CANADA: Researchers working in Turkey have unearthed a 1.2 million year old stone tool, which they believe is the oldest tool of its kind to ever be found in that region.
According to the archaeologists, the tool also suggests that humans passed from Asia into Europe far earlier than originally believed.
Researchers from the Royal Holloway, University of London and a team of international experts conducted the study on a humanly-worked quartzite flake that was discovered in the ancient deposits of the river Gediz in western Turkey. Using high precision dating, the researchers were able to date the tool as being 1.2 million years old. This finding backs the claim that humans lived in Turkey’s Anatolian peninsula at that time. When skull fragments of Homo erectus were found in his region last year, it was assumed that humans only existed in this region 500,000 years ago. The tool proves that belief wrong.
Danielle Schreve, a professor of Quaternary Science in the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway, said, “This discovery is critical for establishing the timing and route of early human dispersal into Europe. Our research suggests that the flake is the earliest securely-dated artifact from Turkey ever recorded and was dropped on the floodplain by an early hominin well over a million years ago.”
Using high radioisotopic dating and palaeomagnetic measurements from the lava flows, the researchers were able to establish that early humans were likely to be present in this area between 1.24 million and 1.17 million years ago.
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