Kota Tampan

Kota Tampan
One important mainland industry once thought to date from the Middle Pleistocene the so-called ‘Tampanian’ pebble and flake industry from Kota Tampan on Perak, Malaysia is believed to date only to about 31,000 years ago (now the figure has been revised to 75,000 years old).

Kota Tampan served as a manufacturing locus for pebble and flake and the tool are in soil evidently sealed by a layer of volcanic ash from an eruption of the Toba volcano in northern Sumatra.

It is another important archeological findings after Bukit Jawa. Digging began in 1933 in Kota Tampan and and incredible 50,000 pieces of stolen tools have been found.

They provide enough evidence for human occupation of the Malaysian territories during the Paleolithic period.

Archeological discoveries confirm that man has lived there since the Stone Age. The limestone caves provided shelter beside the 400 km long Sungai Perak, the peninsula’s second longest river, which has always been the states major artery.

This site was probably in a lake shoreline when it was occupied and subsequently sealed under an ash fall from a massive eruption of the Toba volcano in Sumatra about 31,00 years ago.

At this time, the sea’s surface was about 50 m blow its present level owing to the trapping of after in the high latitude ice sheets.

Kota Tampan was thus probably located much further inland than today, and perhaps in drier and open forest conditions.

Basically the status of Kota Tampan as a Paleolithic site was the subject of furious debate among archeologists specializing in Southeast Asia for over a decade.

One theory proposed by British dated the site as Middle Pleistocene (200,000 – 500,000) and thus the only early Stone Age site in Peninsular Malaysia.
Kota Tampan