[John H K]

Ah. Still don't see where you got the idea evolution was being overturned from the summary article.

Here is a quote from near the end of the NYT article (hope it's not so much the NYT copyright stormtroopers come after me):

Dr. Marean of Arizona State University said that in the bone tools archaeologists were seeing a new picture of modern human evolution. "This puts the behavioral evolution in step with the anatomical evolution," he said.

It's a bit of an understatement to say the article isn't overturning evolution.

[Ahban]

I heard a radio-net program that has bearing on this. Apparently they are using biolumenescence to date these tools.

It has been demonstrated elsewhere that biolum can only give a MAXIMUM age. That is, the tools cannot be any OLDER than 70K. It does not mean they are 70K.

For example, a find in Austraila recently shocked the world with a biolum date of 60K years old. New data (they found a way to carbon date this find) now supports a date of from 1-3K years.

Biolum ASSUMES that the right crystals were "fully charged" with sunlight at the time of burial. Note that these discoveries were in a CAVE. It is highly doubtful that the biolum cyrstals were fully charged as they were not exposed to direct sunlight. Hence this would show more "fading light" than has actually occured.

Unless they use more than biolumenescence to date them, I'd be willing to bet these tools are NOT 70K old.