Ancient Axes, Spear Points May Reveal When Early Humans Left Africa

By Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor | December 27, 2017 04:00pm ET

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This handaxe weighs almost 8 pounds and is unusually heavy. It and many of the other stone artifacts at Wadi Dabsa date to some point between 1.76 million years ago and 100,000 years ago. Researchers are trying to determine a more precise date.
Credit: Andrew Shuttleworth and Frederick Foulds

More than 1,000 stone artifacts, some of which may be up to 1.76 million years old, have been discovered at Wadi Dabsa, in southwest Saudi Arabia near the Red Sea.

The artifacts, which were found in what is now an arid landscape, date to a time when the climate was wetter; they may provide clues as to how and when different hominins left Africa, researchers said.

The stone artifacts include the remains of hand axes, cleavers (a type of knife), scrapers (used to scrape the flesh off of animal hides), projectile points (that would have been attached to the ends of spears), piercers (stone tools that can cut small holes through hide or flesh) and hammer stones. One of the hand axes is unusually heavy, weighing just under 8 lbs. (3.6 kilograms), the researchers said. The discoveries were detailed in the December 2017 issue of the journal Antiquity. [The 25 Most Mysterious Archaeological Finds on Earth]

Based on the tool design, archaeologists said they can tell that many of the artifacts are "Acheulian," a term used to describe types of stone tools made between 1.76 million years and 100,000 years ago. When exactly within this time frame the various artifacts at Wadi Dabsa were made is uncertain, the archaeologists said.

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