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'Staying Longer At Home' Was Key To Stone Age Technology Change 60,000 Years Ago (phys.org)
A new study by scientists at the University of the Witwatersrand suggests that at about 58,000 years ago, Stone Age humans began to settle down, staying in one area for longer periods. The research also provides a potential answer to a long-held mystery: why older, Howiesons Poort complex technological tradition in South Africa, suddenly disappear at that time. Phys.Org reports: The Howiesons Poort at Sibudu contains many finely-worked, crescent-shaped stone tools fashioned from long, thin blades made on dolerite, hornfels and, to a lesser extent, quartz. These "segments," as they are called, were hafted to shafts or handles at a variety of angles using compound adhesives that sometimes included red ochre (an iron oxide). A diverse bone tool kit in the Howiesons Poort includes what may be the world's oldest bone arrowhead. Certainly a variety of hunting techniques was used perhaps including the first use of snares for the capture of small creatures. The animal remains brought to Sibudu reflect this diversity for there are bones from large plains game like zebra, tiny blue duiker, and even pigeons and small carnivores. Soft, clayey ochre pieces were collected in the Howiesons Poort perhaps at a considerable distance From Sibudu. Clayey ochre is useful for applying as paint. The beautiful Howiesons Poort industry with its long, thin blades is replaced at 58,000 years ago by a simple technology that could be rapidly produced. Coarse rocks like quartzite and sandstone became popular. These could be collected close to Sibudu. Post-Howiesons Poort tools were part of an unstandardized toolkit with triangular or irregularly-shaped flakes. Tiny scaled pieces were also produced using a bipolar technique (in the simplest terms this involves smashing a small piece of rock with a hammerstone). The study has been published in the journal PlosOne.
Working from home has really been key to me improving my life as well.
Skilled craftsmen replaced by cheap labor. Who knew it was a tradition 58,000 years old.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
It seems to me that there still would have been traders and other travelers. If the Howiesons Poort tech was so much better there would have been demand for the raw materials. Perhaps they were decimated by inter-tribal warfare. Travel also spreads disease, so a plague or two could have brought them down. There are more factors to this than one simple explanation.
On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough. Seth
The article has this picture which shows some of the alleged "tools".
Years ago my uncle had a dirt and gravel business. He had piles of stones 20 feet high that looked just like those in that picture, that he had crushed from larger rocks.
How can these scientists be so sure that such stones are actually tools of some sort? Just because a rock has a sharp edge doesn't prove that it has been intentionally worked by humans and used as a tool. Depending on the type of rock, just breaking a larger boulder (which could happen completely naturally, without human intervention) can give stones with sharp edges, or otherwise cause markings on the stones.
It's one thing when we're talking about an Amerindian arrow head, which has a defined shape and very specific machining that would be quite unlikely to happen in nature. But the rocks shown in the article's picture look like gravel. They have no specific shapes. They have no obvious signs of being worked by humans. They look like plain gravel.
As any fule kno, you can't invent anything unless you have a shed.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
"staying longer at home"! So primitive humans were actually today's millennials!
Our guide at Chicago's Field Museum stated this theory on our high school field trip. In 1985.
I believe this more like this: If you don't spend all your time finding supplies for survival, you have time left to use your brain for other things.The settling just correlates with a general shift in foraging/thinking time...
Crivens! I kicked meself in me own heid!
I don't see how the parent comment is "anti-science", like you wrongly claim it is.
Science is all about asking questions. Science is all about scrutiny. Science is all about taking a critical look at evidence. Science is all about questioning the methodologies and discoveries of other scientists.
If anyone is anti-science, it is you and people like you who claim that asking questions is somehow "wrong" or should be discouraged.
Any researcher who is resistant to his work being questioned is not a scientist, either. Real scientists love to have their discoveries and their theories ripped apart by their colleagues. Why is that? Because this questioning and scrutiny is how we get to the truth, which is what science is all about.
People who ask questions and who look critically at the evidence, like the parent, are seeking the truth. They are real scientists.
People like you, who attack those who ask questions, are trying to push a narrative or a political agenda. You aren't a scientist. You're completely against the scientific method. You're the one who is anti-science.
Yes, random sharp rocks just fell onto the ends of shafts and go stuck there with compound adhesives that also just happened to randomly travel considerable distance and get stuck to them.
It's also possible that these letters just automatically arranged themselves in a nice neat little row all by themselves. Maybe the wind or something blew them here.
Yabba dabba do!
I remember Rae Dawn Chong, but I don't remember that scene :(
Rly Daryl Hannah in Clan of the Cave Bear is where it's at for stone age pr0n
So much so that unless we solve for the disease of Greed, we will be ultimately destroyed by it.
Greed is what makes every economy work and to think otherwise is naive. Without some amount of greed people sit on their ass and do nothing that they absolutely do not have to. The trick is to harness greed in productive ways and limit the excesses through appropriate laws and social institutions. Unchecked greed is a terrible thing but carefully harnessed and directed self interest can be extremely useful.
Maybe it was Clan of the Cave Bear. Starlog had a picture of a woman bending over into a caveman's lap. That issue would have gotten banned at my middle school library if the librarian knew about it.
As the climate changed rapidly due to burning fossil fuels, these primitive cultures could not adapt quickly enough and died off unceremoniously.
We're trying to improve humanity through the creation of innovative tools
I stay at home all day long. I am evolving so much faster than all you guys who commute to work.
Thus, when I stayed at home until I was 25, I was advancing the human race.
I knew it! They didn't believe me but I insisted! "Really, technology cannot advance unless I get hot cocoa from Mom at 9 pm, every night!!"