Posted on 12/17/2004 11:37:14 AM PST by blam
ARCHAEOLOGISTS EXCITED BY 500,000-YEAR-OLD AXE FIND IN QUARRY
By David Prudames 16/12/2004
This image shows the axe head from different angles. Photo: Graham Norrie, University of Birmingham Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity.
A Stone Age hand axe dating back 500,000 years has been discovered at a quarry in Warwickshire.
The tool was found at the Smiths Concrete Bubbenhall Quarry at Waverley Wood Farm, near Coventry, which has already produced evidence of some of the earliest known human occupants of the UK.
It was uncovered in gravel by quarry manager John Green who took it to be identified by archaeologists at the University of Birmingham.
"We are very excited about this discovery," enthused Professor David Keen of the university's Archaeology Field Unit.
"Lower Palaeolithic artefacts are comparatively rare in the West Midlands compared to the south and east of England so this is a real find for us."
Despite being half and million years old the tool is very well-preserved and will eventually go on show at Warwickshire Museum.
Amongst other things, the hand axe would have been used for butchering animals, but what is perhaps most intriguing about it is that it is made of a type of volcanic rock called andesite.
Photo: Graham Norrie, University of Birmingham Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity.,
Andesite bedrock only occurs in the Lake District or North Wales and this is only the ninth andesite hand axe to be found in the midlands in over a century. Archaeologists are now trying to figure out how the tool might have got there.
Although it is possible the rock was transported to the midlands by glacial ice from the north west there is as yet no evidence for it, which suggests humans might have brought it into the area.
The lack of material for good quality hand axes in the midlands would probably have been known to our ancestors, therefore these tools could have been brought in ready made.
It may also be significant that all previous andesite hand axe finds have been made in deposits of the Bytham River, a now lost river system that crossed England from the Cotswolds via the West Midlands and Leicester to the North Sea.
This valley was destroyed in a later glaciation and seems to have provided a route into the midlands for Palaeolithic hunters.
Half a million years ago the area was at the edge of the human world, linked to Europe along the Bytham valley and across a land-bridge existing before the cutting of the Straits of Dover.
In addition to the hand axe the Smiths Concrete Bubbenhall Quarry has produced 18 other Palaeolithic tools, currently under investigation by the team at Birmingham Archaeology.
Other finds in the area include bones and teeth from a straight-tusked elephant, which are also set to be displayed at Warwickshire Museum.
LOL
read
>>Either way, me thinks this axe dating is off by a zero.
It looks to be a typical Acheulian hand axe, Early Paleolithic, between 700K and 400K in Europe, depending on where you are. What makes you think it is only 50K years old?
Robert Byrd used that axe in early Klan rituals, back when he was a teenager.
Hmmmmm. Sounds like capitalism began early with axe traders.
Humans were making tools longer ago than 500,000 years ago. A site in eastern Asia has post holes (for a structure) dating back about 800,000 years, and tools of a similar vintage were found on an island off SE Asia that, even at that time, was surrounded by the sea. It was too far to swim, meaning that someone crossed over to live there, or to do some hunting.
can someone please tell me how a stone chipped off of a bigger stone that is millions of years old, can be dated as being made 500,000 years ago??? Would not the carbon of the axe be the same as the carbon of the original rock?
Is there any carbon in this stone? Could be, but probably not enough to detectable, and it would have been of inorganic nature and so not useful for carbon dating.
Then by what method are they dating it?
I am new to these kind of threads. Is there always so much "disbelief" of science and its work? On the crevo threads it is easy to understand that attitude, because evolution hits so hard inside one's soul. But here? Could this "disbelief" be from the same source (religious, strict interpretation of the bible)?
They didn't say, but the usual practice would be to use the usual geologic dating and apply that to things found in that stratum. If someone had actually buried the hatchet there, the hatchet might be of more recent origin, but if it had been lost in the mud it would act like an ordinary rock.
Homos erectus goes back to more than ONE million years with previous findings in England dating back to 750,000 years ago.
There was a reciept next to it from WALMART dated June 12, -498,238.
BUMP
Generally no. It usually occurs when the title indicates anything older than 6,000 years old.
So....then my guess is a good one.
I like this one. (...and my ex-wife complained that I never wanted to go anywhere. Here's a family that stayed in the same spot for 9,000 years)
Tool typology. See my answer way back in post 19.
C14 is not very useful past about 50,000 years and completely useless on inorganic material (like stone), because it has no carbon.
I dunno. It's pretty disappointing actually.
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