Recent Discovery of Double-Edged Hand Axes in Europe Could be up to 900,000 Years Old

 

Oldest Old World Tools

A collection of prehistoric stone hand axes appears above. When first discovered, most researchers thought that the hand axes were made between 500,000 and 200,000 years ago. However, a new study contends that they are in fact much older -- possibly the oldest hand axes in Europe.Michael Walker

Sophisticated hand made tools have finally been found in Europe that demonstrate similarly refined skill sets demonstrated by Acheulian tool making methods found in Africa that have been dated to approximately 1.5 million years ago. Previously, such tools that had been discovered in Europe were shown  to have originated from the hands of European tool makers only some 300,000 million years ago. For years, researchers who had been baffled by the gap between the African and European tools now have a better understanding of the varied techniques of tool making that had actually existed.

The hand axes that have resolved the tool gap were found in a part of Granada, Spain; specifically in the Quipar Valley, in cave sediment and were "made using the so-called Levallois technique of shaping stone, known to have existed in Europe only about 300,000 years ago."

Two researchers, geologist Gary Scott and paleontologist Luis Gibert, from the Berkeley Geochronology Center in California used palaeomagnetic analysis, "which uses known changes in the orientation of Earth's magnetic field over time."Palaeomagnetic analysis is based on Magnetostratigraphy, which deciphers the periodic reversal of Earth's magnetic field.

"The transition from primitive chopper-like tools to more finely crafted double-faced axes marked a milestone in the history of technology," The Straits Times, A Singapore Press Holdings Website conjectured, "and gave those whose wielded them an edge in the struggle to survive."

Physorg.com, a website involved with science news and analysis agrees with The Straits Times assessment by adding: "The transition from primitive chopper-like tools to more finely crafted double-faced axes marked a milestone in the history of technology, and gave those whose wielded them an edge in the struggle to survive." 

Acting like tiny compasses, fine-grained magnetic minerals in the tools contain a record of the polarity at the time they were used. Once buried in sediment, the polarity is preserved.

'The age (of the axes) must be Early Pleistocene, the most recent period dominated by reverse polarity, 1.78-to-0.78 million years ago,' the researchers concluded.

The new dating suggests that early man was present in south-western Europe for much of this period, and that the barrier between Africa and Europe was more permeable than once thought, they said.

"Dr. Gibert said the finding, The New York Times explains, "adds to mounting evidence that early humans migrated to Europe from Africa earlier than previously thought."

"The question is, which route did they follow?" Gilbert said. "Rather than coming through the Middle East and then westward, Dr. Gibert said he is convinced they came across at Gibraltar. "We think the Gibraltar straits were a permeable barrier," he said. "It's a provocative interpretation but I think there is enough information to support it."

"Up to now, no one imagined this level of tool-making was going on in Europe about a million years ago," says Michael Walker, an archaeologist at the University of Murcia who has studied the region near Granada where the axes were found."

The journal Nature explains: "Homo neanderthalensis, Homo erectus and Homo heidelbergensis are all species known to be associated with Acheulian axes, which have two-sided cutting faces that were made of many types of stone for still-unconfirmed uses"

 

Michael Walker explains that the The Quípar Valley cave hand-axe is the oldest dated in Europe.

The two small hand axes have been estimated to be "at least 760,000 and 900,000 years old, respectively," in analysis conducted by Scott and Gilbert."If confirmed, the new dates support the idea that the manufacture and use of teardrop-shaped stone implements, known as hand axes, spread rapidly from Africa into Europe and Asia beginning roughly 1 million years ago, said Scott and Gibert.

An early assessment of the hand axe findings by: "Thomas Wynn, a cognitive evolutionary biologist from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, says: "This [find] tells us some things about these early humans' brains, like the development of spatial conception. But not much, as cognitive ability changes very, very slowly."

References

   1. Scott, G. R. & Gibert, L. Nature 461, 82-85 (2009). | Article | PubMed
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