Axeheads and grinding stones from a cave in Australia’s far north suggest that humans arrived on the continent about 65,000 years ago, or 18,000 years earlier than previously thought, according to research published yesterday.
A technique called luminescence dating was used to date the ancient tools, which were found in a rock shelter at the bottom of a cliff, on the edge of a sandy savannah plain about 300km east of Darwin.
Finding of a new minimum age for the arrival of humans in Australia pushes back the origins of Aboriginal culture, the world’s oldest continuous civilization, from a previously agreed consensus of about 47,000 years ago.
Photo: Reuters
It also changes scientific understanding of the date humans migrated out of Africa, the study’s lead author Chris Clarkson told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio.
Scientists believed that humans first left Africa some time between 100,000 and 60,000 years ago, Clarkson said.
“Because Australia sits at the end of this migration route, we can now use this as a benchmark and use it to say that people must have left Africa earlier than this,” he said.
Clarkson’s paper was published in the journal Nature.
The study used both radio-carbon dating, which reaches its limits at about 50,000 years, and luminescence, which uses laser beams, to date 28,500 individual grains of sand from the site, which sits on a Rio Tinto uranium mining lease in the Northern Territory.
“Previous excavations, they didn’t have the access to the dating methods that we do these days to actually confirm that the deposits and the archeology really were that old,” said Andy Herries, associate professor of palaeoanthropology and geoarcheology at La Trobe University in Melbourne.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
IN PURSUIT: Israel’s defense minister said the revenge attacks by Israeli settlers would make it difficult for security forces to find those responsible for the 14-year-old’s death Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday condemned the “heinous murder” of an Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank as attacks on Palestinian villages intensified following news of his death. After Benjamin Achimeir, 14, was reported missing near Ramallah on Friday, hundreds of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli forces raided nearby Palestinian villages, torching vehicles and homes, leaving at least one villager dead and dozens wounded. The attacks escalated in several villages on Saturday after Achimeir’s body was found near the Malachi Hashalom outpost. Agence France-Presse correspondents saw smoke rising from burned houses and fields. Mayor Amin Abu Alyah, of the