Archaeologists in Australia have discovered the remains of the world's oldest axe, a polished Stone Age tool believed to have been made almost 50,000 years ago.
A thumbnail-sized fragment of the carefully polished tool was found in a rock shelter in the Kimberley region of Western Australia and indicates that the earliest stone axes were created some 10,000 years earlier than previously thought.
A study of the fragment found it was about 45,000 to 49,000 years old and dated back to the early arrival of humans in the Australian continent - a discovery which suggests the ancestors of today's Aboriginal people were leading innovators of hunting technology.
"Nowhere else in the world do you get axes at this date," said Professor Sue O'Connor, an archaeologist from the Australian National University.
"In Japan such axes appear about 35,000 years ago. But in most countries in the world they arrive with agriculture after 10,000 years ago."