2.4 Million Old Edged Tools Discovered

[marchone]

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2018/11/28/science.aau0008

This also lends support to the Multi Regional Evolution theory.

 

[not2sharp]

Did they baton these?

n2s

 

[Dangerously]

This is a fascinating find. It’s incredible how little we know about things older than a few thousand years.

And to think that all coastal habitations older than 12000 years ago are covered in 400 feet of water! The only things we are finding now are from people who lived up in the hills of their times. We are probably missing all sorts of history that’s covered in water, just off the coastlines.

 

[marchone]

This one sure was. If you can use the verb baton in this context.

I'm having fun imagining the industry at Oldowan. What was it like? How large was it? How many people worked it? How did they protect their site? Was there a prototype of a (tribal) trade union?

 

[RBid]

Where are the flipper tabs?

 

[SpySmasher]

Looks like I did the sharpening on those babies.

 

[USMCPOP]

... I'm having fun imagining the industry at Oldowan. What was it like? How large was it? How many people worked it? How did they protect their site? Was there a prototype of a (tribal) trade union?

 

[Allan Gray]

Knives are older than our species.

 

[Horizon7]

Interesting point.

 

[Alberta Ed]

Fascinating! Now how about identifying those grinds and edges... chisel, V, micro bevel, sabre, flat, hollow... and what was the RC?

 

[NapalmCheese]

I don't see how we survived as a species without high wear resistant stainless powder metal tech supersteels. Surely there must be a mistake, there's no way a person could survive without an overbuilt M390 folder.

 

[19-3ben]

Knives are older than our species.

OK. That's an interesting conversation started and you piqued my curiosity. What other species made and used knives prior to man?

(unless you didn't mean it literally, and it was more of a statement that other animals have sharp teeth and claws that they use the way we use knives)

 

[marchone]

Specifically knives? Like Otzi's? Or crude stone tools as found at Oldowan? The jury is still out.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/becoming-human-the-origin-of-stone-tools-55335180/

https://phys.org/news/2017-01-hominid-ancestors-tools.html

 

[RBid]

Spine whack testing, please.

 

[Dangerously]

Fascinating! Now how about identifying those grinds and edges... chisel, V, micro bevel, sabre, flat, hollow... and what was the RC?

I’m pretty sure two of the skeletons they found killed each other arguing whether or not full convex edges have more stone behind the edge.

 

[Dangerously]

OK. That's an interesting conversation started and you piqued my curiosity. What other species made and used knives prior to man?

Well, they’re not sure exactly who used these tools. I’m not sure H. Sapiens was the only hominin to use tools; you’ve got our precursors, and other dead species in the Homo family like Neanderthals.

Or it was the aliens.

 

[Dogdrawz]

And the first cave paintings depicting "sharpened" rocks?

The first knife forum.....

 

[mpm0097]

Are those on washers or bearings?

 

[scottc3]

Thx Wayne, interesting read, no luck getting abstract for 25, but 26 was easy peasy.

25 ↵P. J. Nilssen, “An actualistic butchery study in South Africa and its implications for reconstructing hominid strategies of carcass acquisition and butchery in the Upper Pleistocene and Plio-Pleistocene,” thesis, University of Cape Town, South Africa (2000). Google Scholar
26 ↵ M. Domínguez-Rodrigo, T. R. Pickering, S. Semaw, M. J. Rogers, Cutmarked bones from Pliocene archaeological sites at Gona, Afar, Ethiopia: Implications for the function of the world’s oldest stone tools. J. Hum. Evol. 48, 109–121 (2005).
doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2004.09.004pmid:15701526CrossRef, PubMed, Web of Science, Google Scholar