By Tajudeen Sowole
Artefacts of stone
age tools said to have been excavated by archaeologists at a site as old as one
million year have been dated to the early Stone Age period.
Flakes and cores found at the Kathu Townlands site, Northern Cape Province, South Africa. Image credit: Walker SJH et al.
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According to
Sci-News.com, the objects, which include hand axes, flakes and other tools were
found recently at an archaeological site near the town of Kathu in Northern
Cape Province, South Africa. The archaeologists from the University of Toronto
and the University of Cape Town describes the Kathu Townlands archaeological
site as one component of a grouping of prehistoric sites known as the Kathu
Complex. "The site, named the Kathu Townlands, is one of the richest
archaeological sites in South Africa. It is up to 1,000,000 years old."
Sources
recall that in the past, other sites in the same vicinity such as Kathu Pan-1
has produced fossils of animals such as elephants and hippos. The site, more
importantly has produced "earliest known evidence of tools used as
spears from a level dated to half a million years ago."
Other sources say
the objects, which were excavated between late last year, and early 2013
explain the recent results of the archaeological tests on the objects as
stressing the site's richness in museum pieces of ancient origins. Kathu
Townlands have produced tens of thousands of stone tools such as flakes, cores
and artefacts in recent times.
This much
has also been confirmed by Dr Michael Chazan of the University of Toronto’s
Department of Anthropology “The Kathu Townlands was the site of ongoing
intensive occupation and exploitation for stone tool manufacture,” Dr Chazan
was quoted. Also, other archaeologists seemed to have argued along the same
line of thoughts, so suggest an article published in the journal PLoS
ONE. “While one function of the site might have been as a quarry, rough-outs
and primary flakes are rare, and there is a small component of finished tools
(including rare hand axes made on non-local quartzite) suggesting that the site
might have had a more diversified function.”
Chazan added: “we need to imagine a landscape around Kathu that supported large populations of human ancestors, as well as large animals like hippos.”
He was also quoted as saying that there were indications suggesting that Kathu was much wetter, maybe more like the Okavango than the Kalahari. 'There is no question that the Kathu Complex presents unique opportunities to investigate the evolution of human ancestors in Southern Africa.”
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