Prehistoric stone tools bear 500,000-year-old animal residue

Eurekalert! ^ | March 19, 2015 | American Friends of Tel Aviv University

[SunkenCiv]

Tel Aviv University discovers first direct evidence early flint tools were used to butcher animal carcasses.

Some 2.5 million years ago, early humans survived on a paltry diet of plants. As the human brain expanded, however, it required more substantial nourishment - namely fat and meat - to sustain it. This drove prehistoric man, who lacked the requisite claws and sharp teeth of carnivores, to develop the skills and tools necessary to hunt animals and butcher fat and meat from large carcasses.

Among elephant remains some 500,000 years old at a Lower Paleolithic site in Revadim, Israel, Prof. Ran Barkai and his graduate students Natasha Solodenko and Andrea Zupanchich of Tel Aviv University's Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures recently analyzed "handaxes" and "scrapers," universally shaped and sized prehistoric stone tools, replete with animal residue...

Through use-wear analysis -- examining the surfaces and edges of the tools to determine their function -- and the Fourier Transform InfraRed (FTIR) residue analysis which harnesses infrared to identify signatures of prehistoric organic compounds, the researchers were able to demonstrate for the first time direct proof of animal exploitation by flint tools...

While the question of their function and production remained unanswered until now, there was little doubt that the handaxe and scraper, found at prehistoric sites all around the world, were distinct, used for specific purposes. By replicating the flint tools for a modern butchering experiment, and then comparing the replicas with their prehistoric counterparts, the researchers determined that the handaxe was prehistoric man's sturdy "Swiss army knife," capable of cutting and breaking down bone, tough sinew, and hide. The slimmer, more delicate scraper was used to separate fur and animal fat from muscle tissue.

[tumblindice]

Just someone to keep my cave clean,
Cook my mastodon and go away.

A maid, a caveman needs a maid.

[ExCTCitizen]

A few months after the first animal was killed PETA was formed to protest the killing...

[minnesota_bound]

There is a science fiction story about this called
“The Ice People by Rene Barjavel”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ice_People_%28Barjavel_novel%29

French expedition in Antarctica reveals the ruins of a 900,000 years old civilization.

[gleeaikin]

This unsigned and undated article was apparently written by Emanuel Velikovsky. While I have read several of his books and found them interesting, I do not necessarily accept his dating on the Egyptian time line. It was one of his books that made me aware of and receptive to the idea proposed by Firestone et al. that north america was hit by a major boloid(s) around 13,000 years ago, triggering the cold period known as the Younger Dryas

[bert]

For many years I carried an Uncle Henry knife. It wore down my pocket and in jeans resulted in white spots on the blue.

I watched a program on the desert dwellers of South Africa that tucked a small flint chip such as depicted here under the strap or thong around their waist. It was the size of a quarter. They could effectively gut an antelope or such to be carried back to camp.

I found a very small Gerber lockback on the bottom of a crystal spring in Florida and discovered it did what the big knife did but didn’t make holes in my pants. Small is actually good

[BroJoeK]

from the article: "Some 2.5 million years ago, early humans survived on a paltry diet of plants."

Harmless Teddy Bear: "Can I have something that resembles proof of that statement?"

Surely you know, there's no scientific "proof", but there is evidence and confirmed theory.
Evidence begins with the similarity of the oldest pre-human remains to those of chimpanzees, and the gradual increase over time in human-like features, along with fewer chimp-like features.
Since chimps are primarily plant-eaters, it's reasonable to suppose chimp-like pre-humans were also mostly plant-eaters.

Of course, the amount & type of meat they may have eaten at any given time is subject of study & debate.

That's science.

[PIF]

If each civilization averaged 6000 years then there could have been over 80 of them in that 500,00 year time frame - all of which could have been scoured out of existence by the Ice and the resulting massive floods beginning around 12,000 years ago.

Then there is circumstantial evidence that there may have been some form of hominid civilization millions of years before the Pleistocene (things reportedly found in coal lumps but now lost). Even the very early Earth (3.2 billion YA) was habitable ... contrary to popular science and opinion.

[PIF]

They didn’t need to sterilize them, making a new one took only a few minutes of work. Tools were used and often disgarded immediately after use; why lug something around when material for new a one was plentiful?

[SunkenCiv]

The conventional view of civilization, well, historical times, is that it goes back about 5000 years (cuneiform writing), and that agriculture goes back about twice or three times that; the latter is only three percent of this 500K figure. IOW, there’s plenty of room there. During a half million years there’s plenty of time for space debris to arrive in inconvenient places.

[SunkenCiv]

Who’s “they”? No one is talking about dinosaurs, so knock it off.

[SunkenCiv]

Nothing that you’d accept, I’m sure. Perhaps the author of the article would be able to help.

[BroJoeK]

PIF: "If each civilization averaged 6000 years then there could have been over 80 of them in that 500,00 year time frame - all of which could have been scoured out of existence by the Ice and the resulting massive floods beginning around 12,000 years ago."

But it's totally unreasonable to suppose that all older civilization only happened on land which was later scoured by glaciers, or buried by floods, to the point where nothing remains today to be found.
In fact, there is physical evidence of life on Earth from virtually every geological age, and all of it is consistent with evolution theory -- gradual development from early simple to the most recent complex life forms.

PIF: "Then there is circumstantial evidence that there may have been some form of hominid civilization millions of years before the Pleistocene (things reportedly found in coal lumps but now lost)."

In fact, there is no such confirmed, credible evidence -- none -- but there is obvious insatiable lust to believe something, anything, outside the realms of mere mundane, ordinary, boooooring science.

PIF: "Even the very early Earth (3.2 billion YA) was habitable ... contrary to popular science and opinion."

In fact, geological evidence suggests that cyanobacteria began producing oxygen through photosynthesis around 2.3 billion years ago, leading to what's called the "Great Oxygen Catastrophe".
However, atmospheric oxygen never reached current levels (circa 20%) until roughly the beginning of the Cambrian Explosion 550 million years ago.

Atmospheric Oxygen levels over the past 3.8 billion years:

[SunkenCiv]

Hey, food containers weren’t invented yet. And no one invented the lid for thousands of years after that. ;’)

[SunkenCiv]

LOL

[SunkenCiv]

Must be a pain to make those really large kaiser rolls.

[SunkenCiv]

Quite agree.

[SunkenCiv]

No, actually it’s not.

[SunkenCiv]

The Pitfalls of Radiocarbon Dating (along with ‘The Testimony of Radiocarbon Dating’) are credited on the contents page linked near the upper left corner.

[ErnBatavia]

we got a couple elephant bars locally.. good food.

Last year, for whatever reason, the unit in Palm Desert shuttered up.

[SunkenCiv]

There was a fake news story done as viral marketing for that when it came out, I believe.