Posted on 07/06/2016 5:10:19 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Archaeological sites suggest climate may not have been directly linked to cultural and technological innovations of Middle Stone Age humans in southern Africa...
The Middle Stone Age marked a period of dramatic change amongst early humans in southern Africa, and climate change has been postulated as a primary driver for the appearance of technological and cultural innovations such as bone tools, ochre production, and personal ornamentation. While some researchers suggest that climate instability may have directly inspired technological advances, others postulate that environmental stability may have provided a stable setting that allowed for experimentation. However, the disconnection of palaeoenvironmental records from archaeological sites makes it difficult to test these alternatives.
...analyses of animal remains, shellfish taxa and the stable carbon and oxygen isotope measurements in ostrich eggshell, from two archaeological sites, Blombos Cave and Klipdrift Shelter, spanning 98,000 to 73,000 years ago and 72,000 to 59,000 years ago, respectively, to acquire data regarding possible palaeoenvironmental conditions in southern Africa at the time... found that climatic and environmental variation, reflected in ostrich eggshell stable isotope measurements, faunal records, and shellfish indicators, may not have occurred in phase with Middle Stone Age human technological and cultural innovation at these two sites. While acknowledging that climate and environmental shifts may have influenced human subsistence strategies, the researchers suggest climate change may not have been the driving factor behind cultural and technological innovations...
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
This seems just wackadoo enough not to warrant a separate topic:
Stone Age Text Links Australia to Europe: Initial Evidence for Worldwide Travel by an Ancient Stone Age Civilization
Ancient Origins
July 6, 2016
http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/stone-age-text-links-australia-europe-initial-evidence-worldwide-travel-020886
For instance, the area where the Great Pyramid of Egypt is. It wasn't always a desert.
It was interesting to see that findings were separated into two separate time periods—98,000 to 73,000 years ago and 72,000 to 59,000 in two locations. An interesting thought is that the great Toba megavolcano erupted around 74,000 years ago leaving a crater 18 by 65 miles. Did changing conditions force hominids to move from one location to another or change the kinds of things they survived to produce?
I don't see any way it was possible for them NOT to move.
or change the kinds of things they survived to produce?
On the presumption that a megavolcano exploded, they would be forced to move very far to find any kind of 'edible resources' and the chances are very high that those resources (plant, animal) would be quite different from what they were used to.
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