Oldest Technology Gets Older

Ephemeris writes: ""A collection of bone tools dating back 70,000 years is raising new questions about human evolution. The discovery suggests that our early human ancestors were far more sophisticated than previously thought..." This story has the details of the find. Any armchair anthropologists want to toss up ideas as to whether or not spoken language (a necessary precursor to the recent anomoly known as civilization) was alive & kicking 70,000 years ago?"

Comments

This should be expected

[JMZero]

I would hope that by (now-70000 years) man would have been using simple tools. 70000 years is a significant, but not a huge evolutionary interval.

Current human language is a tremendous evolutionary accomplishment, both in terms of mechanics and brain wiring (I believe the brain is wired to learn language - it has a "Language Acquisition Device"). Surely 70000 years ago these structures were developing, and surely they were giving evolutionary advantages to those brutes possessed of them. Evidence: our current level of ability.