Posted on 09/10/2011 8:30:28 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
A new study suggests that Homo erectus, a precursor to modern humans, was using advanced toolmaking methods in East Africa 1.8 million years ago, at least 300,000 years earlier than previously thought. The study, recently published in Nature, raises new questions about where these tall and slender early humans originated and how they developed sophisticated tool-making technology.
Homo erectus appeared about 2 million years ago, and ranged across Asia and Africa before hitting a possible evolutionary dead-end, about 70,000 years ago. Some researchers think Homo erectus evolved in East Africa, where many of the oldest fossils have been found, but the discovery in the 1990s of equally old Homo erectus fossils in the country of Georgia has led others to suggest an Asian origin. The study in Nature does not resolve the debate but adds new complexity. At 1.8 million years ago, Homo erectus in Dmanisi, Georgia was still using simple chopping tools while in West Turkana, Kenya, according to the study, the population had developed hand axes, picks and other innovative tools that anthropologists call "Acheulian."
"The Acheulian tools represent a great technological leap," said study co-author Dennis Kent, a geologist with joint appointments at Rutgers University and Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "Why didn't Homo erectus take these tools with them to Asia?" In the summer of 2007, a team of French and American researchers traveled to Kenya's Lake Turkana in Africa's Great Rift Valley, where earth's plates are tearing apart and some of the earliest humans first appear.
Anthropologist Richard Leakey's famous find--Turkana Boy, a Homo erectus teenager who lived about 1.5 million years ago -- was excavated on Lake Turkana's western shore and is still the most complete early human skeleton found so far.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
1.8 million years now? :)
It won’t be too long before they start claiming dinosaurs knew how to use stone tools.
Homo erectus was a monkey.
Don’t worry, there’s still another 63.2 million years between the dinosaurs going extinct and H. erectus :)
God surely has a sense of humour, Shirley, faking these discoveries as being 1.8 million years old (minus 6, 245) before he created the universe.
Ron Popeils distant relatives.. “Take a rock mount it on a stick, and sell it”..
The earliest Binford tool.
Doubtless because we were having trouble with Kenyans even then, and stone axes were needed to smite them upside the head.
I’m a life long conservative and a student of evolution. While for some this may seem to be somewhat of a contradiction, for those of us who understand science, it all makes absolute sense.
“I thought Gore invented the stone axe.”
Gore IS a stone axe.
Global warming did them in.
I was stoned when I axed her to marry me!
“Doubtless because we were having trouble with Kenyans even then, and stone axes were needed to smite them upside the head.”
Either I’m REALLY tired or that’s REALLY funny. I’ll decide in the morning...
BUMP! :)
“God surely has a sense of humour”
That is surely correct, he made you after all...what a joke!!!
I’ve got a crazy question. I remember reading many years ago that they found a layer of fossilized mud with dinosaur tracks in it, and human tracks along with drag marks from heavy spears, appearing to follow the dinosaur tracks. Scientists pooh poohed it, saying the mud softened later and the human tracks were set much later than the dino tracks and only appeared to be following. Does this ring any bells with anyone who knows a further source of info about it? Googling unsuccessfully. Thanx :)
I’m a life long conservative and a student of evolution. While for some this may seem to be somewhat of a contradiction, for those of us who understand science, it all makes absolute sense
Yea, me to, anyway, when God created man he used available material, some of witch might have been homo erectus, anyway, our solar system is somewhere around 4,5 billion years old and the galaxi/universe somewhere around 14 billion years old and this has nothing to do with God creating man or evolution for that mather
Oh eventually modern science is going to be enlightened and they will find out that homo erectus > homo sapiens were a totally separate creation from primates.
It’s just going to take a while for the logic of intelligent design to kick in. God reveals his science to us only a little at the time because we can’t be trusted with it.
Humans are stubborn and once they latch onto what they consider their own genius, they get to thinking they can play God and don’t need Him. Ain’t happenin...
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