The Long Road to Modernity

ScienceNOW ^ | Monday, December 1, 2008 | Michael Balter

[SunkenCiv]

About 1.7 million years ago in Africa, Homo erectus, an ancestor of modern humans, started using large hand axes and cleavers. This know-how spread to Asia and Europe and remained cutting-edge technology for well over a million years. Eventually, however, it gave way to the Middle Stone Age, which featured smaller and more sophisticated blades and spearheads... In the 1990s... archaeologists dated a Middle Stone Age site in Ethiopia called Gademotta to 235,000 years ago -- implying that the technology had been maturing for a while before the arrival of modern humans... Kapthurin in Kenya, was more reliably dated in 2002 to 285,000 years ago, but researchers have been very reluctant to accept just one site as evidence that the Middle Stone Age started so early... Now two geochronologists from the University of California, Berkeley, Leah Morgan and Paul Renne, have redated Gademotta using the argon-argon method... back to at least 280,000 years ago, essentially the same age as those at Kapthurin. Morgan and Renne suggest that the early dates at both Gademotta and Kapthurin indicate that the tools were probably not invented by modern humans but rather by ancestral hominids intermediate between H. erectus and H. sapiens. A few fossils that might represent such ancestors have been found in Africa over the past decades and are thought to be between 400,000 and 200,000 years old.

[SunkenCiv]

Advanced technology. Sophisticated stone tools were found both above and below a volcanic layer dated to 280,000 years ago (arrow). Credit: Paul Renne

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks neverdem. Will ping the list tomorrow or the next day.

[remaxagnt]

someone let this person know the earth is only 6 thousand years old!

[raygunfan]

no, just stick with whatever mix of assumption-laden dating methods that always give millions/billions of years for whatever is needed to prop up the latest blast of evo indoctrination....

[dr_who]

A typical day in the life of a stone age man must have been boring as hell ...or terrifying. Kind of like police work.

[dr_who]

...minus the donuts.

[JoeProBono]

[dr_lew]

no, just stick with whatever mix of assumption-laden dating methods that always give millions/billions of years for whatever is needed to prop up the latest blast of evo indoctrination....

Now this is anti-science! Have you studied this matter?

[SamAdams76]

Well from my vantage point, the earth has only been around about 46 years. The day I was born, the universe and all the people and animals in it were created for my pleasure and amusement.

SO as far as I'm concerned, the world didn't exist until I was born and anybody that tries to tell me otherwise is just blowing smoke - they will never be able to prove it to me so don't even try.

You may now entertain me by replying to what I just said. Thank you all for existing for my benefit. My world would be a lot more boring without you guys.

[Dilbert San Diego]

I think that homo erectus moved to San Francisco.

[SunkenCiv]

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	Gods Graves Glyphs	Thanks again neverdem. I had my doubts about posting this topic, but it hasn't become a huge bloodbath (yet), just a little ugly, y'know, the same two sets of wheels turning through the same two sets of ruts. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach
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[Little Ray]

Best comparison might be the Kalahari Bushmen. From what I read, subsistence took two hours of work a day; the rest of the day was spent with families, visiting, etc. Makes you wonder why we ever went into agriculture (Personally, I think it had something to do with beer...).

[thefrankbaum]

Why’d you bring into existance so many liberals? Forget Bush, this is all SamAdams76’s Fault!

[allmendream]

Of interesting note is that skeletons of hunter gatherers are generally healthier and larger than those from agricultural societies, as well as the hunter gatherer lifestyle being rather laid back.

But the same square footage can support 10 unhealthy less well nourished agriculturalists for every 1 robust hunter gatherer.

So when it comes to war, the trend of history has been for those 10 agriculturalists to beat the tar out of and replace that 1 hunter gatherer.

As Teddy Roosevelt pointed out ‘it is ridiculous to assume that the North American continent would remain the last great refuge on earth of a hunter gatherer (and horticulturalist) society’.

[zeugma]

Why’d you bring into existance so many liberals? Forget Bush, this is all SamAdams76’s Fault!

 Indeed Sam, you could have planned things a bit better and saved us the indignity of a President Hussien Obama.

[Little Ray]

This has been noticed in lion / hyena fights over kills, too. The mob of critters with the most total muscle mass wins; 10 “sickly” aggies will have a lot more muscle mass than that one healthy hunter-gatherer.

[allmendream]

Also agricultural societies invented bronze weapons, iron weapons and steel. They invented organized warfare as well, and the professional warrior who devotes his expertise to only one enterprise, the efficient killing of other human beings.

Hard for hunter gatherers to beat them when they have you outnumbered 10 to 1, they have superior weapons and discipline, and greater experience and skill at killing.

[Hegemony Cricket]

That is a pretty sophisticated looking arrowhead in that photo. Wonder what kind of clean shiny white stone it’s made of? :-)

[trumandogz]

A typical day in the life of a stone age man must have been boring as hell...

I don't even think they had high speed Internet back then.

[wolfcreek]

I doubt boredom ever crossed their minds with all the fighting for survival and what not. You know, finding your next meal, searching for a warm place to sleep, listening to the wife grunt about her bad day, etc...