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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.
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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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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."
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.
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