Posted on 06/11/2022 6:20:00 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
A 65,000-year-old tool – a kind of ancient Swiss Army knife – found across southern Africa has provided scientists with proof that the ancestors of modern homo sapiens were communicating with each other.
In a world first, a team of international scientists have found early humans across the continent made the stone tool in exactly the same shape, using the same template, showing that they shared knowledge with each other...
These tools were produced in enormous numbers across southern Africa roughly 60-65,000 years ago.
Because the people across southern Africa all chose to make the tools look the same, it indicates they must have been socially connected, said Amy Way, the project’s lead archaeologist, from the Australian Museum and the University of Sydney...
The question that really baffles archaeologists is why the big exit from Africa, which took place 60-70,000 years ago and involved the ancestors of everyone who lives outside Africa today, was so successful when previous excursions out of the continent were not...
The tool was used for numerous things, including cutting, drilling, and skinning.
Previous research has shown that in southern Africa, the artefacts were used as barbs in hunting technology and in Australia, in addition to forming armatures in spears, they were also used for working bone and hide and drilling and shaping wooden objects.
In Africa they have now been found 1,200km apart, Way said...
Way said another fascinating fact about this particular tool – the backed artefact – is that it was made independently by many different groups of people across the world, including in Australia...
This article was amended on 10 June 2022 to remove quotes from another researcher involved in the study after the Australian Museum said they had been supplied in error.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
A more recent study showed that ancient people used sticks. Most were strait and had a pointy end. Combined some times with sharpened stones.
Sticks and stones may break your bones.
But them dang cave people could not communicate very well between tribes.
Monkey see.
Monkey do.
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