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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.
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!
It's funny you think this. Simple societies actually have *more* free time, not less. You hunt, you get a big meal, it's like Thanksgiving, and you relax until you're hungry again. No lawn to maintain, no house to clean, no bills to pay, no 8 hours at a job. Eat and rest until you're hungry enough to go looking for more food.
I'm not saying it's a better life because of this. Death lurks around the corner with even slight interruption to the food supply. There is no warehousing and no reserve food. What there is though is plenty of free time.
Perhaps my comment was too brief.
You are right that science involves asking (and providing a lot of research and thought into answering) questions.
But claiming that the the validity of TFA conclusions is in question because the picture looks like what might be found in a landscaping supply yard is about as anti-science as, well, a box of racks. It represents a rejection of the structures and institutions involved in the exploration of science, which while full of failings and biases, are not so far corrupted that they would require readers to question so basic a proposition as they had done at least a little more than a layperson's visual inspection to confirm these were tool implements and not just busted rocks.
It depends on the terrain but when bow hunting I routinely get within arms length of whitetail deer. I wouldn't underestimate someone that unlike me has spent their entire life focused on hunting with primitive tools and who hunts in small packs of other men who have spent their lives doing the same.