Posted on 03/20/2019 9:37:46 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Early creation of "flake tools" (retouch and use of flakes knocked off core in the course of producing "core tools" such as hand axes & choppers).
(Earlier knappers worked only on the cores -- and discarded the [useful] flakes.)
AFAIK, "Neanderthals" never developed the all-important use of "softer" (antler, bone, wood) tools for "soft hammer" percussion flaking and for the "fine work" of pressure flaking...
I see no evidence at all of the use of "soft" tools in the reported and pictured assemblage.
It would make sense that if somebody was extraordinarily skillful at making something, that others would trade for his stuff. Over time, he would take on apprentices and have a workshop going. People would bring raw material to his shop, plus other trade goods, and come away with finished product.
I have always wondered - even back when that show was broadcast live on TV - what happened to the dinocrane’s head when Fred let go of the rope when the whistle blew ......
Wilma or Betty?
Mary Anne or Ginger?
Your whole experience sounds quite fascinating but that one, quoted above, has to beat the odds of any Lotto game ever. I'm sure the remains you were sifting through represented numerous generations of flint chipper's work product.
Or we might be back to doing what those Neanderthals were doing 60K years ago. Odds are 60K in the future will be dead center into the next glacial period. Meanwhile TPTB are wasting all of our resources preparing humanity for a warmer planet.
I knew there would be evidence of it. Just didn’t think any video would have survived. :)
Yes, the video, which was apparently shot on some early form of Beta or VHS tape, was miraculously preserved in a large glob of tree sap, which then, a long time later, turned into amber.
I love Amber! :)
TXnMA
Yes, it is. Thanks!
Years ago my father had a place on a small tributary of the Mullica River just north of Atlantic City. He had a large smooth stone shaped like a large Idaho potato, which he used as a door stop, and in the winter to heat in the oven and warm the foot of the bed. Now I wonder if it could have been an Indian grinding stone. It was about 8 inches long with an oval center about 2 inches by 3 inches. I know NJ had Indians living in that area.
Yes. That is a grinder. I have one somewhere in the basement, possibly Archaic period for Maryland, about 1,000-2,000 BC. Indians seemed to use that basic design for grinding because you could hold the stone in the middle and you had two grinding heads. They should show up a lot in the periods/tribes in No. America and Latin America who ate maize/corn and grain foods (wheat, rye, etc).
Try looking them up on the internet, possibly using a search term “Indian corn grinder”, “Indian pestol/pestal” (pestal and matatae something like that), “Indian food masher”, etc.
Sometimes they might have also been used as smashing axe-heads or even as small plowing stones.
If the stone your father found was north of Atlantic City, it probably came from the “Gilante or Gigante Tribe”, a member of the “Gambino/Patriarcha Confederation of Italian Indians”. /sarc
I could also have been postcolumbian, ftm.
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