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Discovery of Early Human Tools Hint at Earlier Start
SternisheFan writes in with a story about early humans passing down their tool making skills. "Sophisticated bladelets suggest that humans passed on their technological skill down the generations.
A haul of stone blades from a cave in South Africa suggests that early humans were already masters of complex technology more than 70,000 years ago .
The tiny blades — no more than about 3 centimeters long on average — were probably used as tips for throwable spears, or as spiky additions to club-like weapons, says Curtis Marean, an archaeologist at Arizona State University in Tempe who led the team that found the bladelets.
Twenty-seven such blades, called microliths by archaeologists, were found in layers of sand and soil dating as far back as 71,000 years ago and representing a time-span of about 11,000 years, showing how long humans were manufacturing the blades.
Clever crafters The find lends credence to the idea that early humans were capable of passing on their clever ideas to the next generation of artisans, creating complex technologies that endured over time. John Shea, a palaeoanthropologist at Stony Brook University in New York, says that it also suggests that 'previous hypotheses that 'early' Homo sapiens differed from 'modern' ones in these respects are probably wrong'."
cute editing work right there :)
Rich
More food for thought on the evolution of language.
Wikipedia has an interesting article on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_modernity , which indicates that there are two schools of thought on this, which I'll call the gradualists and suddenists. The suddenists think Something Wonderful Happened ~50,000 years ago, so this discovery will make them have to move their date earlier. However, the gradualists think there are signs of modern behavior much earlier, so this news won't make them rethink anything. (Most likely they'll just say ITYS.)
IMO the suddenists are following the same kind of thinking that made people think Neanderthals were dumb brutes, that we're a lot more different than animals than we really are, etc. ISTM that there has always been some kind of ... prejudice? conceit? ... that makes a lot of people assume that we're a lot more special than we actually are.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I wonder if Teh Management would consider truncating AC posts to a shorter "Read the rest of this comment" than the above.
Like maybe, 10 lines. If they're actually saying something relevant and interesting (which they often do), it would still be easy enough to click the link.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Put the tools there to fool you.
maybe it would be under "posts to board, then answers own posts"
what is she thinking ?
if these things were square-like with rounded corners the findings prove that pirating of ideas was advanced already there.
Sophisticated bladelets suggest that humans passed on their technological skill down the generations
It seems odd to me there was ever a dissenting view from this, I mean what about 'standing on the shoulders of giants' concept.
They only lost one bladelet every 400 years. Maybe they could help me find my car keys.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Does this finding invalidate any patents?
If you are an atheist, the comparison is that you believe in code you cannot see to detect and contain malware on the basis of faith! So you do believe in something invisible to you, don't you?
So your argument is that if I don't believe in God, I can't believe in software? Finally proof that software doesn't exist.
Learn to love Alaska
A few thousand years from now, archaeologists will make the same observations about collections of quaint crude programming languages (the ones we use today) that they find in "digital caves"...
Too bad that the idea of patents has passed over generations.
And please thank your sister for me again.
It took a while but she finally reached my UID and she insists on doing every single UID ever. A determined woman.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
More and more in the last decade or so I have seen things that lead me to believe that humans have been basically modern humans for approximately 200,000 years. That's how far back our ancestors have been traced through our mitochondrial DNA. I have no doubt that in coming decades there will be new discoveries that will keep pushing the dates of "modern" human behavior further and further back.
This is a fascinating concept to me because it means the human race and basic forms of human civilization have been around for an incredibly long time. Basic concepts like languages, writing systems, trading, counting, money, philosophy, astronomy, martial arts and many other things have probably been invented, forgotten and reinvented hundreds of times by individual geniuses over the course of those 200,000 years. All the sci-fi stories I've ever read where it's seen as some amazing thing that an alien race has been around for more than a hundred thousand years... Well, the human race proves that's really not that amazing. Or, conversely, that the human race is equally as amazing as those "ancient" alien races. In fact, we could be considered one of those "ancient" alien races, from the perspective of an alien race.
When I was younger, the concept was that just a few thousand years ago we were retarded cave men, and then suddenly civilization happened. Nowadays what I picture is more like endless millennia of fairly intelligent people living like Native Americans in many different ways, with pockets of even more modern cultures that rose and fell through the ages, until finally a few thousand years ago a few things like writing and math were (re)discovered and remembered and propagated to enough other humans that modern civilization exploded into being and had enough momentum and population to finally stick around, where it hadn't been able to "stick" before. I think it was basically luck that things didn't develop either ten thousand years earlier or ten thousand years later. All the basic elements seem to have been there for a looooooong time.
Just my pet theory. I am not an anthropologist, obviously, just fascinated by the things that may have happened during early modern human history, which seems to extend much further back than what I was taught in grade school.
Am I the only one slightly inconvenienced by the expression "masters of complex technology" for crafting tiny stone blades?
By the same token, the hyperbole-inclined call "Mousterian technological complex" a pretty simple set of stone tools made by Neanderthals...
Right, everything is relative, but still, in historical perspective, none of these even remotely qualify as "complex". Seriously, start with the invention of the wheel, one of the six SIMPLE machines:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_machine
What if they were buried, rather than discarded? Doesn't that blow any conclusions out of the water?
"...The find lends credence to the idea that early humans were capable of passing on their clever ideas to the next generation of artisans, creating complex technologies that endured over time...."
And that approach to the development of the species worked fine for several hundred thousand years.
Then, in medieval times, people started to develop Guilds in order to keep commercial secrets. Didn't completely stop innovation, though.
Finally, in the 20th/21st centuries, they developed a complex theory of 'Intellectual Property' and, more importantly, a whole social caste of people called 'lawyers' to administer the rules for using it. Allied to this, a world-wide communication system operated by machinery enabled these lawyers to see at a moment if anyone was breaking their 'rules'.
After that, the progress of humanity went rapidly downhill, until they ended up back with the flint blades....
According to wikipedia the oldest stone tools are 2.6 to 1.7 million years old: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldowan
So what is so special about this?
After reading TFA there is one thing that leaves me mighty confused.
The only hypothesis made for these artifacts is that they were weapons or parts of bigger weapons, and that they led to a military advantage over neanderthals.
TFA doesn't even consider any other possibile use for the bladelets, like being tools for skinning, carving or sculpting. Even the requirement of having developed complex language is secondary to the craftsmanship necessary for the bladelets.
I've seen it is common among some anthropologists to consider the history of humanity in the same terms as the most recent history (last 6.000 years): in terms of war and contending parties. Is there anyone informed enough (more than me) about this topic that can tell if it is actually a trait of human history or an ideological bias?
Thanks in advance.
Could be Cow Tools.
...just sayin'
"about 3 centimeters long on average "
I am amazed that70,000 years ago these toolmakers were using the metric system - yet USA is still using inches, pounds and gallons when we are trying to explore space.
I guess they needed the multi blade shavers, they were hairy back then.
Og: Ug look happy.
Ug: Ug is happy!
Og: Why Ug happy?
Ug: Ug finish pay off student loan!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Og happy he knew Old One. He gone now but teach Og much about version control, labels, merging and gutting pigs. Og rather gut giant live boar than merge. Better than dumb Neanderthals. They still using RCS. Ha ha.
Unless you're using "tools" as a verb, there should be an "s" at the end of "hint." /grammar-nag
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
So what are they - stone blades, tiny blades, bladelets or microliths?
Early humans probably created these tools to fight off the Sauroniops. http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/12/11/08/050217/new-dinosaur-named-after-the-eye-of-sauron
Trading is really old, so it was never forgotten. It evolved just once, in East Africa before we got out of Africa. It was never forgotten
Spoken language is something we evolved into. We have the language instinct at birth. It is not something to be taught to children. They naturally try to communicate via spoken language. They know objects have names, and actions have names, and they can be strung together to express concrete events (cup-broke!) or express intent (want-juice) . So laungages were never fogotten.
Writing was invented only twice. Looking at the effort we need to undertake to teach children to write, it is clear, it is not instinctive. It was invented. There are only two instances of independent invention of writing. The linear-b alphabet found in the Mediterranean island and the pictographic glyphs of the Incas. All the writing systems of the Old World were either derived from linear-b or inspired by it. Some minor record keeping aids probably existed long back, notches on a stick or knots on a vine or shells strung up. But it probably did not blossom into full fledged writing based on symbols standing in for phonemes or words.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
It makes me sad to think we've been killing each other for that long.
> [the bladelets] were probably used as tips for throwable spears, or as spiky additions to club-like weapons
I get having sharp tips for spears - very useful for hunting. It's the "spiky clubs" that's disturbing - I don't see much use for a mace outside of hurting humans.
They got the dates wrong?
Have gnu, will travel.
Why truncate when you can downmod?
Free Martian Whores!
The hypothetical ancient civilization could not have evolved without using WATER. The fact thet we still have water proves that they never existed.
See http://blogcritics.org/politics/article/is-oil-a-renewable-energy/ :D