The carpet of lithics -- a view across a valley in the Messak landscape. Image: Foley/Mirazón Lahr
Posted on 03/14/2015 4:01:07 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
A new intensive survey of the Messak Settafet escarpment, a massive outcrop of sandstone in the middle of the Saharan desert, has shown that stone tools occur "ubiquitously" across the entire landscape: averaging 75 artefacts per square metre, or 75 million per square kilometre.
Researchers say the vast 'carpet' of stone-age tools -- extracted from and discarded onto the escarpment over hundreds of thousands of years -- is the earliest known example of an entire landscape being modified by hominins: the group of creatures that include us and our ancestral species.
The Messak Settafet runs a total length of 350 km, with an average width of 60 km. Parts of the landscape are 'anthropogenic', or man-made, through build-up of tools over hundreds of thousands of years.
The research team have used this and other studies to attempt to estimate the volume of stone tools discarded over the last one million years of human evolution on the African continent alone. They say that it is the equivalent of more than one Great Pyramid of Giza per square kilometre of the entire continent (2.1 x 1014 cubic metres of rock)...
At the simple end, large flakes of stone would have been opportunistically hacked from boulders to be used for cutting or as weapons. At the more sophisticated level, researchers found evidence that specific tools had been used to wedge into the stone in order split it...
The researchers say that if -- as seems likely -- the success of Stone Age communities depended significantly on tool technology, there would be enormous advantage to knowing, remembering and indeed controlling access to areas with a "super-abundance" of raw materials, such as the Messak Settafet.
(Excerpt) Read more at pasthorizonspr.com ...
The carpet of lithics -- a view across a valley in the Messak landscape. Image: Foley/Mirazón Lahr
A Levallois core, which is a distinctive type of Middle Stone Age stone tool, recovered on the surface of the Messak. Image: Foley/Mirazón Lahr
Prof. Robert Foley recording lithic density on the Messak. Image: Foley/Mirazón Lahr
Hey, the Digest topic is on time this week!
Site of Fred Flintstones Snap-On Tool factory?
So they just dropped them on the ground and walked off when they were done with them? Sounds like my sons.
Anthropologists have determined from cave paintings that early hominids died off because they reached the period of “peak stone.” After peak stone the material was increasingly more expensive and only the rich 1% had it. Attempts to switch to the solar powered wood technology were continuously thwarted be the 1% who pointed out that wood spears required more stone use than stone ax heads by themselves. Despite daily warnings by the stoners that stone use was unsustainable and that wood technology required subsidies to become competitive nobody listened. The last alive were the 1% who ate the last stoners and then died surrounded by their incredible wealth.
Yes, apparently they deserted them.
Things that make you go Hmmmmm.
“Hey, Org, look at this great axe!”
“I love it, Glab, but what’s it good for?”
“Well, nothing, now that you mention it.”
*drop*
(’: These are just the seconds — 75 million of them. IOW, they made a lot of tools. :’)
If they’d had lights and television, they’d still be on too.
LOL!
“The Stone Age didn’t end because people ran out of stones.” — Sheikh Yamani, 1990s
During the Mid Twentieth Century, it has been determined that homonids had large household shrines that housed various “deities”. At first, scientists posited that the large, heavy metallic structures were symbols of male fertility, as they were constantly offered wood or other stiff objects as votives. These effigies had many moving parts, and were powerfully constructed to accept the offerings by grinding, penetrating, or consuming them by abrasion.
Originally minor deities, these simple but effective idols gradually crowded out the main deity that originally occupied the family shrine, which was a large, elegant and welcoming goddess of family and prosperity.
The goddess, who went by many feminine names, but sometimes just referred to as “SHE” eventually ended up OUTSIDE the family shrine, while the warlike, patriarchal, destructive, rape-culture-promoting, mean-spirited, chauvinistic, male-oriented minor deities multiplied in the shrine, dominating the simple structure with their power, and chewing up the daily offerings of life-giving trees and plant life.
The Male Deities had harsh and domineering names, which they boldly emblazoned on all sides of the idol. Although much of the exterior decorations have been lost to the ages, a few flecks of paint remain. Even the names sound dark and menacing...”Mikita”, “SKILL”, “Black”, and “Dekker”.
ROTFL
,,,, that’s hilarious ,,, I’m age 70 and you sound just like my father in the 50s . He used to say ,,, “if I ever need one of my tools all I have to do is go out back and look around on the ground “ . Not much has changed I suppose .
Ok....so its a Homo Depot.
“Where’s the rakes?”
“Over by the stone axes...”
If you have to axe...
LOL
LTOS gets mischievous on a Saturday Morning!
:-)
“they just dropped them on the ground and walked off when they were done with them?”
No toolbox. Maybe easier to just flake off another when needed?
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