Europe’s Oldest Stone Hand Axes Emerge In Spain - Confirmed 900,000 years old

Evidence of ancient reversals of Earth’s magnetic field in soil at two archaeological sites indicates that hand axes date to 900,000 years ago in one location and to 760,000 years ago in the other, Scott and Gibert report in the Sept. 3 Nature. Until now, most researchers thought that hand axes unearthed at these sites were made between 500,000 and 200,000 years ago.

Other European hand ax sites date to no more than 500,000 years ago. In contrast, hand axes date to roughly 1.7 million years ago in eastern Africa. And age estimates of 1.2 million years and 800,000 years for hand axes from two Israeli sites indicate that this tool-making style spread out of Africa long before the origin of Homo sapiens around 200,000 years ago. Excavations in southern China have also yielded 800,000-year-old hand axes (SN: 3/4/00, p. 148). Fossils from ancient human ancestors have not been found with the Israeli and Chinese artifacts.

Earlier analyses of magnetic reversals in soil at other sites in southern Spain indicate that single-edged stone tools appeared there around 1.3 million years ago, Gibert says (SN: 1/4/97, p. 12). Population movements back and forth between Africa and Europe must have occurred at that time, possibly via vessels across the Strait of Gibraltar, he hypothesizes.

“Then at 900,000 years ago, we now have the oldest evidence of hand axes in Europe, which represents a second migration from Africa that brought a new stone-tool culture,” Gibert says.

www.sciencenews.org...

More proof we are much older than we are usually led to believe.
This is fascinating stuff.

900,000!


The last sentence was also revealing...

These data provide minimum ages for the Spanish finds. “Older ages are possible but would be odd,” Gibert says.

Why would it be odd to have dates go beyond 900,000 years? Would it really shake things up?



[edit on 4-9-2009 by warrenb]

i wonder what religious leaders think about this?? i guess ole' adam and eve's garden was around alot longer then they thought.

yeh this blows 7000 years since adam right out of the water.

id be more inclined to listen to creationists if they could accept dating methods and not literally try to guess teh age of the earth based on books written by men in the last 4000 years.

That is really interesting. I have a hard time thinking in terms of our ancestors 900,000 years ago.

Originally posted by okamitengu
yeh this blows 7000 years since adam right out of the water.

id be more inclined to listen to creationists if they could accept dating methods and not literally try to guess teh age of the earth based on books written by men in the last 4000 years.

It was Noahs' hand axe how the hell do you think he chopped down all those trees to make a boat, beaver teeth ?

Creation still stands satan put those axes there so I could come along and try to deceive the world ahha ha ha ha hah.

thats amazing thats OVER 9000!!

Originally posted by warrenb

More proof we are much older than we are usually led to believe.
This is fascinating stuff.

900,000!

The last sentence was also revealing...

These data provide minimum ages for the Spanish finds. “Older ages are possible but would be odd,” Gibert says.

Why would it be odd to have dates go beyond 900,000 years? Would it really shake things up?

[edit on 4-9-2009 by warrenb]

I'm not sure I follow here. They said in the article that they have found axes up to 1.7 million years old, how does 900,000 make us older than we're led to believe? In Europe, yes. As a whole? Not according to that...

reply to post by warrenb


Well, we all know that our ancestors made tools a while ago. 900,000 years is just a drop in the bucket.

Why anyone would try to prove that we are only 6000 years young is beyond me. We know that the homo sapiens have been around for a while, homo erectus used tools, and maybe they were alot smarter than we originally thought. Same with the cro-magnon era. I guarantee they used tools, and we know they were around for a while.

This explains the cavemen in Geico commercials.

There's some misleading assumptions here. The "us" isn't "homo sapiens." It's "homo erectus." They had fire and shaped stone tools and were our direct ancestral species. Scientists call them humans, just as they call Neanderthals and Australopithecenes and Hobbits all members of the human...er... race or whatever.

But that didn't mean it was goodole h.sap.

[edit on 4-9-2009 by Byrd]

reply to post by Byrd


So the article in question is just pointing out that homo erectus were around 900,000 years ago? I think we all knew that. But the use of common tools...



I can't edit for anything.

[edit on 4-9-2009 by havok]

reply to post by Byrd


Indeed.
However technically it is "us" since they are supposedly our ancestors.

While I have seen several articles similar to these in other contexts about other artifacts, one has to wonder about where the human race is now. Relatively speaking, we are infants on the planet Earth.

Dinosaurs lived through several hundred million years. Yet the Earth is still far older. If our species could attain say 2 million years on the planet to this point what changes in our culture, perspective, our forms would 10 million years do. How about 100 million years. Seems inconceivable and yet its already been done. In our species' arrogance we claim to be at the top of the heap and controlling/conquering much of the planet we inhabit. We can barely control ouselves, as a group. Think we have a better shot than the dinos? Maybe, maybe not. There is also evidence of technology that has risen and mysteriously faded throughout the ages. Then there are the OOPARTS.

This world is full of mysteries that will take more than several generations to fully account for. Often we will find and do find today wonders that are fantastic and gross. Such is life whether these mysteries are as yet previously undiscovered or rediscovered from a forgotten past.

Consider in the realms of technology. 2 million years ago a pile of humans have the hand axe. One lengthens in and its now a sword. There is war with other humans over water, food, labor, whatever. These humans who've attained these swords kill off the handaxe guys but the few guys that know how to make swords and handaxes also get killed. Bang the species is blasted back to grubbing for worms to eat and stay that way for generations maybe even thousands of years.

How often has that cycle repeated itself on our species? How often will it continue to happen? One of our greatest assets is our passion for what we do and think, yet it is also our greatest weakness. It can save us ultimately or destroy us utterly. The evidence is in the historical past. Where, when and how will our species evolve ( yes elvolve ) and rise beyond allowing passions to defeat our vision? Are we capable of such a leap?


IMHO, there is evidence that we are capable, yet too many of us allow our passion to dominate our destiny. The past does not have to keep repeating itself.



Oh crap, BAWOT sorry if I went off topic. The subject is of interest to me in its implications and the continual evidence that keeps on being revealed.



PG

reply to post by okamitengu

id be more inclined to listen to creationists if they could accept dating methods and not literally try to guess the age of the earth based on books written by men in the last 4000 years.

Yes I love the King James version of the bible. Remember the first son inherits the land and title, the second son becomes a leader in the military and the third son is for the Church. I doubt that true religious feelings had anything to do with the third son becoming an Anglican priest.

Religion is used by those in power to control the unwashed masses. Today we have "Mother Earth" as our new "religion" I do not think it is any coincidence that Maurice Strong, father of Environmentalism, friend to the Rockefellers and Al Gore, has a religious think tank on his ranch Bacca. This is especially true after Johnson castrated the Christian church here in the USA by using an amendment to the tax code. The change made it illegal for the Church to dabble in politics.

America's first professional Egyptologist, Breasted...
The way Breasted told his bewildered mother of this decision is worth repeating. He stood before her, according to Charles Breasted, and read a passage from the King James version of the Bible. He paused, then read his own translation of the verse from the original Hebrew. The two were markedly dissimilar. To Breasted, if not to his mother, the conclusion was obvious: "I could never be satisfied to preach on the basis of texts I know to be full of mistranslation." www.saudiaramcoworld.com...

On topic
I would expect older finds in Europe in the future, because there were waves of migration in response to changes in climate. They have found this to be true in the Americas. I was taught there was one migration, now there is evidence of many migrations to the "New World" most from Asia and some from Europe. If I recall correctly they found a link between an area in France and Latin America due to a unique artifact only found in the one area of France until the recent discovery in Latin America. This shows the warm to cold to warm climate changes for the million-year paleoclimate record (bottom panel)... the one-million-year time series (Figure 7, Panel e).

But was it confirmed via carbon dating to be that old?

The article says " If confirmed, the new dates support..... "

So its not confirmed yet.