Oldest axe ever found uncovered in Australia
Archaeologists working in Western Australia have uncovered pieces from the world’s oldest-known hafted axe, or axe with a handle, according to a new report in the journal Australian Archeology.
Lead archeologist Sue O’Connor, an archeology professor at the Australian National University, said the axe goes back to between 46,000 and 49,000 years, at about the time people first appeared on the continent.
“This is the earliest evidence of hafted axes in the world. Nowhere else in the world do you get axes at this date,” O’Connor said in a statement sent to redOrbit. “In Japan such axes appear about 35,000 years ago. But in most countries in the world they arrive with agriculture after 10,000 years ago.”
Fragments from the edge of the world’s oldest axe. Credit: ANU
Better technology than previously thought
O’Connor said this discovery revealed early Aboriginal technology was not as basic as has been earlier indicated.
“Australian stone artifacts have often been characterized as being simple. But clearly that’s not the case when you have these hafted axes earlier in Australia than anywhere else in the world,” she said.
The Aussie professor noted the technology originated in Australia around 50,000 years ago, as axes haven’t been associated with these people before they came to the continent.
“There’s no axes in the islands to our north. They arrived in Australia and innovated axes,” she said.
After the hafted axe was found, bits of it were analyzed by Peter Hiscock, an archeology professor from the University of Sydney.
“Since there are no known axes in Southeast Asia during the Ice Age, this discovery shows us that when humans arrived in Australia they began to experiment with new technologies, inventing ways to exploit the resources they encountered,” Hiscock said.
“The question of when axes were invented has been pursued for decades, since archaeologists discovered that in Australia axes were older than in many other places. Now we have a discovery that appears to answer the question,” he added.
Hiscock also said axe technology did not necessarily spread with humans are they migrated across the globe.
“Axes were only made in the tropical north,” he said. “These differences between northern Australia, where axes were always used, and southern Australia, where they were not, originated around the time of colonization and persisted until the last few thousand years when axes began to be made in most southern parts of mainland Australia.”
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Image credit: ANU
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