World's Oldest Axe Found in Malaysia

WONG:
Malaysian archaeologists may have found the oldest indication of human civilization. Embedded in meteorite rocks, they found samples of hand-axes dating back to 1.8 million years.

STORY:
The Stone Age axes were discovered a year ago in Lenggong, a Malaysian archaeological site.

The stone tools were found inside a suevite rock, which is formed when meteorites hit the Earth. The samples were then sent for testing at a Japanese lab.

After applying extensive track-dating methods, the Tokyo lab found them to be an astonishing 1.8 million years old. The oldest sample found so far.

[Dr. Mokhtar Saidin, Center of Archaeological Research]:
"The first time we dated the hand-axe in this region, 1.8. We found a lot of hand axes in China, in Philippines and Indonesia but without the date, you know, just the surface find. So I compared it throughout the world and what I got from Africa, the hand-axe only date 1.6 million. So at this moment, what we found is the oldest hand-axe in the world."

Dr. Mokhtar shows us more samples of Stone Age hand axes.

[Dr. Mokhtar Saidin, Center of Archaeological Research]:
"So the culture for making the hand-axe must be older than 1.8 [million years old]. So this is another one, this may be a core where you can see the facets or flakes that come out from the core, it's also embedded inside the suevite."

He also demonstrates how the stone tools may have been used.

[Dr. Mokhtar Saidin, Center of Archaeological Research]:
"They use the suevite to make (the) hand axe. You can see is, you cannot trace this is from the river pebble because the cortex is already out. They have to flake both sides of the pebble and really at the sharp end so they are using something like this."

Other Stone Age tools have been found before in Malaysia but were only about 200,000 years old. E-MAIL THIS PRINT THIS MOST POPULAR PDF VERSION




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Science & Technology

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• Age
• oldest axe

[happinesson]

1.8 million years ago..that's pretty old..good thing i wasn't a live during that data..this will give me hard time cooking..

[adelle0001]

wow nice may nakita pang axe na super old!

[MrUvA1337]

The oldest stone age axe cool! But can these stone age Homosapiens whoop the Roman Empire? ehhh

[deingeist]

That dude was like, oh cool I found a rock that looks a bit like it has a clovis tool embedded in it. Totally faked the date on that.

[Mivorae]

doesnt look like shadowmourne

[hellavadeal]

@rooftopeagle Carbon dating only works on biological matter. It was dated by the rock it was found in. Radio metric dating only works on sedimentary rock. This was not that kind of rock. The date is pure speculation based on how old they think the rock is. An educated guess. Rock from the new domes formed on volcanoes gets dates that are way off too. Mount St. Hellens had dates over 2 million for rock that was witnessed forming.

[jlasud]

@rooftopeagle I think with radiocarbon dating burned objects show up older than they are.Anyways they probably know these things too.

[Gnomebe]

That's really old people. He's saying humans have been running around for over a Million years.

[rooftopeagle]

I'd imagine that they used carbon dating which is effective to a few thousand years so how do they get millions of years old when you max out at 30,00 years according to Willard Libby, the inventor of radiocarbon dating?

[DarkNova941]

at 0:34 to 0:36 that beeping noise is the alarm for the prayer :P i have that program (adthan) on my phone as well :D Mashallah, i hope god blesses his life :)