[language] Stone Axes Suggest Diversity's Dawn

[H. Mark Hubey]

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LOS ANGELES TIMES
Friday, March 3, 2000

Stone Axes Suggest Diversity's Dawn
Archeology: Ancient tools compel a new look at the pace of human development
in Asia.

By ROBERT LEE HOTZ, Times Science Writer

     Archeologists have discovered the oldest stone axes ever found in Asia,
800,000-year-old implements that hint at the minds that painstakingly shaped
them at the dawn of humanity.
     The findings provide provocative evidence of the beginnings of cultural
diversity, which, like toolmaking itself, is today the hallmark of humankind.
     The discovery is also certain to force many researchers to reconsider
the pace of human development in Asia, which until now has been considered an
evolutionary backwater. Previously, tools of this vintage had been found only
in Africa and Europe.
     The subtle differences between these newly discovered axes in Asia and
similar artifacts found elsewhere reveal evidence of two distinct toolmaking
cultures emerging among humanity's distant forebears, some researchers
believe.
     Unearthed by the thousands, the tools are so sophisticated that they
effectively dispel any lingering scholarly notions that humanity's earliest
ancestors in Asia lagged behind those in Africa and Europe in developing the
rudiments of technology, experts said.

Full text:
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/science/20000303/t000020799.html

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