Shells Offer New Take on Human Evolution

Discovery News ^ | March 30, 2009 | Anna Salleh

[SunkenCiv]

To understand human development, archaeologists tend to analyze either fossilized human bones or stone tools. In Africa and Europe stone tools are seen to increase in complexity over the last few million years.

But in East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Guinea, stone tools don't appear to develop until the last 4000 years.

Katherine Szabo of the University of Wollongong in Australia has just taken up this issue, saying it "bears on questions of our history as a species."

Szabo explained the lack of stone tools found in these regions has led some researchers to conclude that this region was "static," with some dubbing it "culturally retarded."

Others argue that, like the hunter gatherers of today, humans in East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Guinea relied on plants, such as bamboo, rather than stone, and these aren't preserved in archaeological record.

"That may very well be true but we can't prove it," said Szabo.

She said researching shells is exciting because it can be preserved for just as long as stone in the archaeological record...In published research to date, Szabo reports having excavated shell tools dating back 32,000 years from a cave site in eastern Indonesia, and comparing them with stone tools from the same cave.

"It transpired that the shell tools were in fact much more complex to produce than the stone tools," she said.

[SunkenCiv]

· join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic ·
	Gods Graves Glyphs	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
·Dogpile · Archaeologica · ArchaeoBlog · Archaeology · Biblical Archaeology Society · · Discover · Nat Geographic · Texas AM Anthro News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · Google · · The Archaeology Channel · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists ·

[FrogMom]

Isn’t it true that necessity is the mother of invention?

Isn’t it also true that if you have something that works and you are in a must-do-xyz-to-survive environment, that you use what’s available and what has worked historically?

New inventions occur when you don’t have traditional materials or tools OR when you have patronage.

So they made stone tools in the north because they didn’t have access to their traditional materials/tools (shells).

Dunno. Her contention seems like a no-brainer to me. What am I missing, why is it such a revolutionary way to look at it?

[SunkenCiv]

Rocks are everywhere, so if they weren’t used, that’s a weird thing. This shell discovery may lead to reanalysis of finds elsewhere, and shell tools will probably be recognized in prehistoric digs elsewhere.