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| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
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Thanks Red Badger. |
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Posted on 11/15/2012 12:05:23 PM PST by Red Badger
A University of Toronto-led team of anthropologists has found evidence that human ancestors used stone-tipped weapons for hunting 500,000 years ago – 200,000 years earlier than previously thought.
"This changes the way we think about early human adaptations and capacities before the origin of our own species," says Jayne Wilkins, a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto and lead author of a new study in Science. "Although both Neandertals and humans used stone-tipped spears, this is the first evidence that the technology originated prior to or near the divergence of these two species," says Wilkins. Attaching stone points to spears – known as 'hafting' – was an important advance in hunting weaponry for early humans. Hafted tools require more effort and foreplanning to manufacture, but a sharp stone point on the end of a spear can increase its killing power. Hafted spear tips are common in Stone Age archaeological sites after 300,000 years ago. This new study shows that they were also used in the early Middle Pleistocene, a period associated with Homo heidelbergensis and the last common ancestor of Neandertals and modern humans.
"It now looks like some of the traits that we associate with modern humans and our nearest relatives can be traced further back in our lineage", Wilkins says. Wilkins and colleagues from Arizona State University and the University of Cape Town examined 500,000-year-old stone points from the South African archaeological site of Kathu Pan 1 and determined that they had functioned as spear tips. Point function was determined by comparing wear on the ancient points to damage inflicted on modern experimental points used to spear a springbok carcass target with a calibrated crossbow. This method has been used effectively to study weaponry from more recent contexts in the Middle East and southern Africa. The stone points exhibit certain types of breaks that occur more commonly when they are used to tip spears compared to other uses.
"The archaeological points have damage that is very similar to replica spear points used in our spearing experiment," says Wilkins. "This type of damage is not easily created through other processes." The findings are reported in the paper "Evidence for Early Hafted Hunting Technology" published in the November 16, 2012 issue of Science. Other authors contributing to the study are Benjamin Schoville from Arizona State University, Kyle Brown of the University of Cape Town, and University of Toronto archaeologist Michael Chazan. Funding for the research was provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the National Science Foundation, and the Hyde Family Foundation. Logistical support came from the South African Heritage Resources Agency and the McGregor Museum, Kimberley, South Africa. The points were recovered during 1979-1982 excavations by Peter Beaumont of the McGregor Museum. In 2010, a team directed by Chazan reported that the point-bearing deposits at Kathu Pan 1 dated to ~500,000 years ago using optically stimulated luminescence and U-series/electron spin resonance methods.
The dating analyses were carried out by Naomi Porat, Geological Survey of Israel, and Rainer Grün, Australian National University.
Journal reference: Science
So what you are saying is that anything over hmmmmmmmm 6,000 years is BS?
I am not saying that the earth is only 6,000 years old. No one knows--or can know--how old the earth is. That is beyond the realm of science.
Took flint napping in college, if I remember right there is a way to determine the age of the fracture based on the exposed cortex of the stone. I will have to look in my books to see what i can find. If the stone was heat treated, you can use thermo-luminecense(sp?) to date the heating event. North American indians often heated flint and other stone in order to make them easier to work with.
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| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
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Thanks Red Badger. |
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| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
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Thanks Red Badger. |
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think atl atl
A lonely road in Virginia is pretty vague. Perhaps it could be discovered if you were more specific.
I live near many many lonely roads in Southwest Virginia and might be the discoverer if pointed in the right direction.
Would that be cheating?
For goodness sake! I take it that Mark Twain was NOT an admirer of James Fennimore Cooper’s work. Methinks I note a bit of jeolousy there. He certainly can turn a phrase.
Too clever by halft...
I get the point...........
Yeah, it’s much smarter to assume that all dating methods and aging processes change randomly over time, or that they all magically skew in the same direction by the same amount.
THAT WAY YOU DON’T HAVE TO QUESTION ONE MAN’S COUNTING OF YEARS IN ONE BOOK.
Much simpler.
Like assuming that every "day" is exactly 24 hours, even if you are counting "days" before the darkness was divided from the light.
Cleaving rock exposes a fresh surface, that surface oxidizes and hydrates slowly over time.
If you know the minerals and know the rates of oxidation/hydration, and can measure the depth of the altered crust, you can get a pretty good idea of how fresh the surface is.
True that.
Which is precisely why they don't Carbon-14 date anything older than ~50,000 years. There simply isn't enough 14C left to provide an accurate date.
Let me correct that, no honest scientist will do that.
I've seem museum displays where "creation scientists" have carbon "dated" artifacts far, far older, then blandly said they must be much younger than those evil atheist scientists claim.
Note, I did not say "randomly."
THAT WAY YOU DON’T HAVE TO QUESTION ONE MAN’S COUNTING OF YEARS IN ONE BOOK.
I am not accepting without question any man's counting of years: either a) an age of the earth as 6,000 years, which failed, e.g., to take into account the "telescoping" of genealogies; or b) an age of the earth as bazillions of years, which is based on the presupposition that nothing could have intervened (a worldwide catastrophe, for instance) to affect the results of a dating method that may work up to a certain point. I have said that no one knows, or can know, when "the beginning" was. It is beyond the realm of science.
True that, you said that they all magically skew in the same direction by the same amount.
I have said that no one knows, or can know, when "the beginning" was. It is beyond the realm of science.
I agree that no one knows.
I disagree that knowing is impossible, although any estimation of the exact moment will have some error, in the same sense that the exact distance from New York to Los Angeles can never be specified to the nearest micron.
It is not beyond the realm of science to tease out all the confounding factors. That's what these guys and gals live for!
yep and all those modern spears killed off all the dinosaurus....mans fault...
How did Helen Thomas manage to survive?
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