New Delhi (ANTARA News/Xinhua-OANA) - Archaeologists have discovered India`s oldest stone-age tools, up to 1.5 million years old, at a pre-historic site near Chennai, southern India, the Kolkata-based daily The Telegraph reported on Friday.

The discovery may change existing ideas about the earliest arrival of human ancestors from Africa into India, the report said.

A team of Indian and French archaeologists has used two dating methods to show that the stone hand-axes and cleavers from Attirampakkam are at least 1.07 million years old, and could date as far back as 1.5 million years, said the report.

In nearly 12 years of excavation, archaeologists Shanti Pappu and Kumar Akhilesh from the Sharma Center for Heritage Education, Chennai, have found 3,528 artifacts that are similar to the prehistoric tools discovered in western Asia and Africa, it added.

Their finding will appear on Saturday in the U.S. journal " Science", according to the report.
(U.KR-BPY/B002)

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