Stone Tools May Be Crocodile Stomach Stones (LOL!!!)

CEH ^ | September 21, 2009

[GodGunsGuts]

Sept 21, 2009 — “Were crocodiles responsible for the stones we call tools?” is the title of a surprising letter to the editor in Nature last week.[1] Patrick Dempsey (the archaeologist, not the actor) raised a possibility that paleoanthropologists and the journals have been making a big mistake for a long time. He asked, “Could Nature have been unknowingly publishing papers for the past 80 years about crocodilian gastroliths (stomach stones) instead of stones concluded to be 2.5-million-year-old hominid tools?”

Surely anthropologists have thought of this and know how to tell the difference, right?...

[steveo]

Don’t call me Shirley.

[GodGunsGuts]

Ping!

[xcamel]

Now you’ve gone totally off the rails.

(but we knew that)

[dirtboy]

Maybe crocodiles painted these as well (and only 6,000 years ago or less):

[wbill]

Makes me wonder what archaeologists 50,000 years from now will think when they look at our homes.

"Obviously some sort of religious symbol, there's one or more in every house" (toilet)

"Teams of primitives beat each other senseless in pursuit of this valuable icon" (football)

....and so on.

[MediaMole]

The TV will be viewed as some sort of religious symbol. The entire house was oriented toward the rectangular shrine.

[Charlespg]

Stone Tools May Be Crocodile Stomach Stones

Good lord are these people that stupid?

[xcamel]

Yes, they are.

[Cicero]

Good question. Whether it pans out or not, it’s a fascinating idea. At the least, it needs to be considered and refuted by the Homo Habilis proponents.

[conservative cat]

I used to have a book that was written about this- it was about a modern day motel excavated as an archaelogical find in the future. Pretty amusing.

[mware]

I vote that those in the future call people that lived in the United States.

Americanus Coke-a-Colus

[johnandrhonda]

anyone that went to college knows that academics are sometimes full of crap...

[GodGunsGuts]

Do you want the long or the short answer to that question? :o)

[svcw]

Anthropology class? I was just going to mention that. Beat me to it.

[GodGunsGuts]

In my experience at the University of California, I would say your statement applied to at least 80% of my professors.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[xcamel]

UCDL (Disney Land)

[HiTech RedNeck]

Urg to Grog: “Don’t chip those arrowheads. We can get a bunch of them easily if we kill and disembowel that there crocodile.”

[dog breath]

I was volunteering one summer on a archaeological site as a teenager. During lunch I was walking along the river and picked up a clam shell with a hole in it and carried it back to the site. I became bored with it since the hole was made by some animal or worm and I left it under a tree. The head archaeologist found it and cussed out his assistant for leaving a important find like this clam hoe laying around. I tried to tell them that it was made naturally and was not from the site but he wouldn't believe me thinking that I was covering for his assistant. The last I saw that thing it was in a display case labeled, Fort Ancient Culture Clam Hoe. The man's pride made him insist that it was a hoe.