1.8m-year-old axes unearthed | Malaysiakini

Seven axes were found with other tools at an excavation site in Malaysia's northern Perak state in June, and tests by a Tokyo laboratory indicate they were about 1.83 million years old. -- PHOTO: AP

KUALA LUMPUR - MALAYSIAN archeologists have unearthed prehistoric stone axes that they said on Friday were the world's oldest at about 1.8 million years old.

Seven axes were found with other tools at an excavation site in Malaysia's northern Perak state in June, and tests by a Tokyo laboratory indicate they were about 1.83 million years old, said Mokhtar Saidin, director of the Center for Archaeological Research at the University of Science Malaysia.

The group released their conclusions Thursday, and other archeologists have not yet examined the results.

'It's really the first time we have such evidence (dating back) 1.83 million years,' Mr Mokhtar said, adding that the oldest axes previously discovered were 1.6 million years old in Africa.

However, other chopping tools, as well as human remains, have been found in Africa that are much older, with some dating back 4 million years, he said.

Geochronology Japan Inc., a lab in Tokyo, calculated the age of the tools by analyzing the rock that covered them, Mr Mokhtar said. The result has a margin of error of 610,000 years, he said.

Some previous discoveries have suggested there were humans in Southeast Asia up to 1.9 million years ago, but those have been disputed, said Mr Harry Truman Simanjuntak, a researcher at the National Research Center of Archaeology in Jakarta.

Mr Simanjuntak cautioned that others still need to investigate claims about the axes' age.

The oldest previous evidence of human existence in Malaysia was stone tools dating back about 200,000 years, found at the same excavation site in Perak.

The archeologists are trying to find human bone remains in Perak, Mokhtar said, but stressed that it might be unlikely because of decay due to warm, humid climate conditions. The oldest bones found in Perak so far have only been about 10,000 years old. -- AP