Posted on 12/27/2009 9:39:01 AM PST by Salman
Evidence of sophisticated, human behavior has been discovered by Hebrew University of Jerusalem researchers as early as 750,000 years ago -- some half a million years earlier than has previously been estimated by archaeologists.
The discovery was made in the course of excavations at the prehistoric Gesher Benot Ya'aqov site, located along the Dead Sea rift in the southern Hula Valley of northern Israel, by a team from the Hebrew University Institute of Archaeology. Analysis of the spatial distribution of the findings there reveals a pattern of specific areas in which various activities were carried out. This kind of designation indicates a formalized conceptualization of living space, requiring social organization and communication between group members. Such organizational skills are thought to be unique to modern humans.
Attempts until now to trace the origins of such behavior at various prehistoric sites in the world have concentrated on spatial analyses of Middle Paleolithic sites, where activity areas, particularly those associated with hearths, have been found dating back only to some 250,000 years ago.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
Thanks for the link - fascinating and thought-provoking discovery. I wonder how they collected the fish they they ate. Nets and fishhooks wouldn’t have lasted 750K years.
“Nets and fishhooks wouldnt have lasted 750K years.”
Clearly, they were made by the even more advanced “Paleo-Plastic Age” humans that supplied them.
I have been saying this for a long, long time now.
Ask Helen, she was there....
Picture of Helen Thomas in 5, 4, 3, 2...
By hand? Using stone weirs? Or looking for those stuck on the rocks of streams, like migrating salmon.
LOL!
You beat me by 9 seconds.
I should have typed faster.
“Such organizational skills are thought to be unique to modern humans”
And bees and ants, and mole-rats, and beavers, and . . .
They appear to be Neopaleolithic! ;-)
Nothing more than a small straight bone with a line tied in the center, most often sharp at both ends.
Push that down the throat of a minnow and when the fish eats it the tension on the jerked line will jam the bone sideways in the fish's mouth/stomach.
do people really believe this crap? i guess im in the minority who belive in a young earth
Well, where to start with this nonsensical headline?
First, let's look at the meaning of "modern." I'm sure I don't have to go copy and paste source code from some online dictionary, here. The meaning is clear. And clearly, behaviors deemed modern have been rendered no longer modern by this discovery, should it withstand scrutiny, if and when such scrutiny might ever be applied.
Now, on to assumptions of time. It seems these folks really have a problem estimating age and any related timeline. So much so, that age and timelines are constantly being revised. Constantly. One would think, given the nature of honest intellectual inquiry, that such revisions might on occasion fall in a direction that does not favor the status quo. It's quite odd, rather like flipping a coin and coming up nothing but heads, for going on 150 years now.
Peculiar, isn't it? Dealing strictly with the misuse of the language and that alone, you might get the impression that somebody is trying to sell us something.
No, you’re not alone at all.
No, you’re not alone. Especially here. :)
Unfortunately.
1. How does lengthening the timeline by a factor of three "favor the status quo"?
2. You sound like you think new discoveries should shorten the timeline sometimes. But think about it: say the estimate is that something's been around for 250,000 years. So someone discovers 100,000-year-old evidence of that something: is that a surprise? Does it change anything? No, we already knew that. You only hear about the discoveries that change our knowledge, not all the ones that just confirm it.
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