Find revises man's arrival down under

SYDNEY - Ax heads and grinding stones from a cave in Australia's far north suggest humans reached the continent about 65,000 years ago - some 18,000 years earlier than previously thought, according to research published on Thursday.

A technique called luminescence dating was used to date the ancient tools, which were found in a rock shelter at the bottom of a cliff on the edge of a sandy savanna plain east of Darwin.

Finding a new minimum age for the arrival of humans pushes back the origins of Australia's aboriginal culture, the world's oldest continuous civilization, from around 47,000 years ago.