will hinge on:
a) are it really stone tools;
b) is the dating reliable (and there is more to this than just lab techniques).
Without clear details having yet been published to judge those, I remain very cautious. SE Asia has a history of dubious claims for stone "tools", and dubious dates attached to (real) stone tools. Partly, this has to do with the complex geology in many parts of the area. Partly this has to do with a persistent old-fashioned typochronological approach to archaeology with some SE Asian scholars (in which primitive looking "must" be old - while they not necessarily are).
Point to consider is that in SE Asia, bifacial tools are present that technologically look like the Acheulean (Lower Palaeolithic handaxe cultures of Africa and Europe), but are in fact Neolithic (i.e. from the last 5000 years).
In answer to some of the earlier comments: when chipped stone comes from high energy fluvial (water-laid) deposits, it is sometimes very difficult to make the distinction between intentionally flaked stone (shaped by human hand) or "geofacts", stone flaked by geological force (like tossing and banging against each other in a high energy stream). The latter sometimes can look very convincing. The same goes for tephrafacts (pseudo-artifacts created in a volcanic environment). Unfortunately, SE Asia with it's high energy monsoonal river systems is an ideal environment for the creation of geofacts. It is also an environment where chronologies are sometimes horribly and notoriously screwed up.
So we have to await publication of the details before we are able to say anything serious about this extraordinary claim.
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