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World's Oldest Stone Tools Discovered In Kenya
sciencehabit writes: Researchers say they have found the oldest tools made by human ancestors—stone flakes dated to 3.3 million years ago. That's 700,000 years older than the oldest-known tools to date, suggesting that our ancestors were crafting tools several hundred thousand years before our genus Homo arrived on the scene. If correct, the new evidence could confirm disputed claims for very early tool use, and it suggests that ancient australopithecines like the famed 'Lucy' may have fashioned stone.
...to bang the rocks together, guys.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I'm pretty sure stone flakes are a hallmark of human-like intelligence. Other animals fashion tools, yes, but to my knowledge, not cutting tools.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
New Caledonian crows are known to be tool users and makers. Some of the tools they make could be classified as "knives":
http://www.welcomewildlife.com/?folder=pages/featured/birds/smartest
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Caledonian_crow#Tool_use_and_manufacture
If poking at bush babies with a broken stick to hurt them enough to come out to be eaten constitutes a tool, then Fongoli chimpanzees of Senegal (NYT article) use tools. At least the females do, the males do he-male things like chase down their prey. It is thought the females do this because they are not big and brawny like the males. Actually, the males just feel like they are losing their testosterone if they stoop to using tools...or asking the females which direction their prey went.
I mean, how can you tell rock flakes from 3.3 million year old corn flakes...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
...still confuses management.
Are there any pictures of these stone flakes?
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
You don't know which species had "human-like" intelligence 3.3 million years ago. There were a number of "human-like" species that aren't our ancestors.
Mostly because Humans are the only ones that love killing each other.
Dont see prides of lions killing the pride next door just for shits and giggles
Sure they do, if you count sex. Male lions will kill rival males in other prides so they can take over mating rights. Both male lions & female lions will kill the cubs of rival prides.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Lions were the first example I thought of also. A male lion taking over a pride will also kill all cubs that aren't his own to ensure that the females only raise his own offspring. Nature isn't a rainbow-sunshine world of peace and harmony. It's a nasty world of kill or be killed and eaten. Anyone who thinks that humans are the only ones who kill really hasn't seen much of nature.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Male lions will kill rival males in other prides so they can take over mating rights. Both male lions & female lions will kill the cubs of rival prides.
Almost all animals will do this. Some nutball recently tried to release a family of zoo-raised apes back into the wild in Africa. The second they encountered a rival male and his females, the wild-raised male killed the zoo ape and his offspring and took his females as his own.
Nature is ugly. Humans may be the best killers, but we're FAR from the most brutal, remorseless, or vicious ones.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Seeing as chimps have been observed making and using tools, it would seem at least plausible that our common ancestor 4 to 6 million years ago was making and using tools too.
Chimps have been seen to make wooden tools (which obviously don't preserve very well in the fossil record), and to use stone tools. I don't know of them being observed to make stone tools, but that doesn't seem like it would be a huge leap.
So the difference between early man's use of tools and that of our co-chimpanzee ancestor was most likely just one of degree, if anything.