CAPE TOWN, KOMPAS.com – A number of archaeologists say where to stay at Cave Wonderwerk in the Kalahari Desert, South Africa, is home to primordial man 2 million years ago, making it “oldest house in human history“.
In a scientific article in “Quaternary Science Reviews”, a team from the University of Toronto, Canada, and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, dated dwellings by testing the sediment in cave.
The lead author of the journal, Professor Ron Shaar, explains that determining the age of occupancy in caves is the team’s most challenging work of archaeologists.
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The solution, says Shaar, is that the team analyzed a layer of sediment 2.5 meters thick containing stone tools, animal remains, and fire traces using two methods: paleomagnetism and burial dating.
“We carefully took hundreds of very small sediment samples from the cave walls and measured their magnetic signals,” said Shaar. BBC Indonesia on Sunday (2/5/2021).
Magnetization occurs when clay particles enter the cave from the outside, fall on the floor of the cave, and thereby perpetuate the direction of the magnetic field at that time.
“Our laboratory analysis shows some of the samples are magnetized to the south, not to the north, which is the direction of the current magnetic field,” said Shaar.
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Shaar explained that the date for changing the direction of the magnetic field has been recognized globally. “This provides clues about the age of the entire layer sequence in the cave,” he added.
Professor Ari Matmon’s team members used the second dating method to find out when humans first entered and lived in this cave.
“The quartz particles in the sand have a geological clock that starts ticking when they enter the cave. In the laboratory, we can measure the concentration of specific isotopes and deduce how much time has passed since the grains of sand entered the cave,” explains Matmon.
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Analysis shows some sediments are 2 million years old.
This conclusion is the same as the results of research conducted by a team member, professor Michael Chazan, in 2008 using the cosmogenic dating method.
Confirm that Gua Miracle is the oldest house in human history since 2 million years ago, has very significant implications.
“This is an important step in understanding the tempo of human evolution across the African continent. The time scale has been confirmed and we can continue to study the connection between humans and climate change, as well as study the lives of our ancient ancestors,” said Chazan and another team member, Liora. Kolska Horwitz.
In Wonderwerk Cave found ancient stone tools, such as hand axes, and evidence of early humans in this cave using fire about 1 million years ago, as published in the journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” in 2012.
Evidence of fire traces such as charred bones and ashes were found deep in the cave and experts conclude that the fire tracks were “confirmed to be the result of human activity not due to natural causes.”
The site of the “oldest house in human history” inside the Wonderwerk Caves was discovered by some farmers in the 1940s.
Since then, excavations have been carried out to “unravel the mystery of human existence in the cave about 2 million years ago”.
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