1.2M-Year-Old Obsidian Axe Factory Found in Ethiopia

https://www.iflscience.com/1-2-million-year-old-obsidian-axe-factory-found-in-ethiopia-67232

by jbotz • 3 years ago

28 7 3 years ago

iflscience.com

egberts1• 3 years ago

No whitepaper?

nly• 3 years ago

Just looks like a sharp rock to me. How do we know this is hominid-made?

20after4• 3 years ago

If you look at a lot of these artifacts you can easily recognize the telltale markings and intentionally manufactured shapes.

JoeAltmaier• 3 years ago

Axes this old are not unheard-of. They have been identified as up to 2 million years ago (Homo Erectus?). This paper is about the tool yard, and it's proximity to the source material. Or so I understand.

lastofus• 3 years ago

...a team of researchers has described the discovery of an obsidian handaxe workshop within a layer of sediment dated to 1.2 million years ago.

What kind of radiometric dating is used for sediment? Is it not possible for older sediment to shift around and cover newer stuff?

wswope• 3 years ago

The term of art for dating based on soil layers is called stratigraphy, and doesn’t necessarily require radiocarbon dating. E.g. if you find a layer of silty sediment with clamshells widely dispersed, on a site you know was a lakebed that dried up >100 kya, it’s probably a safe assumption that the layer you’re digging is at least that old.

Sediments are absolutely shifted over time as you suggest, but what matters is the relative positioning of the layers, not their absolute thickness, and it’s generally pretty easy to spot when layers have been disturbed by human or geological activity.

I wasn’t able to get my hands on the original journal article from Nature to see exactly what techniques were used on this particular site, but a detailed description of the stratigraphy is generally included in any standard dig report.

throwaway81523• 3 years ago

Journal article is paywalled from https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-022-01970-1 but will probably appear in the usual places after a while.

1.2M-Year-Old Obsidian Axe Factory Found in Ethiopia

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