Possible Million-Year-Old Tools Unearthed in Sudan Could Change Human History
Ancient tools have been discovered in eastern Africa that are possibly a million years old. What can this discovery teach us about our ancient history?
A recent gold rush in eastern Africa has led to open-pit mines where gold hunters have stumbled upon a different kind of fortune: hundreds of stone tools, including Acheulean hand axes, cleavers, and other tools. The head of the study, Professor Mirosław Masojć from the Institue of Archaeology at the University of Wraclaw, Poland said, “[t]he layers of soil around the tools were at least seven-hundred-thousand years old.”
But some have speculated that the tools could be up to one million years old. This discovery puts our ancient ancestor Homo erectus in this area twice as far back as previously thought.
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The London Hammer: Is It An Out of Place Artifact?
What could be so unusual or controversial about the discovery of an iron hammer encased in ancient rock? After all, archaeologists have discovered historical artifacts for as long as humans have been searching for their ancient roots. But what happens when an object defies historical study and appears to exist as a kind of time traveler in the mysterious realms between worlds? For what is known as the “London Hammer,” the world has been wrangling with a seemingly ordinary household tool steeped in mystery, archaeological wonder, and with many unanswered questions.
Alleged to date back more than 400 million years, the London Hammer, or as it is also called the London Artifact, can be looked at as a study of how the modern and ancient worlds can connect and collide. How else can we explain that an obviously human-made instrument linked to the late 1800s that never rusted despite the wood transforming into coal?
How could the London Hammer withstand typical aging impacts like oxidation, and what explanations exist for its discovery in a rock formation predating human existence? Perhaps it’s best to begin with its claimed discovery location – the small town of London, Texas.
London Hammer — From Texas to the World Stage
For Max and Emma Hahn, it was a summer day like many others. In 1936, the Texas couple took a hike along Red Creek near London, Texas, a tiny community located in the center of the Lone Star State. But the hike turned out to be like no other the Hahns had ever experienced. Not because of the weather or the beauty of the landscape but because they discovered a strange piece of wood encased in what seemed to be an unusual formation of rock.
