Posted on 12/14/2005 2:26:31 PM PST by blam
GGG Ping.
Vedy, vedy interesting. Thanks for the ping Blam.
I bought at an auction a certified 80,000 year old Neanderthal stone "knife/scraper" found in southern France.
It is pretty awsome holding something in your hand that was made 80,000 years ago.
Humanoids of some kind. 250,000 years is probably the oldest more or less modern man, and 40,000 years is the beginning of modern man. Roughly speaking.
The earliest human activity in Britain happened [had to] on London Stock Exchange. If they start digging in the City, they'll find even older artifacts.
I wonder how come these folks aren't considered?
"Over the past few years, researchers working at a site called Dmanisi in the Republic of Georgia have unearthed a trove of spectacularly well preserved human fossils, stone tools and animal remains dated to around 1.75 million years ago--nearly half a million years older than the 'Ubeidiya remains. "
There's a great Far Side cartoon labeled "Early man" which shows a Neanderthal-looking guy showing up for dinner at someone's house and the hostess still has her hair in curlers.
I think 125,000 years old is the oldest estimate I've seen for the age of Modern Humans...with an exit from Africa about 90,000 years ago. Albeit, I have some strong suspicions that some of these early folks (see post # 8) may have became modern somewhere outside Africa.
You can tell it's a tool because just barely discernable on one side it says "Craftsman".
New research shows that early humans were living in Britain around 700,000 years ago, much earlier than scientists had previously thought.
It suprised nobody to find none of the tools were related to dentistry.
bump
to have lasted that long, they're probably made by Craftsman.
Tools? They look like plan old rocks to me.
Yes, and this new dating technique was verified by finding a date etched on the rock tool to verify the year of manufacture.
18:00 14 December 2005
NewScientist.com news service
Rowan Hooper
The prehistoric humans who made the tools lived alongside elephants, lions and other large mammals (Artist’s impression: Natural History Museum)Humans may have colonised northern Europe 200,000 years earlier than previously thought. Stone tools found in eastern England suggest that humans were there at least 700,000 years ago.
"We don't know for sure what species it was," says team member Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London, "but my bet is it's an early form of Homo heidelbergensis or Homo antecessor."
H. heidelbergensis is known to have been present in central Europe about 500,000 years ago. Bones were first discovered in 1907 near Heidelberg, Germany, and have since been found in France and Greece. Hominin remains about 800,000 years old have been found in Spain and Italy, indicating that early humans had colonised southern Europe by this time. These early humans have been classed as another species, H. antecessor, though arguments remain over whether it is a really separate species to H. heidelbergensis.
The 32 stone tools, made of black flint and many of them still sharp, were discovered by amateur archaeologists at Pakefield, Suffolk. They have been dated using several methods. Firstly, the magnetic polarity of iron-containing minerals in the sedimentary rocks where the tools were found is aligned north-south, just as it is today. The Earth's magnetic field underwent a polarity reversal 780,000 years ago, so the site must be younger than that.
The tools were found beneath glacial deposits laid down during a period 450,000 years ago when the region was blanketed in ice, so they must be older than this. Also present were fossils of a water vole Mimomys, which was superseded by another vole species called Arvicola around 500,000 years ago. This leads the authors to speculate that the tools are around 700,000 years old.
A new amino-acid dating technique developed by Kirsty Penkman of the University of York in the UK supports this estimate. The method was used to measure the breakdown of amino acids within shells of a freshwater snail found at the site (Nature, vol 438, p 1008).
Back then Britain was connected to what is now the European mainland and had a climate similar to that of the Mediterranean today. The researchers found hippo fossils at the Pakefield site, as well as fossils of other warmth-loving species such as lion, an extinct giant deer called Megaloceros dawkinsi and Palaeoloxodon antiquus, an extinct straight-tusked elephant. Rhinos and hyenas also roamed the region.
The warm climate probably allowed early humans to migrate northwards without the need to develop technology such as fire and clothing or to adapt to a colder climate, says Anthony Stuart of University College London, who coordinated the project.
But the climate got the better of them eventually. "People couldn't settle here long-term," says Stringer. "They would have been swept away by the cold stage that followed about 100,000 years ago."
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