Posted on 08/21/2018 3:03:11 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Research carried out at the University of Kent demonstrates that a technique used to produce stone tools that were first found half a million years ago is likely to have needed a modern human-like hand... This research is the first to link a stone tool production technique known as 'platform preparation' to the biology of human hands. Demonstrating that without the ability to perform highly forceful precision grips, our ancestors would not have been able to produce advanced types of stone tool like spear points. The technique involves preparing a striking area on a tool to remove specific stone flakes and shape the tool into a pre-conceived design. Platform preparation is essential for making many different types of advanced prehistoric stone tool, with the earliest known occurrence observed at the 500,000-year-old site of Boxgrove in West Sussex (UK)... Using sensors attached to the hand of skilled flint knappers (stone tool producers), the researchers were able to identify that platform preparation behaviours required the hand to exert significantly more pressure through the fingers when compared to all other stone tool activities studied. The research demonstrates that the Boxgrove hominins (early humans) would have needed significantly stronger grips compared to earlier populations who did not perform this behaviour. It further suggests that highly modified and shaped stone tools, such as the handaxes discovered at Boxgrove and stone spear points found in later prehistory, may not have been possible to produce until humans evolved the ability to perform particularly forceful grips. This discovery is particularly important because human hand bones rarely survive in the fossil record.
(Excerpt) Read more at eurekalert.org ...
Jewelry has been found in “Sundaland” whereas it was rock or shell with cross hatching marks. Estimated age is 500kya. So of course humans had gripping capabilities. Homo Sapien goes back to around 800kya. Before that Homo Erectus as well as Neanderthal and Denisovians.
“If man had the ability to construct and grasp tools 500,000 years ago, he would have proliferated and the evidence of his existence would be overwhelming instead of rare”
I’ve often thought about the population considerations when people throw out these numbers of hundreds of thousands and millions of years. I’ve never seen anybody address it before your post. Thx.
Cavewomen made these tools COZ they are kitchen utensils.
Scrapers, every ancient tool you can’t identify is a scraper.
You forgot that at least 300,000 of those 500,000 years were during brutal Ice Ages.
Also, it's quite possible that earlier humans lacked the same zealous reproductive instincts that 95% of Homo Sapiens have.
1) Do you remember what happened when they lost power in NYC on a cold winter night? Yeah Baby BOOM!!!
2) Man just wasn’t that interested in sex the first 500,000 years...Nope, not buying that either.
It started 120,000 years ago and lasted for more than 100,000 years.
When it peaked around 20,000 years ago, CO2 dropped to 180 parts per million, the lowest level ever recorded.
At 150 ppm, almost all photosynthetic plant life would have died, and almost all large land carnivores and herbivores would have died, too.
In addition, the extreme cold caused world wide drought.
Some researchers claim that the world wide Homo Sapien population dropped to 100,000 around 70,000 years ago.
That is in fact the point of the study — the existing, known tools of that age were made by hands basically exactly the same as ours.
A remote possibility.
/rimshot
Actually, the selfie stick was invented around the same time as these stone tools, but it was your basic, solution in search of a problem. The first Blackberry was a major disappointment, because it was an actual blackberry.
I thought opposable thumbs were invented by Siskel and Ebert.
That doesn’t work. According to evolutionists, Bronto’s lived 150 million years ago, so weren’t around 500,000 years ago to stomp man.
******************************************
Well ... then just how do you explain Fred Flintstone using one in construction?
Haven't got that far, I'm still trying to figure out how he scored Wilma.
There were a few cold ice age periods during those times, and not much remains after that ice age weather gets cranking and builds mile high glaciers.
Great video!
An such a great show. They don’t make them like that anymore.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.