World’s Oldest Stone Ax Is Found in Australia
Friday, May 13th, 2016May 13, 2016
Archaeologists have discovered a small chip of polished volcanic basalt in the remote Kimberley region of Western Australia that provides evidence that ancient Australians invented stone axes earlier than any other prehistoric people. The stone fragment was originally excavated in the 1990’s by archaeologists from the Australian National University (ANU) at Carpenter’s Gap, a prehistoric site in Windjana Gorge National Park. The ancient rock shelter is one of the earliest sites known to have been occupied by humans in Australia.
Axes are extremely useful tools found in every human society from ancient times up to the modern era. Axes have many uses, but they are typically used for chopping and shaping wood and as weapons. The most ancient axes had heads made of stone tied to handles made of hardwood. Archaeologists believe the rest of the Carpenter’s Gap ax head may have been carried off long ago after the excavated fragment broke away during use. Stone Age axes are common at sites throughout the world—sites that span tens of thousands of years of prehistory. As metal technology developed over the past 6,000 years, ax heads began to be made of copper, bronze, and iron.
The Carpenter’s Gap fragment was not recognized as a part of a stone ax until 2014, when researchers at ANU began re-examing objects excavated from the site. Researchers noticed that the fragment, about the size of a fingernail, had a polished edge produced by grinding the basalt against another rock to sharpen it. At the time, the most ancient polished stone axes—known from sites in Japan—dated to about 35,000 years ago. However, the Carpenter’s Gap ax fragment was excavated from the deepest layers of the site, which archaeologists date to between 46,000 and 49,000 years ago—the time when humans are thought to have first arrived in Australia.
Polished stone axes were independently invented in many regions of the world in ancient times, especially as people settled into villages and began farming. But no polished stone ax is known to be older than the Carpenter’s Gap ax fragment. Polished stone axes are completely unknown from prehistoric sites in Southeast Asia and on islands north of Australia before about 10,000 years ago, when farming was introduced to these regions. This shows that the first people to migrate to Australia did not bring this technology from elsewhere. The small fragment from Carpenter’s Gap shows that this revolutionary Stone Age technology was first invented by the ancient ancestors of Australian Aboriginal people.
Other World Book articles