Posted on 04/21/2006 11:14:50 AM PDT by blam
Java Man's First Tools
Richard Stone
INDO-PACIFIC PREHISTORY ASSOCIATION CONGRESS, 20-26 MARCH 2006, MANILA
About 1.7 million years ago, a leggy human ancestor, Homo erectus, began prowling the steamy swamps and uplands of Java. That much is known from the bones of more than 100 individuals dug up on the Indonesian island since 1891.
But the culture of early "Java Man" has been a mystery: No artifacts older than 1 million years had been found--until now. At the meeting, archaeologist Harry Widianto of the National Research Centre of Archaeology in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, wowed colleagues with slides showing stone tools found in sediments that he says were laid down 1.2 million years ago and could be as old as 1.6 million years.
The find, at a famous hominid site called Sangiran in the Solo Basin of Central Java, "opens up a whole new window into the lifeways of Java Man," says paleoanthropologist Russell L. Ciochon of the University of Iowa in Iowa City.
Although hominids apparently evolved in Africa, Indonesia is a Garden of Eden in its own right, with a wealth of H. erectus fossils.
The startling discovery 2 years ago of "hobbits"--the diminutive H. floresiensis of Flores Island--added a controversial new hominid to the Indonesian menagerie.
In 1998, Widianto found stone flakes in the 800,000-year-old Grenzbank layer at Sangiran, whose well-plumbed sediments reach back 2 million years.
Then in September 2004, his team struck gold in a layer dated by extrapolation from the rocks around it to 1.2 million years ago.
Over 2 months, they unearthed 220 flakes--several centimeters long, primarily made of chalcedony, and ranging in color from beige to blood red--in a 3-by-3-meter section of sand deposited by an ancient river.
The find, not yet published, could be even more spectacular than Widianto realizes, says Ciochon.
His team, which also works at Sangiran, has used ultraprecise argon-argon radiometric methods to date the volcanic strata overlying the levels excavated by Widianto to 1.58 million to 1.51 million years ago--making the flakes at least 1.6 million years old.
If the flakes were undisturbed, Ciochon says, they would represent "some of the earliest evidence of the human manufacture of stone artifacts outside of Africa." Their antiquity would match that of the oldest flakes found in China, at Majuangou, dated to 1.66 million years ago and also made of chert.
Indonesian tool kit. Homo erectus used small, finely worked tools on Java. CREDIT: RETNO HANDINI
But not everyone is convinced. Although the chert flakes are abraded, possibly by water, a few limestone flakes are remarkably sharp.
"The difference in preservation condition could indicate that we are dealing with secondary deposition," or flakes of different ages mixed together, cautions archaeologist Susan Keates of Oxford University in the U.K., who was at the talk. Others disagree.
"I feel their excavation is reliable, because the deposits are thick and undisturbed," says Hisao Baba, curator of anthropology at Japan's National Science Museum and the University of Tokyo, whose team has also uncovered H. erectus fossils and flakes on Java.
The Sangiran flakes "are fundamentally different"--smaller--than the stone choppers made by H. erectus in Africa, says Ciochon.
The evidence, he argues, suggests that Java Man had to range far for small deposits of good flint or chert and so created small, finely worked tools in contrast to the larger tools found in Africa.
Considering the scarcity of raw materials on Java, Ciochon says, it's "a remarkably fine technology."
Widianto will resume excavations in June. "I will be going deeper and deeper, older and older," he promises.
This is the problem. You think that there actually are 'dozens of ways to accurately date things'. There are not.
Those 'dozens of ways to accurately date things' are interpretations built on assumptions that are extrapolated back into an unobserved past. Until you recognize this fundamental point, you will continue to blindly accept whatever you are told.
Written records are recorded observations and are a different class of evidence than interpretations built on assumptions that have been extrapolated.
The 'abilities' of Homo Erectus are not of the same type of evidence as written observations. They are interpretations built on assumptions and are based more on imagination than anything else.
That is the fundamental difference between them and written records and why it should be clear that you should be very skeptical of what anyone tells you happened 'millions of years ago'.
Tree rings are assumptions? I really don't get the sense that you know what you're talking about.
The 'abilities' of Homo Erectus are not of the same type of evidence as written observations.
I don't know what that sentence is supposed to mean. Abilities?
You think tree rings go back millions of years? They don't go back more than a few thousand and that is assuming that they are matched correctly. Assumptions, assumptions.
'Abilities' = the purported tools that supposedly indicate tool-making supposedly indicating intelligence supposedly indicating the 'abilities' of this creature.
Assumption built upon interpretation built upon extrapolation.
I've played this exercise in my mind by pretending that I had gone back in time 500 years or so and tried to tell someone how to make something we have today. You'd have to invent everything. Everything moves forward together and most cannot come before their time.
The tree-ring 'gauge' is now over 10,000 years long.
I'm not sure what your point is here, but 10 certainly falls within the parameters of few.
No argument...just exactness. I'm a big fan of Professor Mike Baillie
Research Interests
Archaeologist and palaeoecologist with research interests in dendrochronological and chronological issues. Teaches chronological and environmental issues in palaeoecology plus human evolution. Research record in tree-ring chronology construction for radiocarbon calibration and reconstruction of past environmental change."
Like I said, "...that is if they are matched correctly."
Big IF, imo since no tree is 10,000 years old.
Other assumptions (besides the ability to 'match' different trees correctly) underlying this 'gauge' are the ability of the researcher to count correctly, the assumption that the weather was always the same such that each ring represents an annual cycle rather than a wet/dry cycle.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/docs/tree_ring.asp
Well, we went from 'dozens of ways to accurately date things' to one (tree rings) that has been shown to be inaccurate pretty quickly.
Like I said, be very skeptical when someone claims to be able to tell you that 'millions of years' even existed, much less what supposedly happened.
It's all in the storyteller's imagination at that point.
Ain't no real Java Man....
Been held back by superstition
I'm glad I'm not the only one who has done that ;)
I came to the conclusion that I would be absolutely worthless if I was transported to the middle ages, unless I could convince people of germ theory (that would be a biggie) :)
I had a similar conversation, sometime back, concerning a fossil that proclaimed three dating methods. Upon close inspection it broke down to just one.
I don't believe the evidence. Common sense tells me humans haven't been around for a million or more years.
So the whole human race has been "superstitious" for over a million years?
Care to elaborate?
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