A composite photograph of the front and back of the jade gouge shown with a centimeter scale. CREDIT: Les ONeil, University of Otago The discovery of a 3,300-year-old tool has led researchers to the rediscovery of a “lost” 20th-century manuscript and a “geochemically extraordinary” bit of earth. Discovered on Emirau Island in the Bismark Archipelago (a group of islands off the coast of New Guinea), the 2-inch (5-centimeters) stone tool was probably used to carve, or gouge, wood. It seems to have fallen from a stilted house, landing in a tangle of coral reef that was eventually covered over by shifting sands. The jade gouge may have been crafted by the Lapita people, who appeared in the western Pacific around 3,300 years ago, then spread across the Pacific to Samoa over a couple hundred years, and from there formed the ancestral population of the people we know as Polynesians, according to the researchers. Jade gouges and axes have been found before in these areas, but what’s interesting about the object is the type of jade it’s made of: it seems to have come from a distant region. Perhaps these Lapita brought it from wherever they originated. (Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com …
