Contents - Akademi Sains Malaysia

P. Loganathan: Paleolithic Age (Tampanian) Stone Tool Production ‘Workshops’,Table 1. Fission track ages of zircons from rhyolitic tuffs in Sumatra. aLocation/Source Zircons collected from the rhyolitic ash Fission-track ageParapat Pass, Lower Tuba tuff 8 zircon grains 1.2 ± 0.16 Ma b (1 sigma)Parapat Pass, Upper Tuba tuff 6 zircon grains 0.10 ± 0.02 Ma (1 sigma)9 km south of Parapat, Uppermost Toba tuff 5 zircon grains 0.03 ± 0.003 Ma (1 sigma)Siguragura, Toba Rhyolite tuff 7 zircon grains 0.10 ± 0.02 Ma (1 sigma)Aekgadang tuff 5 zircon grains 3.5 ± 0.17 Ma (1 sigma)Bukittinggi tuff 8 zircon grains 0.07 ± 0.02 Ma (1 sigma)Maninjau tuff, east side 8 zircon grains 0.08 ± 0.02 Ma (1 sigma)Tanjung Karang, Lampung tuff 7 zircon grains 1.0 ± 0.22 Ma (1 sigma)a Nishimura 1980; b Ma = Million years.wide region”. Is it therefore possible that it was Maninjau’s tuff, and not Toba’s, the tuff which covered parts of thePaleolithic Kota Tampan?Stauffer et al. (1980) reported that radio-carbon dating of woody material directly below the rhyolitic tuffs in Ampangand Serdang, both localities in Selangor, gave ages of between 30 000 years to 36 000 years. This radiocarbon date ties inwith Nishimura’s fission track age dating of zircons from the Tuba tuff of 30 000 years. This suggests that there were atleast two episodes when erupting Sumatran volcanoes rained tephra over parts of Peninsular Malaysia.Extensive alluvial tin mining in Selangor and Perak had “removed” much of the tuffs deposited. Kota Tampan, Perak,was not a tin mining area and thus had its tuffs essentially undisturbed (except by tropical weathering and erosion, as wellas agricultural and infrastructure developments later) preserving the tool artefacts, basically in situ.REFERENCESNishimura, S 1980, ‘Re-examination of the fission-track ages of volcanic ashes and ignimbrites in Sumatra’, in Physicalgeology of Indonesian Island Arcs, ed S Nishimura, Kyoto University.Renne, PR, Deino, AL, Walter, RC, Turrin, BD, Swisher III, CC, Becker, TA, Curtis, GH, Sharp, WD, & Jaouni, A-R 1994,‘Intercalibration of astronomical and radioisotopic time’, .Storey, M, Richard, G. Roberts, RG & Saidin, M (n.d.), ‘Astronomically calibrated 40Ar/39Ar age for the Toba super-eruptionand global synchronization of late Quaternary records’, (in press): .Stauffer, PH, Nishimura, S & Batchelor, BC 1980, ‘Volcanic ash in Malaya from catastrophic eruption of Toba, Sumatra, 30 000years ago’, in Physical geology of Indonesian Island Arcs., ed S Nishimura, Kyoto University.Tjia, HD & Kusnaeny, K 1976, ‘An early Quaternary age of an ignimbrite layer, Lake Toba, Sumatra’, Sains Malaysiana, vol. 5,no. 1, pp. 67–70.Tjia, HD & Fatihah, RM 2008, ‘Blasts from the past impacting on Peninsular Malaysia’, Bulletin of the Geological Society ofMalaysia, vol. 54, pp. 97–102, doi: 10.7186/bgsm2008016.Yokoyama, T, Nishimura, S, Abe, E, Otofuji, Y, Ikeda, T, Suparka, S & Dharma, A 1980, ‘Volcano-, magneto- andchronostratigraphy and the geologic structure of Danau Toba, Sumatra, Indonesia’, in Physical geology of IndonesianIsland Arcs, ed S. Nishimura, Kyoto University.73