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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
Seeing creation where there is only nature? Nah, doesn't sound like something we'd do.
You were probably not a Boy Scout as a kid. There is actually a lot of work to make a sharp object out of a stone that is sharp and concisely sharp enough to be useful. Weather erosion like to make smooth surfaces not sharp ones. Rock chips at best will be good for poking but not cutting. So man made stone tools are actually quite different then a naturally occurring tool
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The article doesn't say, but if it's a flint then the stone is incredibly brittle and takes a considerable amount of skill to work without shattering the stone. Working flint (or any stone) to a point or an edge leaves a distinctive pattern of markings on the stone which would be all but impossible to have occurred naturally as you basically need to flake off the unwanted bits of flint until you get the desired edge or point. Natural weathering of stone tends to fall into a limited number of types, predominantly rounding through contact erosion, and shearing which is usually caused by freezing water breaking a stone in two. Neither of the natural patterns are likely to lead to the organised pattern of chips that a worked stone would exhibit.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
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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But it's very hard to explain a whole bunch of tool-like rocks together in one heap as anything other than people making them. And that's what they found here.
> 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.
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.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
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.
Oh, those scientists are still unable to do what cro-magnon man could: make a simple obsidian rock pointy like an arrowhead.
Um, what? Obsidian knapping is practiced by many people around the world who are quite capable of producing fine points. You can find howtos on YouTube, so it's far from being a lost secret of the ancients.
Best to check those overly broad claims before committing yourself to perpetuating them.