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Guide to Patagonia's Monsters & Mysterious beings

I have written a book on this intriguing subject which has just been published.
In this blog I will post excerpts and other interesting texts on this fascinating subject.

Austin Whittall


Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Oldest Stone Tools in Turkey are 1.2 Ma and made by Homo erectus


The oldest stone tool in Turkey was discovered, and it was made by Homo Erectus. A paper by Maddy et al., reports that (I quote the Abstract):


Abstract Anatolia lies at the gateway from Asia into Europe and has frequently been favoured as a route for Early Pleistocene hominin dispersal. Although early hominins are known to have occupied Turkey, with numerous finds of Lower Palaeolithic artefacts documented, the chronology of their dispersal has little reliable stratigraphical or geochronological constraint, sites are rare, and the region's hominin history remains poorly understood as a result. Here, we present a Palaeolithic artefact, a hard-hammer flake, from fluvial sediments associated with the Early Pleistocene Gediz River of Western Turkey. This previously documented buried river terrace sequence provides a clear stratigraphical context for the find and affords opportunities for independent age estimation using the numerous basaltic lava flows that emanated from nearby volcanic necks and aperiodically encroached onto the contemporary valley floors. New 40Ar/39Ar age estimates from these flows are reported here which, together with palaeomagnetic measurements, allow a tightly-constrained chronology for the artefact-bearing sediments to be established. These results suggest that hominin occupation of the valley occurred within a time period spanning ∼1.24 Ma to ∼1.17 Ma, making this the earliest, securely-dated, record of hominin occupation in Anatolia.


The tool is a piece of stone about 5 cm (2 in.) long, fashioned by the hand of a Homo erectus in Anatolia. Far from their African homeland. A clear indication that H. erectus was alive and kicking at the time (1.2 Ma) and crafting advanced tools. By the way, Anatolia gives access to Georgia on the Northeast and, Europe to the West.


H. erectus remains were found close to this site some years ago (at Kocabas - see the full text of the paper here), but the dating was not clear, but estimated at 1.1 Ma. Now we can be sure that H. erectus was living here during this period.


stone tool by Erectus from Anatolia
The tool. From the paper


Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2014 by Austin Whittall © 

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