Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Scientists Discover World's Oldest Stone Tools
The Earth Institute ^ | 2015-05-20 | The Earth Institute

Posted on 05/20/2015 8:02:59 PM PDT by OK Sun

Finds Challenge Ideas about Who Were the First Toolmakers

Scientists working in the desert badlands of northwestern Kenya have found stone tools dating back 3.3 million years, long before the advent of modern humans, and by far the oldest such artifacts yet discovered. The tools, whose makers may or may not have been some sort of human ancestor, push the known date of such tools back by 700,000 years; they also may challenge the notion that our own most direct ancestors were the first to bang two rocks together to create a new technology.

The discovery is the first evidence that an even earlier group of proto-humans may have had the thinking abilities needed to figure out how to make sharp-edged tools. The stone tools mark “a new beginning to the known archaeological record,” say the authors of a new paper about the discovery, published today in the leading scientific journal Nature.

“The whole site’s surprising, it just rewrites the book on a lot of things that we thought were true,” said geologist Chris Lepre of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Rutgers University, a co-author of the paper who precisely dated the artifacts.

The tools ”shed light on an unexpected and previously unknown period of hominin behavior and can tell us a lot about cognitive development in our ancestors that we can't understand from fossils alone,” said lead author Sonia Harmand, of the Turkana Basin Institute at Stony Brook University and the Université Paris Ouest Nanterre.

Hominins are a group of species that includes modern humans, Homo sapiens, and our closest evolutionary ancestors. ...

(Excerpt) Read more at earth.columbia.edu ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: afarensis; archaeology; australopithecus; chrislepre; godsgravesglyphs; kenya; laketurkana; science; soniaharmand
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-74 next last
To: Fungi
Let's see. First 25 years, 2+2 children=4; second 25, 4+2 children=6, third 25, 6+2 childern=8, forth 25, 8+2 children=10. So after 100 years you have 10 people. Then original 2 die off, and 2 more are born=10. ad infinitum. There's only 10 people ever on Earth. Wow! Who knew?

May we please get back to science?

41 posted on 05/20/2015 10:13:32 PM PDT by OK Sun (Freedom is not just another word.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 35 | View Replies]

To: Fungi

You have no need to understand anything that doesn’t fit your biases I’m guessing. It might be helpful for you to actually understand what you are trashing.


42 posted on 05/20/2015 10:18:09 PM PDT by JimSEA
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 40 | View Replies]

To: JimSEA

Did you do the math? Never mid your false premises; you must be a liberal, well rehearsed.


43 posted on 05/20/2015 10:30:10 PM PDT by Fungi
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 42 | View Replies]

To: OK Sun

3.3m year old tools, huh?

That was BEFORE they had 3-prong (grounded) plugs, right?

They don’t make tools like that anymore, I’ll tell ya!

Those were the good old days... Men really had skills to make stuff...

A good tool is like a friend. Sometimes you can’t find when you need it.

I guess.


44 posted on 05/20/2015 10:39:09 PM PDT by kinsman redeemer (The real enemy seeks to devour what is good.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: editor-surveyor
the universe is not yet 10,000 years old

Comical.

The speed of light is well-known and reliably proven and provable.

Basic trigonometry reliably gave us the distance to the moon and then the sun and then the planets and then the stars... and most stars are farther than 10,000 light years. (A high schooler with a pencil can calculate the easier distances with excellent accuracy. Sirius and Vega are two excellent ones to start with. In 1770, we had the distance to the sun within 1 percent. In 1836, we had the distance to 61 Cyg within 9 percent.)

Light must travel that distance, and it takes time... a lot more than 10,000 years for most... and yet it has already travelled here, for all of those millions of stars in the sky that we can see every night, or else we could not see them.

Please, do point out the verses in Genesis that explains this anomaly. The Almighty, in his efforts to pull a fast one over 18th-21st Century humans, at the moment of Creation supposedly 6000 +/- years ago, decided to place light 99.9999999999 percent of the way between the stars and the earth... just for kicks. Makes perfect sense. *rolling eyes*

About as much sense as the idea that the Bible covers every generation that has ever existed, and thus gives a complete accounting of the length of time since Creation.

Yes, He created it all.
No, it wasn't 6000 years ago.

45 posted on 05/20/2015 10:40:31 PM PDT by Teacher317 (We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 22 | View Replies]

To: JimSEA

Eve had fingernails.
Eve could see them growing as the days went by.
“Adam, you said you were older than me. I have evidence to the contrary.”
“What other lies have you told me? Where is she?”


46 posted on 05/20/2015 10:45:31 PM PDT by kinsman redeemer (The real enemy seeks to devour what is good.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 36 | View Replies]

To: Fungi; OK Sun

Out of curiosity - where is your request to do math supposed to lead? I don’t have a faintest idea so far. What does your math show you? The math of OK Sun post seemed correct to me.


47 posted on 05/21/2015 1:11:55 AM PDT by Krosan
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 43 | View Replies]

To: OK Sun
Scientists Discover World's Oldest Stone Tools


48 posted on 05/21/2015 2:44:33 AM PDT by 9thLife ("Life is a military endeavor..." -- Francis)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: 9thLife

I have been thinking. I don’t think Star Trek is science fiction as in opposed to for example Arthur C. Clarke Odyssey books there was no science in Star Trek. Odyssey books had science we can understand, but in Star Trek it was just hand waved away and it was all Force Field category 4 or Warp Level 5.

One of the reason why I attempted my joke earlier. In 2001 Odyssey the monolith that taught apes to use tools came also 3 million years ago.


49 posted on 05/21/2015 2:52:16 AM PDT by Krosan
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 48 | View Replies]

To: Krosan
I think everybody should enjoy Stone Trek. It's a bit of work as it's represents one of the earliest animations on the web but it's a classic.
50 posted on 05/21/2015 2:56:25 AM PDT by 9thLife ("Life is a military endeavor..." -- Francis)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 49 | View Replies]

To: 2ndDivisionVet

Will ping after travel. Thanks PROCON.


51 posted on 05/21/2015 3:03:30 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (What do we want? REGIME CHANGE! When do we want it? NOW!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: 9thLife

Just googled it and found “Stone Trek” is actually a thing. Heheee! I am watching the video now. I think they are overdoing it a bit by pretending their microphone is also made of stone as the sound quality makes it really hard to follow the speech. Or maybe it is just my inadequate speakers.


52 posted on 05/21/2015 3:04:35 AM PDT by Krosan
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 50 | View Replies]

thanks 2ndDivisionVet for this similar one, nice pics:

Sophisticated Tool Kit Predates Humans
http://news.discovery.com/human/evolution/sophisticated-tool-kit-predates-humans-150520.htm


53 posted on 05/21/2015 3:05:20 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (What do we want? REGIME CHANGE! When do we want it? NOW!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Calvin Locke
Due to mass-to-thrust issues, something had to be left behind...and ancient stone tools of no particular value were chosen.

I see that you received the 'In Search Of' box set for Christmas, too.

It does explain a lot that those snotty scientists don't want us to know. ☺

54 posted on 05/21/2015 3:09:14 AM PDT by mountainbunny (Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens ~ J.R.R. Tolkien)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies]

To: OK Sun; TexasGator; JimSEA; Teacher317; Krosan

Thanks!


55 posted on 05/21/2015 3:09:47 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (What do we want? REGIME CHANGE! When do we want it? NOW!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: PROCON; StayAt HomeMother; Ernest_at_the_Beach; decimon; 1010RD; 21twelve; 24Karet; ...
Thanks PROCON.

56 posted on 05/21/2015 4:04:51 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (What do we want? REGIME CHANGE! When do we want it? NOW!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: OK Sun

Yeah, but have they found the Lyin’ King’s Birth Certificate?


57 posted on 05/21/2015 4:38:30 AM PDT by left that other site (You shall know the Truth, and The Truth Shall Set You Free.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: OK Sun
Probably their version of kids' toys to keep them busy and out of the way - "Here Apeley, go bang this rock on other rocks until it is all busted up".

It was also the beginning of percussion instruments...

58 posted on 05/21/2015 4:45:27 AM PDT by trebb (Where in the the hell has my country gone?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: OK Sun

Africans making tools? For what?


59 posted on 05/21/2015 5:03:58 AM PDT by tupac (the crux of the biscuit is the apostrophe)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: sagar

Because the universe is not 10,000 years old?


60 posted on 05/21/2015 5:19:45 AM PDT by tupac (the crux of the biscuit is the apostrophe)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-74 next last

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.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson