'Oldest Sculpture' Found In Morocco (400K Years Old)

BBC ^ | 5-23-2003 | Paul Rincon

[blam]

'Oldest sculpture' found in Morocco

By Paul Rincon
BBC Science

A 400,000-year-old stone object unearthed in Morocco could be the world's oldest attempt at sculpture.

The figurine was found 15 metres below ground

That is the claim of a prehistoric art specialist who says the ancient rock bears clear signs of modification by humans.

The object, which is around six centimetres in length, is shaped like a human figure, with grooves that suggest a neck, arms and legs. On its surface are flakes of a red substance that could be remnants of paint.

The object was found 15 metres below the eroded surface of a terrace on the north bank of the river Draa near the town of Tan-Tan. It was reportedly lying just a few centimetres away from stone handaxes in ground layers dating to the Middle Acheulian period, which lasted from 500,000 to 300,000 years ago.

Cultural controversy

The find is likely to further fuel a vociferous debate over the timing of humanity's discovery of symbolism. Hominids such as Homo heidelbergensis and Homo erectus, that were alive during the Acheulian period, are not thought to have been capable of the symbolic thought needed to create art.

Writing in the journal Current Anthropology, Robert Bednarik, president of the International Federation of Rock Art Organisations (IFRAO), suggests that the overall shape of the Tan-Tan object was fashioned by natural processes.

But he argues that conspicuous grooves on the surface of the stone, which appear to emphasise its humanlike appearance, are partially man-made. Mr Bednarik claims that some of these grooves were made by repeated battering with a stone tool to connect up natural depressions in the rock.

Stone handaxes like these were found close to the figurine

"What we've got is a piece of stone that is largely naturally shaped.

"It has some modifications, but they are more than modifications," Mr Bednarik told BBC News Online.

Mr Bednarik tried to replicate the markings on a similar piece of rock by hitting a stone flake with a "hammerstone" in the manner of a punch. He then compared the microscopic structure of the fractures with those of the Tan-Tan object.

Sceptic's view

However, Professor Stanley Ambrose of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign said he saw no evidence for tool marks and that, although the figure was evocative, it was most likely the result of "fortuitous natural weathering".

"He [Mr Bednarik] has effectively presented all the information necessary to show this is a naturally weathered rock," Professor Ambrose told BBC News Online.

Professor Ambrose points to Mr Bednarik's observation that some rocks in the vicinity of the figure were weathered and even rounded from transport by water. Professor Ambrose believes that rocks and artifacts found at the site could have been disturbed by flowing water in the past.

Mr Bednarik also observes that flecks of a greasy substance containing iron and manganese on the surface of the stone could be red ochre, a substance used as paint by later humans.

"They [the specks] do not resemble corroded natural iron deposits, nor has any trace of this pigment been detected on any of the other objects I have examined from Tan-Tan," writes Mr Bednarik in the paper.

A 200,000-300,000-year-old stone object found at Berekhat Ram in Israel in 1986 has also been the subject of claims that it is a figurine. However, several other researchers later presented evidence that it was shaped by geological processes.

The Tan-Tan object was discovered in 1999, during a dig directed by Lutz Fiedler, the state archaeologist of Hesse in Germany.

[biblewonk]

My personal belief is that God created the universe billions of years ago. The story of Creation in the bible is a parable describing the process in a simplified way for people who didn't have an understanding of astrophysics, carbon-dating, biology etc. As we learn more about science, the general outline of the creation of the universe remains the same, we're just able to "fill in the blanks."

That's a commonly held belief. The thing is that God could easily have said it was billions of years old and came from a big bang. He could have said that he formed life forms over millions of years. Man was much much more sophisticated 3000 years ago than a lot of people realise. Therefore the theistic evolution model makes God out to be a fibber. IMHO.

So, two questions:

1) How do folks who believe that the world is 6000 years old explain carbon-dating?

Carbon dating is not reliable. It depends on as assumption about the original ration of radio isotopes and them makes a simple math equation about the current ratio.

On a similar note: If scientist were to examine Adam 1 minute after he was created, how old would they say he is? Science is blind and helpless to prove the supernatural because science is natural science. There are lots of C vs E threads on the FR. Ask any of them what science says about a big bang? There is no natural science that explains that.

2) What about fossils of things like dinosaurs etc. that are hundreds of millions of years old?

Fossils are formed under certain very special circumstances. If an animal dies it does not fossilize it decays. This is always the case... unless it is compressed under tons of silt. This is what happened 4000 years ago with the big flood. There are whales fossilized vertically through "hundreds of millions of years of stratta" as if they stood on their heads for hundreds of millions of years. Not likely.

[biblewonk]

Oh no here they come.

[Hegemony Cricket]

Good questions. I don't claim to have all the answers, or even to be able to argue the issues conclusively, but here are a couple of points to ponder.

1) Carbon dating makes an assumption (key-word) that the naturally occurring levels of C-14 have been consistent throughout all of history with what we can measure today.

2) If you can believe that God is powerful enough to create the kinds of very complex life forms that we observe around us every day, why is it so difficult to believe that He was powerful enough to create it instantaneously, or that He could have created a mature planet, complete with fossils?

3) How do folks who believe the world is billions of years old explain the discovery of items such as a fossilized (petrified) tree trunk that extends vertically through a number of layers of strata, that would otherwise be described as representing "millions of years" of layerization?

[P.O.E.]

Perhaps a caveman found it this interestingly shaped rock and said to his friend, "Hey doesn't this look like Old Lady McRumprock?"

[Eternal_Bear]

If Chimps can paint, they can sculpt too I bet. If this is sculpture it was made by some advanced form of Homo Erectus most likely a direct ancestor.

[Modernman]

I'm really not qualified to argue the scientific aspects. However, in response to your second point, I don't see why God would create a world that looked billions of years old, with fossils and everything but that was only 6000 years old. I know God moves in mysterious ways, but such a move seems almost like He would be playing a joke on us. What would be his motivation for doing so?

Appreciate your answers, though. I've been hesitant to get involved in the C vs. E discussion because some of the proponents (on both sides) on this biard are too belligerent.

[SevenDaysInMay]

400,000 years of porn. Man has always had a fondness for naken women and saving images in their cultures ideal of beauty, except Islamics who really do like blondes.

For millenia Babylon was the leading consumer market for sex slaves from the region of the Lithuanian Kingdom, aka blonde children from Eastern Europe and Russia who did not "have more fun", herded over a thousand miles from their murdered families. I've read that even today, Baghdad has the highest percentage of blondes of any Arab nation, tribute to those lusty buyers of breeder children of the north.

[general_re]

Carbon dating is not reliable. It depends on as assumption about the original ration of radio isotopes and them makes a simple math equation about the current ratio.

Except that carbon dating can be and has been verified by comparing its results to the dates of known historical events. For example, if you know that a particular battle took place in the year 1000, and you find artifacts from that battle, you can compare the carbon-dating results to what you already know from the historical record. And in virtually every case where such comparisons have been done, the carbon dating results match up with the historical record very nicely - such comparisons give you a sanity check so that you're not totally reliant on unfounded assumptions.

[biblewonk]

oops, ration = ratio.

[biblewonk]

If carbon dating couldn't atleast do that then we wouldn't even know the term.

[PatrickHenry]

Patrick, could you post you usual list-o-links?

I could, RA, but why don't we let them have this thread all to themselves? Anyone who really cares can easily look into these things for themselves. Oh, all right; here's a few links:

Radiometric Dating .
Human Ancestors.
The Age of the Earth.

[Hegemony Cricket]

Oh, I totally agree about the belligerence aspect. I anticipate that this thread will devolve into name-calling and ad hominem attacks here shortly (unfortunately, because that does nothing to further any real discussion of the issue).

As far as what God's motivation might have been, I could not possibly have a clue. My postulation was based solely on my observation that all of the living elements of God's creation were reported in the Biblical record as having been created in their mature form. It's only a small leap to the possibility that the "dead" (read that non-living, if you will) elements of creation could have and should have been created in their mature form as well.

Mind you, whatever conclusion you come to about our origins, it must be accepted on faith. Unfortunately, nobody can produce a videotape of the big bang or of creation, so you must look at what evidence we have today and decide how it got here.

I guess for me, it just fits better that the complexity we see all around was the product of an intelligent designer, rather than finished products that somehow sprang out of the random noise.

[general_re]

So then if we know it's accurate in those situations, what grounds do we have for assuming it's inaccurate in others?

[Modernman]

I believe that everything in the universe was created by an intelligent designer (namely, God)from nothingness (i.e., the Big Bang). I believe that from the Beginning until today, the whole process took billions of years. Such a timeframe, though boggling to us since we only live 80 or so years, is nothing to a timeless God.

So, though I don't believe that God created the world fully-formed 6000 years ago, I do believe He started the whole process billions of years ago.

[Hegemony Cricket]

"Except that carbon dating can be and has been verified by comparing its results to the dates of known historical events. For example, if you know that a particular battle took place in the year 1000..."

Would you agree that there are several orders of magnitude (and therefore much larger margin for error) between events a few thousand years ago, and events a few million years ago? By way of example, I coud glance at a cart full of groceries and guess the total bill within $100, but, if I glanced at the annual budget of, say New York City, I likely could not guess it closer than to the nearest $100 million.

On an interesting side note: Did you ever notice that our frame of reference of "known historical events" only extends back in history about 6,000 to 8,000 years?

[activationproducts]

Personally I am as far removed from being a young earth creationist as you can get.

[activationproducts]

Thanks for bringing science into the picture. It is always welcome in my eyes.

[Some hope remaining.]

Teddy Kennedy's great-great-great-great-great-.....-great-great-grandfather?

[general_re]

Errors of precision like that for carbon dating are pretty much linear in nature, IIRC, which makes it pretty easy to correct for - the farther back you go, the less precise the results are, and the wider the range of valid results would be. So for recent artifacts, you might date them to 100 years old, +/- 2 years, and for older artifacts, you might date them to 70,000 years old, +/- 500 years. But those error margins are built right in to the calculations, and it doesn't go back as far as hundreds of millions of years ago in any case - carbon dating is limited to about 100,000 years ago, with modern particle-accelerator techniques.

[general_re]

On an interesting side note: Did you ever notice that our frame of reference of "known historical events" only extends back in history about 6,000 to 8,000 years?

Isn't that about what you would expect if writing were invented about 6,000 to 8,000 years ago? ;)