Ancient tools found in India throw light on hominid migrations out of Africa
March 26th, 2011 - 4:35 pm ICT by ANIWashington, Mar 26 (ANI): Stone artefacts unearthed in southeastern India have shown that African hominids moved to South Asia shortly after developing advanced stone tools 1.6 million years ago.
Archaeologist Shanti Pappu of the Sharma Center for Heritage Education in Tamil Nadu, India and her colleagues, said makers of a specific style of teardrop-shaped stone hand axe, flat-edged cleavers and other implements that originated in Africa around 1.6 million years ago, reached South Asia not long afterward, between 1.5 and 1 million years ago.
Rather than waiting until around 500,000 years ago to head into South Asia, as many researchers have thought, the African hand axe crowd wasted relatively little time before hightailing it to India.
Archaeologists categorize stone hand axes and related implements as Acheulian tools.
Most researchers regard Homo erectus, a species that originated around 2 million years ago, as the original brains behind Acheulian innovations.
“Acheulian tool makers were clearly present in South Asia more than 1 million years ago,” Science News quoted Pappu as saying.
“Several previous excavations in different parts of India have also yielded Acheulian tools, but these finds lack firm age estimates,” she said.
H. erectus must have rapidly moved from East Africa to South Asia, proposes archaeologist Robin Dennell of the University of Sheffield in England.
Dennell suggests Pappu’s new finds raise the possibility that 800,000-year-old hand axes previously discovered in southeastern China indicate the presence of H. erectus groups that came from South Asia - or at least exposure of Chinese hominids to Acheulian techniques.Pappu’s team excavated and dated stone tools at Attirampakkam, an Indian site discovered in 1863. Work since 1999 has produced more than 3,500 Acheulian artefacts, including 76 hand axes and cleavers.
Artefact-bearing soil contained signs of a reversal in Earth’s magnetic field that places the finds at between 1.07 and 1.77 million years old.
Measurements of radioactive isotopes in six quartz tools unearthed at Attirampakkam indicated that these finds had been buried approximately 1.5 million years ago. (ANI)
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Tags: age estimates, ancient tools, archaeologists, cleavers, hand axe, hand axes, heritage education, hominids, homo erectus, magneti, million years, pappu, robin dennell, South Asia, southeastern china, southeastern india, stone tools, tamil nadu india, tool makers, university of sheffield