Prehistoric Knives Suggest Humans Competed

Discovery ^ | 2-1-2005 | Jennifer Viegas

[expat_panama]

I like the way you put quotes on "drifted".  I'd put quotes on "British Isles" too

Just 10k years ago the "isles" were a peninsula.  At 50k y.a. they may have been a lake. 

That's why I doubt they were islands off the coast of Normandy as far back as 400k y.a.

[blam]

"I like the way you put quotes on "drifted". I'd put quotes on "British Isles" too "

LOL. I know about the Ice Age connections. I suppose I should have said 'from a GPS mark 400,000 years ago to a GPS mark today', there is about a 12.5 mile difference.

[Pharmboy]

Try and visit the Battlefield at Princeton. There you can visit the Ford farmhouse and stand in the room that Gen. Mercer died in. When I went there, the caretaker noticed that I was looking at the floor. He said to me "Don't bother looking; they sanded the floors in the '70s when they redid the house."

For years Hugh Mercer's blood stained the plank floors until they foolishly sanded it away.

[unspun]

Interesting that this map depicts so much change in the NW, whereas the Mediterranean has such little change.

[expat_panama]

I copied it from "Europe - a History" by Davies (a Brit). There may have been a tad "britrocentrism" in the making of the map.

Then again, there simply may have been more changes that side of the continent. Remember the channel itself didn't occur until about 4000 BC, and we're still having big changes with the Dutch coast (besides the dikes).

[Docbarleypop]

i love the fact that someone here actually takes the time to figure our how far an island would move in 400k thanks for the perspective!

[jwalsh07]

Stringer added, "At this time in Europe, Homo heidelbergensis was giving way, or evolving, into Neanderthals. There are hints gleaned from comparing bits of their bones and tools that we have found in Britain and the continent that there may be separate species of this creature: one that made hand-axes and one that did not. This is one of the big questions of human evolution studies today and a major focus for our work."

Is this science?

[blam]

"i love the fact that someone here actually takes the time to figure our how far an island would move in 400k thanks for the perspective!"

LOL. You can find it all here. Africa and South America broke apart about 120 million years ago. They've been drifting apart at about the same rate as you fingernails grow each year.

[blam]

"Just 10k years ago the "isles" were a peninsula. At 50k y.a. they may have been a lake."

Click here to see a map of the world with the ocean level reduced by about 300ft...then, imagine it reduced by 500ft as some believe it was during the Ice Age, Glacial Maximum.
The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) occured about 18,000 years ago.

[expat_panama]

Thanks. I'm so crazy about maps I became a civil engineer.