430,000-Year-Old Wooden Tools Are the Oldest Ever Found (nytimes.com) 61
Early hominins in Europe were creating tools from raw materials hundreds of thousands of years before Homo sapiens arrived there, two new studies indicate, pushing back the established time for such activity. From a report: The evidence includes a 500,000-year-old hammer made of elephant or mammoth bone, excavated in southern England, and 430,000-year-old wooden tools found in southern Greece -- the earliest wooden tools on record.
The findings suggest that early humans possessed sophisticated technological skills, the researchers said. Katerina Harvati, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Tubingen in Germany and a lead author of the wooden-tool paper, which was published on Monday in the journal PNAS, said the discoveries provided insight into the prehistoric origins of human intelligence. Silvia Bello, a paleoanthropologist at London's Natural History Museum and an author on the elephant-bone study, which was published last week in Science Advances, concurred.
The artifacts in both studies, recovered from coal-mine sites, were probably produced by early Neanderthals or a preceding species, Homo heidelbergensis. Homo sapiens emerged in Africa more than 300,000 years ago, and the oldest evidence of them in Europe is a 210,000-year-old fossil unearthed in Greece. By the time Homo sapiens established themselves in Britain 40,000 years ago, other hominins had already lived there for nearly a million years.
The findings suggest that early humans possessed sophisticated technological skills, the researchers said. Katerina Harvati, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Tubingen in Germany and a lead author of the wooden-tool paper, which was published on Monday in the journal PNAS, said the discoveries provided insight into the prehistoric origins of human intelligence. Silvia Bello, a paleoanthropologist at London's Natural History Museum and an author on the elephant-bone study, which was published last week in Science Advances, concurred.
The artifacts in both studies, recovered from coal-mine sites, were probably produced by early Neanderthals or a preceding species, Homo heidelbergensis. Homo sapiens emerged in Africa more than 300,000 years ago, and the oldest evidence of them in Europe is a 210,000-year-old fossil unearthed in Greece. By the time Homo sapiens established themselves in Britain 40,000 years ago, other hominins had already lived there for nearly a million years.
Homo Sapiens, last survivor (Score:2)
Of the hominids. Thinking they will surely never go extinct, despite that having happened to the, what, 6 other alternatives?
I think so far it was dumb luck and a scale to small to wipe out everybody. But in the future it will require actually acting intelligently with a global view. Things do not look good.
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Poe's Law (Score:3)
It is in the Bible,
Is it, though?
and Bibles don't lie!
Don't they though?
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At any given point in time, there seem to have been 4-6 different branches of humanity, with only one of these surviving to the next round (possibly occasionally more). There have been something like 5 different rounds in the past 2.2 million years. This suggests that between 20 and 30 different lineages of hominids have gone extinct. If some of those other lineages did successfully branch, then this figure goes up accordingly.
Homo Sapiens aren't a particularly competent branch. Most of the early innovation
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Homo Sapiens aren't a particularly competent branch.
Yes, they are.
Most of the early innovation (art, music, symbolic thought, ritual) was done by Neanderthals and only later adopted by H. Sapiens
Flatly incorrect.
It is absolutely true that earlier hominids also dabbled in such things, but Homo Sapiens mastery of these things was vastly more sophisticated. This is evidence even in the initial migrations out of Africa of Homo Sapiens that colonized places that Neanderthals never tread, simply due to improve tool mastery.
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That one is called "denial". It inhibits fixing of actual problems and nicely proves the point you are responded to.
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You want to deny facts because you worry that facts get in the way of your narrative.
Let's put it into perspective.
Neanderthals predated humanity by a solid 150,000 years. And still didn't manage to make a bow and arrow.
Trying to use Neanderthals as a warning is flat out fucking stupid.
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This is evidence even in the initial migrations out of Africa of Homo Sapiens that colonized places that Neanderthals never tread, simply due to improve tool mastery.
Huh? That was probably Homo Erectus you're thinking of in "initial migrations" out of Africa. They appeared about 2 million years ago and neanderthals were more like 400-500 thousand years ago. Neanderthals are considered to be descendants of Homo Erectus (as are Homo Sapiens). Homo Erectus and Neanderthals each colonized places the other did not, but also had a wide overlap.
Now, yes, Homo Sapiens has colonized a much larger area than any other previous hominids, and yes we have better tools, etc. However,
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Huh? That was probably Homo Erectus you're thinking of in "initial migrations" out of Africa.
No. Keep reading until it makes sense. Bye, now.
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Keep reading until where? The line that I quoted and was discussing was the last line of your comment. There wasn't anywhere to keep reading to. You talked about Homo Sapiens coming out of Africa, but we didn't. Our Homo Sapiens ancestors migrated into Africa, not out of it. Our ancestors who migrated out of Africa were Homo Erectus, who then became an intermediate ancestor which then became Homo Neanderthalensis and Homo Sapiens.
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Nobody is talking about H. erectus migrations out of Africa.
H. neanderthalensis did not come from H. erectus (unqualified).
They came from H. heidelbergensis via H. e. ergaster (Late African Homo Erectus)
After the split from H. heidelbergensis, there was significant divergence between the child branches, and some eventual minor later admixture.
Parent was asserting that H. sapiens art and cool culture comes from H. neanderthalensis.
This is fucking absurd, and
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I know you weren't talking about Homo Erectus migrating out of Africa. You wrote:
This is evidence even in the initial migrations out of Africa of Homo Sapiens that colonized places that Neanderthals never tread, simply due to improve tool mastery.
So you were talking about migrations of Homo Sapiens out of Africa. Except that Homo Sapiens never migrated out of Africa. Our ancestors did. Specifically our ancestors Homo Erectus. Try to follow along.
H. neanderthalensis did not come from H. erectus (unqualified).
They came from H. heidelbergensis via H. e. ergaster (Late African Homo Erectus)
OK. You're not getting this. So I will try to use an easy analogy. I said that Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens are descendants of Homo Erectus. Try to think of this in terms of an actual family tree. Let's we have two siblins: Hom
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Except that Homo Sapiens never migrated out of Africa.
What in the actual living fuck are you talking about?
I had suspected you were a fucking moron. [wikipedia.org]
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Ah, now I understand what you're saying. It appears that current theory appears to support that. Fair enough. That was actually educational. When I learned this stuff, the recent African origin theory in question was around, but not widely accepted, or at least not by any of my professors that I am aware of. It looks like I just defaulted to the older theory that I was taught.
Word of advice, learn to read and respond intelligently to comments at the start. Then you can avoid big, long, pointless arguments.
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Word of advice, learn to read and respond intelligently to comments at the start.
Fascinating response from someone who responded based on a presupposition of a model of human migration that was known to be wrong when I was a kid (Migrated into Africa? When were you born, 1875?).
I have no idea how old you are, but when you make a claim that is largely regarded to be false, particularly in the midst of our other conversation, this is the kind of response you're going to get. I wasn't interested in debating another absurdism coming from you.
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Fascinating response from someone who responded based on a presupposition of a model of human migration that was known to be wrong when I was a kid (Migrated into Africa? When were you born, 1875?).
It wasn't that old an idea, and you're misunderstanding or misrepresenting what I was saying anyway. Basically the theory was simply that homo sapiens essentially evolved from the hominid diaspora that originated in Africa, then Homo Sapiens gradually became the dominant hominid species. The main difference is that the evidence seems to show that the evolution of Homo Sapiens from that hominid diaspora happened entirely in Africa. Quite frankly, as I already stated, we're still building an authoritative the
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Both H. neanderthalensis and H. sapiens split from H. heidelbergensis, which was itself a spit from H. erectus (ergaster) in Africa.
There is no evidence I am familiar with that supports what you are saying.
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"Neanderthals are considered to be descendants of Homo Erectus (as are Homo Sapiens). " This assertion is probably wrong. Fair chance HSS has/have been around a long long time, evolving alongside those commonly called ancestors.
I am not quite sure I understand your reasoning here. My parents are my ancestors. I had plans to go to my father's house for dinner this weekend, but we have had to postpone due to other family issues. My parents did not magically vanish when I was born. Similarly, "ancestor" species of another species don't magically vanish when speciation occurs. So, even if your extended timeline of 750K years is correct (which is highly debatable, based on current theory and the supporting evidence) that doesn't alter
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You're absolutely right that survival has been dumb luck by humans so far, and that acting intelligently and globally will be a requirement. Humans, I'm sad to say, just don't show that kind of competence.
Some humans do, but as a group, Humans merely show an impressive incapability of selecting good leaders. The few times it happens, it seems to be by random accidents.
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You're absolutely right that survival has been dumb luck by humans so far, and that acting intelligently and globally will be a requirement. Humans, I'm sad to say, just don't show that kind of competence.
This is unfair to us. We have, in fact, repeatedly demonstrated our ability to act intelligently and globally. We have largely ended the worst forms of industrial pollution, solved the problem with the ozone layer and ended acid rain. It's true that we're not doing so well with climate change, but that's because we aren't doling enough not that we aren't doing a lot, because we are. The power grid in my redder-than-red state is 60% wind and solar. China is building renewable energy capacity like crazy,
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Neanderthals took over 100,000 years to go extinct, and they never had anything whatsoever within their power to stop it.
Human civilization may collapse, I could grant you that. But extinction is pretty fucking unlikely. Civilization will rise again if that happens.
Not learning from the past is one thing, but saying that toads are going extinct because of something doesn't mean we're going to.
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Well, I guess seeing the "Bigger Picture" is not something you do.
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You're trying to compare species that failed to adapt to environments that were far outside of their control, with a species that has the power to destroy its entire planet's biosphere, and is wielding it to its detriment.
The comparison is flat out stupid.
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Homo sapiens subsp. sapiens is probably the REASON those other alternatives didn't make it.
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The closest possibility is H. neanderthalensis, but its population was in severe decline before meeting modern humans.
One could speculate why this is endlessly. Some think it was because of our more advanced tool culture, some thing it was an inability for them to adapt (which in my mind, also kind of implies technological limitation). But no one really knows. All that is known, is that the decline far predate
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Depends on your prior.
If you use an uninformative prior then you're right.
If however you use a prior based on the last 2000 years of written human history, then the likelihood of deliberate conquest, enslavement and eradication of indigenous humans whose culture and/or looks mark them as different is very high. This has been normal and consistent behaviour, fully justified by the moral codes of the ages, all around the world, except in very limited cases.
As we do not have written records going back mor
Animals have been making tools forever (Score:2)
Humans (homo sapiens) are late arrivals who inherited almost everything from earlier hominids and from lots of other animals who learned to use tools millions of years ago.
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Using tools and making tools are very different things. The only species that actually manufacture tools are crows, humans, and chimpanzees.
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You missed at least one finch that I've read of. Probably lots of others.
OTOH, species that carry tools around are a lot less common, and if you just quickly make a tool, use it, and then discard it, there's little benefit in refining it.
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Tools aren't just for food, every animal that builds a nest is a tool maker.
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Tools aren't just for food, every animal that builds a nest is a tool maker.
Hmm... To agree with that we would need to eliminate things done from instinct rather than conscience thought. A dog turning in circles to prepare a sleeping area probably doesn't rise to the level of tool use. Hitting a bone with a rock to get to the marrow probably isn't tool use. Keeping one particular rock that fits your hand shape to save you time searching for a nearby suitable one moves into the gray zone of tool use. Tying a rock to a stick to get more impact force is definitely a tool.
If I fin
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Humans were quite obviously far more intelligent, at least at their tool-making.
There are very stark difference in sophistication between early homo sapiens tool cultures as they spread to Asia from Africa vs. earlier hominids.
It is true that earlier hominids had the special sauce for making tools- but we were quite simply better at it. What we inherited (and improved upon, evolutionarily speaking) was the DNA for brains capable of doing that. If that is what you were referr
Re: Animals have been making tools forever (Score:2)
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We'll not be able to lean upon speciation as an explanation for willful ignorance.
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Speciation is really only visible when it's run to completion. And sometimes even then it's dubious. (Consider "ring species".)
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Speciation in general is a difficult concept that doesn't really fit with how evolution works.
No matter what, someone must pick some arbitrary line, or set of lines, where we distinguish between 2 positions in the same line.
x1 is obviously the start.
x2 is obviously where we are now.
Where in the middle did we acquire enough differences from x1 to now define ourselves as x2?
Obviously a whale is not a hippopotamus, but are pan troglodytes and pan paniscus really
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Completion, here, means that the branches cannot ever produce fertile crossbreeds. In cases where there is geographic separation this often happens when an intermediate branch goes extinct.
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So I don't find "completion" to be helpful.
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Let me know when you successfully crossbreed an ant and an earthworm.
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You lost any credibility you had with that dumbass fucking post, dude.
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Ligers or tigons are at least occasionally fertile. So the species are not completely separated. They're rare enough that the species are essentially separated, but it's a statistical argument, so there can still be gene flow.
N.B.: It's worth noting that fertile mules (or perhaps it was hinneys) are occasionally produced.
Species are only "completely separated" when the only gene flow between them is due to either human intervention or viral (or perhaps bacterial) infections. (FWIW, I've heard that the ro
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Your definition of, "cannot produce offspring" (are we now adding fertile to that?) is not scientific at all.
And that's my point.
There's no such thing as speciation- and you know that.
Your particular line in the continuum isn't even a good one. It was largely discarded by the time I was in highschool.
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that's the drift of some modern genetics research.
No, it is not.
Modern genetics research goes away from classifying things so crudely. It would at best be a phenotype.
Also, it's Scotsmen. From the grandchild of a Scotsman.
Re:40k years ago they came from Africa? ya right (Score:5, Informative)
Obviously if there were already hominids in Britain and Europe 500k years ago isn't it quite possible that more advanced hominid species such as Neanderthals, Sapiens and Denisovans and others evolved separately in place all around the world and that we can no longer assume Sapiens evolved only somewhere in Africa then spread out and highly diversified over a very short time frame -- 50k years or so?
No.
The level of diversity is the proof.
There is more difference between 2 random people of the same "race" than there is between an average of 2 random races.
We have a single common ancestor, and it was recent.
The multiple-loci position is untenable due to the genetic similarity of extant geographically isolated populations.
We know that the hominids migrated out of Africa about 1 million years ago, long before Sapiens appeared. So stop pretending that Sapiens didn't evolve from different sets of hominids separately in multiple places to a genetically compatible state. That DOES happen and it does a better job of explaining why Sapiens are so diverse today. Scientists frequently get things wrong and then refuse to recognize what is obvious. It's the structure of scientific revolutions...
No.
In general, this viewpoint is spread by people who don't want to accept that they come from black folks. My buddy Matt used to argue this shit all the time.
It is wrong, and usually a sign of deep-seated racist views.
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But what constitutes a "species" isn't well defined. There are decent reasons for considering Cro-Magnon, Denisovian, and Neanderthal to be one species...but there are also decent reasons for considering them to be separate species. As long as two groups can interbreed if the happen to meet and be in the mood, you can't be sure they are separate species.
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Don't get caught up on speciation. It's just a convenient way to pick accepted points in the line.
What is clear, is that modern human populations did not evolve from local ancestors half a million years ago.
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Archaeological evidence nearly universally supports the origin of H. sapiens in Africa, radiating outward, while genetic evidence makes it practically iron-clad, and even explains the archaeological anomalies.
It frankly doesn't even make sense for H. erectus to have evolved along-side humans. We're a clearly-derived organism, and there are even middle organisms that archaeologically and morpholog
Re: 40k years ago they came from Africa? ya right (Score:2)
Behind every 430,00 year old tool... (Score:3)
tool (Score:2)
What's the difference between a tool and a stick?
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We shaped wood long before stone (Score:2)
Apes make a nest at night by bending & breaking branches. So of course we did too.
Its just that stone, bone and metal get preserved better. All the archeologist have been doing the equivalent of searching for a lost item under the lamp because the light is better
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Apes and humans are descended from a common ancestor that diverged from the line that would sprout the Homo genus millions of years prior.
Your logic is sound- that we wielded and manipulated at least small pieces of wood long before stone, but you cannot infer that from the behavior of apes.