Tool Use By Humans Pushed Back By 800,000 Years

gpronger writes "The journal Nature reports that newly discovered tool marks on bones indicates that we were using tools at minimum 800,000 years earlier than previously thought. This places the start of tool use at 3.4 million years ago or earlier. The most likely ancestor in this time frame would be Australopithecus afarensis. The researchers, led by palaeoanthropologist Zeresenay Alemseged of the California Academy of Science, San Francisco,and Shannon McPherron, (an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany) state that cut marks on the bones of an impala-sized creature and another closer in size to a buffalo, indicate butchering of the animals by our distant ancestors. However, they do not believe that they were in fact hunters, more likely scavenging the remains left behind by large predators."

Comments

Tool use is widespread

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Turns out we're not the only animal that uses tools so there's no reason why it would have appeared recently in human evolution. What's more impressive is our ability to design tools to attain a certain objective by using only our imagination (abstract thought) rather than the ability to pick up a rock from the vicinity to carve up a carcass. That's likely much more recent.

Re:Tool use is widespread

[c6gunner]

Actually, abstract thought might not be as recent or require as much evolutionary development as is often thought either.

While I agree that this is a possibility, I think it's rather funny that you're using the behavior of a modern-day chimp as evidence. You do realize that the chimp in that video has had just as much time and "evolutionary development" as we have, don't you?

Re:Tool use is widespread

[Runaway1956]

Good link. I was sitting here thinking about all the tool using animals I've ever heard of. That page pretty much covers them. And, of course, primates pretty much lead the list. There was a story in the last couple years about a band of primates discovering a newer, better way to catch termites from a termite mound. I think they frayed the bit of straw or stick, giving the termites more area to grab hold of. The chimp got more termite chow for the same effort with the improved stick. The interesting bit was, they taught another band how to do the same thing.

Man may be the most prolific tool user, but he certainly isn't unique.

WELL

[ciderbrew]

I think we all agree here that this is "just a theory". Despite all that MumboJumbo you call "Science".
It's only a theory. Like gravity and maths.

+6 flamebate on other sites, this sort of talk is you know...

"That's likely much more recent" - Really?

[Kupfernigk]

You may be correct, but you have not the slightest evidence to back up that claim. There are many, many other issues to consider, such as environmental pressure or the lack thereof, and the difficulty of abstract thought before there were any abstractions - the bootstrap problem. Our present ability to think of new tools in an environment surrounded by them is not, perhaps, that impressive. The first person to think of trimming a sharp rock for better performance was a genuine innovator.

Re:"That's likely much more recent" - Really?

[dan828]

It's something people don't seem to get-- mostly I think because our education system is full of little stories about how "stupid" people of the past were for believing something we see as foolish now, or because they didn't have electricity or some such (like knowing how to flip a light switch somehow makes you a genius). People genetically indistinguishable from us lived in the stone age, and their technological know how involved use of natural materials to create what we consider to be crude tools, yet, all in all, those people probably had a great deal more know-how then most people around today. They could make tools, hunt or gather their food, build a fire to cook it, and fashion a shelter to protect themselves from the elements. Most modern people only know how to use tools that others have created and haven't a clue how any of them work.

Re:Evolution

[MichaelSmith]

I can put up a shelf. But I can't butcher a carcass. Evolution in reverse eh?.

The other day I was sitting in a release planning meeting, listing to a discussion about our version control system and related tooling. Suddenly I had this thought that we were all just a bunch of apes, manipulating abstractions of abstractions of tools ultimately designed to help us catch our dinner. Now I don't know how we do it at all. It all seems so unlikely.

Re:Evolution

[delire]

Suddenly I had this thought that we were all just a bunch of apes, manipulating abstractions of abstractions of tools ultimately designed to help us catch our dinner.

The real abstraction you're talking about is post-industrial capitalism. Meat eaters often consider themselves somehow kin to the Great Hunter, that by eating a bloody steak they are somehow closer to the earth and it's mortal realities yet they couldn't be further from it. Rather, they cowardly pay another to kill a sick beast - stoned on antibiotics so that it can actually live and eat corn - on their behalf. I say that as someone that grew up on a farm and often ate what I killed with my own hands.

Unlike our hunter forebears, people caneat meat every day because of the abstraction of late capitalism. I encourage every meat eater to take the life of the thing they want to eat, at least once in their lives. Look at the beast in the eyes, take its life and then eat parts of its body. A highly valuable dietary - and somehow even spiritual - reality check.