Stone Blades Cut Back Evolutionary Dates

ICR ^ | April 10, 2009 | Brian Thomas, M.S.

[GodGunsGuts]

Stone Blades Cut Back Evolutionary Dates

by Brian Thomas, M.S.*

Evolutionary anthropologists once thought that stone knives were developed in the late Stone Age, around 40,000 years ago. That figure was later revised to 200,000, around the Middle Stone Age, when stone blades were discovered in lower strata.

Now stone blades have been found in Kenyan rock layers dated at about 500,000 years old according to evolutionary estimates.1 Thus, the original claim that “40,000 years ago, man made his first stone implements” was off by over 92 percent, suggesting that evolutionary depictions of human history are unreliable....

[tpanther]

Welcome to FR. How long have you been a hospice nurse?

[HospiceNurse]

I began as a CNA 12 years ago and got my RN 6 years ago.

[RobbyS]

As soon as you find a crow who can write a geometry book, let me know.

[tpanther]

How do you like it?

[stormer]

I did a quick inventory of the people I know, and they're a pretty smart group. But with the exception of one who has a PhD in mathematics, none could even begin to write a geometry book. So your point is?

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so very much for sharing your insights, dear brother in Christ!

[RobbyS]

One chapter would include what Pascal did on conic sections when he was age 15. One thing that everyone relies on is how the material world seems to match our mathematical models. Indeed that insight is where modern science begins. Whether the mathematics originates with us, or we simply recognize patterns inherent in the material world the human being has to be taken as sui generis. The “thinking” of animals is perhaps no more than anthropmorphism, hardly different from the product of the Disney Studios.

[Tribune7]

Wonder how the figured out that they were intelligently designed? Didn’t think that sort of thing was possible /s.

[Reeses]

Why do they always call them tools and not weapons? Why are multiple tools often found nearby, as if they were left on a battlefield rather than a hunting ground? If a kitchen tool breaks, does anyone keep them in their kitchen? Modern man thinks ancient man was a peace loving hippie rather than a killer yet there is little to support that. According to Darwin, man evolved from tribal warfare, yet modern man rejects that as too unseemly to be possible.

[stormer]

What then, do you make of animals that craft their own technologies? If we refer back to the original post and the discussion of toolmaking, the questions are regarding the makers. If as you infer, only humans have this capacity, then the makers are human (albeit less evolved), if you don't believe they are human or that human evolution is a reality, then animals are developing technology (using science). Certainly not Disney anthropomorphism.

[stormer]

Actually, Darwin wrote that religion evolved in support of altruistic behavior that was beneficial in tribal warfare.

[RobbyS]

Whatever the crude too-making abilities of other animals, they surely fall short of our own. I am not rejecting human evolution. I am rejecting simplistic, 19th Century arguments that ignore the immense gulf that has developed between man and the other primates. My point is that the origins of man are so far in the past that it is impossible to find conclusive evidence. So the argument of whether our differences with chimps are a difference of kind or degree is moot. Only an ideological determination to overthrow all
natural hierarchy can cause people to try to talk to the animals like some modern day Dr. Doolittle. They have much to “say” to us, but not in words or human-like deeds. We study them for knowledge; they study us only as prey or, more broadly, as a source of food.

[Reeses]

Actually, Darwin wrote that religion evolved in support of altruistic behavior that was beneficial in tribal warfare.

I hadn't heard that before but it makes sense. Just about all human traits can be traced to an advantage in war. For human evolution to make progress, some people must prosper, and just as important, some people must die.

[TXnMA]

"Wonder how the figured out that they were intelligently designed? "

For an explanation of how we know those prismatic blades knapped from a polyhedral core were "intelligently designed", see my explanation in #23.

Those blades are not at all easy to make correctly, and doing so takes at least as much planning and motor skill as "running the table" in pool...

FWIW, such blades, knapped from a truly glassy material such as obsidian, have the sharpest edges ever made -- far sharper than the best surgical steel scalpel.

[Tribune7]

We know this was designed:

We must, however, rule out design for this:

And this:

Now does that make sense?

[atlaw]

I prefer the explantion offered by Brian’s brother, Billy Thomas pH.Tv*:

“Removing the restriction of evidence, the stone knives were most likely made by Seraphim somewhere on the order of not-very-long-ago, probably to carve exit Runes in the hallways of the Tower of Babel to satisfy the Levitical fire codes of 2200 B.C. While that explanation seems obvious, there is also the possibility that the forced servitude of the daughters-of-men and the dispersion of their giant offspring from the Middle East, as suggested by Genesis 6, caused some really quick stone-blade manufacturing by the families caught in the giants’ path, who were able to carry the stone-blades but not much else to their new cave dwellings when their houses were smashed underfoot. The volcanic deposits that sandwiched the newly-discovered African blades could well be deposits from celestial dump-trucks sent by sympathetic sons-of-god trying to rebuild the villages lost in the giant-migration. This historical picture, unlike the standard evolutionary one, is based on Biblical penumbras that are self-evident to ICR graduates, not on unfounded and ever-changing presuppositions.”