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Topic: Human History  (Read 23891 times)

Human History


Quote
Paris (AFP) - Anthropologists on Wednesday said they had found the earliest engraving in human history on a fossilised mollusc shell some 500,000 years old, unearthed in colonial-era Indonesia.

The zigzag scratching, together with evidence that these shells were used as a tool, should prompt a rethink about the mysterious early human called Homo erectus, they said.

The discovery comes through new scrutiny of 166 freshwater mussel shells found at Trinil, on the banks of the Bengawan Solo river in East Java, where one of the most sensational finds in fossil-hunting was made.

It was here in 1891 that an adventurous Dutch palaeontologist, Eugene Dubois, found "Java Man."


what is this ? is this another "My whole life is full of lie " ??

i thought The oldest Human is From Africa + 200.000 years ago .  :chef:

is this valid and legit .



http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-oldest-engraving-rewrites-view-of-human-history-2014-12#ixzz3MVxv5q2a

Re: Human History

Reply #1
Something about that bothers me. The shell may indeed be half a million years old. Maybe older. The marks on it--- nope. They are far too fresh, far too sharp and clear to be anything like that old. Not in that material, where they supposedly found it.

Imagine going back into a cave, known to have been inhabited by prehistoric man back before men mastered fire, and there-- in the back of the cave-- you find the inscription in iridescent spray paint--- "Bob Loves Tina". That's sort of how this thing strikes me. Those marks are recently etched into the shell, likely with a pocket knife. They don't even appear to be that old.
What would happen if a large asteroid slammed into the Earth?
According to several tests involving a watermelon and a large hammer, it would be really bad!

Re: Human History

Reply #2

Something about that bothers me. The shell may indeed be half a million years old. Maybe older. The marks on it--- nope. They are far too fresh, far too sharp and clear to be anything like that old. Not in that material, where they supposedly found it.

If the shell was sealed off and undisturbed for all that time there wouldn't be much to erode the markings. But then again, 500000 years would be way early. Before Neanderthals early. I'll wait for a report from something with core competence closer to archeology.

Re: Human History

Reply #3




indeed, it is hard to believe if a doodle can stay at a Shell for 500.000 years old .

on the other hand , another theory about this Homo genus and species emerged in Africa about 2 million years ago is lack of evidences .

Re: Human History

Reply #4
Mebbe it's just me, I dunno--- one of those marks looks like an "H", and the one next to it looks like an "M". Now, I suppose its entirely possible that men that long ago could have made marks that look like modern letters--- the Romans used marks not unlike our modern alphabet characters for numbers, in fact much of our modern alphabet is Roman, so I guess the Romans could have "borrowed" it from some more ancient culture. But, those marks still look too new.

Nothing changes, does it. We have quite the debate going on about the "Shroud of Turin". Some believe it may have been the burial cloth of Jesus, others believe it's a Middle Ages forgery designed to imitate the real thing, and there are loud voices on both sides of that argument. Now a shell comes up with recent-looking markings that supposedly were made by human ancestors half a million years ago, and I reckon if we wait here long enough we'll find somebody who will stand for the idea that it's the real deal and not a poorly done forgery. By now you know where I stand on this.
What would happen if a large asteroid slammed into the Earth?
According to several tests involving a watermelon and a large hammer, it would be really bad!

Re: Human History

Reply #5
so this doodles is founded in africa  , from 100.000 - 200.000 year ago .





perhaps it have similarity in patterns , but it does not mean that Doodle in Shell is really from 400,000-500,000 years ago  .

i always  sceptical with that kind of  thing-ies  .

even the validity probably is absurd ..
but that was   the  second weird invention  of Pre-historic evidences in this 10 decade after Megalithic pyramid in Mount Padang     .
which the  Carbon-dating test results from the Miami lab show that the structure could date back to 14,000 BC or beyond.

older than Giza pyramid .







Re: Human History

Reply #6
Here's a link to the much better popular-science article in Nature. And now for the real article:

Joordens, J. C. A. et al. Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature13962 (2014).

Under the assumption that most of you are obstructed by a paywall, I'll post some excerpts relating to the concerns mentioned above. Most of the article is about the use of tools, especially the use of shells as a raw material for making tools. Speaking just for myself, when out in "the wild" (um, probably at the very most an hour's walk from civilization) it seems to me the most obvious tools are branches, shells, feathers, and combinations thereof. (No, this is not a mountainous area with plenty of stones around to play with.) Yet you'd also be quite unlikely to find fossils of such items used as tools. Only shells might be reasonably expected to survive at all, yet the very use of a shell as a tool virtually insures its eventual destruction. To me these results are exactly what I'd expect, which is why it's of the utmost importance to test for signs that go against such expectations. It looks like the authors did their job.

Quote
One of the Pseudodon shells, specimen DUB1006-fL, displays a geometric pattern of grooves on the central part of the left valve (Fig. 2). The pattern consists, from posterior to anterior, of a zigzag line with three sharp turns producing an ‘M’ shape, a set of more superficial parallel lines, and a zigzag with two turns producing a mirrored ‘N’ shape. Our study of the morphology of the zigzags, internal morphology of the grooves, and differential roughness of the surrounding shell area demonstrates that the grooves were deliberately engraved and pre-date shell burial and weathering (Extended Data Fig. 5). Comparison with experimentally made grooves on a fossil Pseudodon fragment reveals that the Trinil grooves are most similar to the experimental grooves made with a shark tooth; these experimental grooves also feature an asymmetrical cross-section with one ridge and no striations inside the groove (Extended Data Fig. 6). We conclude that the grooves in DUB1006-fL were made with a pointed hard object, such as a fossil or a fresh shark tooth, present in the Trinil palaeoenvironment. The engraving was probably made on a fresh shell specimen still retaining its brown periostracum, which would have produced a striking pattern of white lines on a dark ‘canvas’. Experimental engraving of a fresh unionid shell revealed that considerable force is needed to penetrate the periostracum and the underlying prismatic aragonite layers. If the engraving of DUB1006-fL only superficially affected the aragonite layers, lines may easily have disappeared through weathering after loss of the outer organic layer. In addition, substantial manual control is required to produce straight deep lines and sharp turns as on DUB1006-fL. There are no gaps between the lines at the turning points, suggesting that attention was paid to make a consistent pattern. Together with the morphological similarity of all grooves, this indicates that a single individual made the whole pattern in a single session with the same tool.


Quote
Age estimates for the Trinil Hauptknochenschicht vary from the Early to the early Middle Pleistocene stages, usually based on correlation of the Trinil Hauptknochenschicht with the Grenzbank layer at Sangiran on Java10, 11. However, such lithological correlations should be tested with direct chronological methods12. The presence of sediment-infilled Pseudodon shells enabled us to obtain direct 40Ar/39Ar and luminescence dating evidence for the age of the shells from the Trinil Hauptknochenschicht. The 40Ar/39Ar approach provides a maximum age: the sediment infill cannot be older than the youngest volcanic event being dated, but can be younger. Luminescence dating was performed to obtain a burial (minimum) age for the sediments inside the shells. The 40Ar/39Ar analysis of hornblende minerals picked from shell infills yielded, for each shell, three age groups of 1.65 ± 0.04 million years (Myr), 1.12 ± 0.04 Myr and 0.64 ± 0.06 Myr, respectively, reflecting three periods of volcanic activity (Extended Data Fig. 7 and 8, and Supplementary Table 5). For the youngest hornblende age group, which is crucial for defining the maximum age of the Hauptknochenschicht shells, the corresponding isochron age of 0.54 ± 0.10 Myr is the best representation of the true age of this group. Luminescence studies on feldspar from the sediment fill of four shells (including the engraved shell DUB1006-fL) provided an average minimum age of 0.43 ± 0.05 Myr (Table 1, Extended Data Fig. 9 and Supplementary Table 6). Hence the maximum and minimum age of the shells, including 1σ uncertainties, situates them in the middle part of the Middle Pleistocene. These are the first direct ages for sediments from the Trinil Hauptknochenschicht, suggesting it to be younger than has been estimated thus far. The minimum age unequivocally indicates that H. erectus and not H. sapiens must have made the shell modifications. Our results highlight that the sediments of the Hauptknochenschicht contain volcanic material from different eruptions, as expected on Java where run-off, floods and lahars from the volcanic uplands bring a mix of volcanic material of different ages into the lowlands. These findings underline that it is crucial for future chronological studies on Java to use additional dating methods to constrain 40Ar/39Ar ages13, 14 and to critically evaluate previously reported 40Ar/39Ar ages for the first appearance of H. erectus on Java15.

The combined evidence for high-dexterity opening of shells, use of shell as a raw material to make tools, and engraving of an abstract pattern on a shell with a minimum age of 0.43 ± 0.05 Myr indicates that H. erectus was the agent responsible for the exploitation of freshwater mussels at Trinil described here. The inclusion of mussels in the diet of H. erectus is not surprising, as predation on aquatic molluscs is observed for many terrestrial mammals, including primates6, 16, 17. The reported use of shells as raw material for tool production is the earliest known in the history of hominin technology. It may explain the absence of unambiguous stone artefacts in the Early and Middle Pleistocene of Java9, 18, possibly the result of poor local availability of lithic raw material, as also suggested for the much younger (about 110,000 years old) Neanderthal shell tools from Italy and Greece19. Our discovery of an engraving on shell substrate is unexpected, because the earliest previously known undisputable engravings are at least 300,000 years younger4, 5 (Extended Data Fig. 10). We predict that it is only a matter of time before comparable evidence is discovered, filling the gap between this early case of shellfish exploitation, shell tool use and engraving, and its later counterparts.



i thought The oldest Human is From Africa + 200.000 years ago .   :chef:

That would be why it mentions homo erectus and not homo sapiens sapiens. :right:

Mebbe it's just me, I dunno--- one of those marks looks like an "H", and the one next to it looks like an "M". Now, I suppose its entirely possible that men that long ago could have made marks that look like modern letters--- the Romans used marks not unlike our modern alphabet characters for numbers, in fact much of our modern alphabet is Roman, so I guess the Romans could have "borrowed" it from some more ancient culture. But, those marks still look too new.

Our alphabet directly traces back to the Phoenician alphabet. But whether the markings were made half a million years ago or in the 1890s, the picture is of course optimized to show the markings.

A visiting colleague photographed the shells and later noticed a faint zigzag pattern on one. “People never found this engraving because it's hardly visible,” says Joordens. “It's only when you have light from a certain angle that it stands out.”


I'll wait for a report from something with core competence closer to archeology.

The co-author, Wil Roebroeks, is an eminent archeologist.


Re: Human History

Reply #8
 so they said Erectus is older than Neanderthal .
and everybody loses their minds.  :yikes:

Re: Human History

Reply #9
What Frenzie said. Of course mistakes are made in dating, and you don't get a good stable picture until you have several instances. The story of the Neandertals has regularly been rewritten in the last 150, especially the last 50, years. Increasingly it is Homo erectus' time.

They were around for around two million years (depending on where to draw the species line) up until fairly recent times, they spread across the world (the old world anyway), and adapted significantly during that time span into many species/sub-species/populations/cultures/all of the above. In the latter days they co-existed with Homo sapiens (sapiens) and Homo (sapiens) neanderthalensis, humans and Neandertals.

They were accomplished hunters, in some ways better than us, with fairly advanced technology and mastering fire. We don't know if they mastered language as well. They only had brain sizes half of ours, then again the Neandertals had bigger brains than we do, and little did that help them.

The implicit question, given that these markings wouldn't be accidental and wouldn't have any practical tool use purpose, is: Were (some of) Homo erectus artists, or were they merely blood-thirsty engineers?

Re: Human History

Reply #10
Scientists say that there's a bit of the knuckle dragger in all of us.
=======================================================

Note: Don't you hate it when somebody uses "scientists say"?

Re: Human History

Reply #11
knuckle dragger  is genuinely human rights .


Quote
Note: Don't you hate it when somebody uses "scientists say"?


if in satirical contents is acceptable .

but in a serious discussion  , sometimes that maybe conflict with  argumentum of authority fallacy .

Re: Human History

Reply #12
Homo erectus were ape like creatures,  not artists. I don't know why they are called homo, relativism at it's best probably.
A matter of attitude.

Re: Human History

Reply #13
Homo they definitely were, from what we now can pick out from their bones and tools, they were something else that what came before them.

From the long-discarded idea of H. erectus as little more than a semi-monkey we have advanced to  dramatisations and documentations like BBC's Planet of the Apemen episode 1, where H. erectus, not H. sapiens, was the top dog.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7hfeICyyzs[/video]

Re: Human History

Reply #14
i think make  assumptions is not a good thing to do .

dont forget if Java island is young , and there are many volcanoes there .
perfect to create fossils by   bury any prehistoric ancient human  , nor civilizations  .
if there are many Pre-historic evidences  there , probably that is  because  the geographics factors .






Re: Human History

Reply #15
they were something else that what came before them.

Everything is something else that what came before.
Be it hominid or worms, that's not the issue.

The problem, is a materialist culture that tries to minimize Man by saying that we are not different from some ape-like creatures and with that denying the divine nature of Man.
Constantly, atheist media trying to be the Truth, intoxicating populations already intoxicated by football and soap operas delivered by the same media.
The triumph of ignorance, copyright by atheism.
A matter of attitude.

Re: Human History

Reply #16
saying that we are not different from some ape-like creatures and with that denying the divine nature of Man.


Wouldn't you assume anthropology to be inundated with atheists?  After all, theology is full of theists.   :knight:  :cheers:
James J

Re: Human History

Reply #17
Wouldn't you assume anthropology to be inundated with atheists?

Anthropology, by it's own nature, it's only accessible to theists. Atheists studies monkeys and their variations.
A matter of attitude.

Re: Human History

Reply #18
Anthropology, by it's own nature, it's only accessible to theists.


Oh stop it!  Physical anthropologists are interested in human biological origins, evolution and variation. They give primary attention to investigating questions having to do with evolutionary theory, our place in nature, adaptation and human biological variation.  Granted that there are other branches of anthropology--sociocultural, linguistic,etc., but they are open to all, not just theists (not even mostly theists).  I have nothing against believers really, so why do you hate atheists?  Do you likewise hate all people who believe differently than you or do you reserve that just for atheists?   :knight:  :cheers:
James J

Re: Human History

Reply #19
any -ism is un-hate-able if there is no  lunatic fundamentalist intolerant militant bigots and zealots .


Re: Human History

Reply #20
I have nothing against believers really, so why do you hate atheists?  Do you likewise hate all people who believe differently than you or do you reserve that just for atheists?

Hate atheists? I think you need to put yourself in the queue of my "hates".
In the first place I discuss with protestants. When having some extra time I pay some attention to atheists. Only the smart ones.
I have no time to you. :knight:  :cheers:
A matter of attitude.

Re: Human History

Reply #21
I have no time to you.


You have no time for English either. 

I was baptized a Methodist, so I am Protestant.  I choose to believe that there is no God of any kind, but since no one has ultimate knowledge of that, I am an agnostic atheist.  You have no ultimate knowledge of God either (if you can be honest about that), so you are an agnostic theist.  I believe that I know enough about the Bible and Theology to discuss it rationally with anyone.   :knight:  :cheers:
James J

Re: Human History

Reply #22
So, now ya dun made me go look it up.

Anthropology is the study of humans past and present. It may indeed be impossible to study man properly without getting into religion simply because humans have been worshiping something ever since-----....

However, that doesn't mean you have to be a theologian to study anthropology. You don't even have to believe that any god exists, even though as an anthropologist you'll encounter a pantheon of gods and goddesses that various people have worshiped. You're studying humans, not gods.

Given their track-record, I wonder if theologians are the best choice for studying God. Some of the stuff they produce has me worried that they know less than I do--- and I don't have any degrees in theology.
What would happen if a large asteroid slammed into the Earth?
According to several tests involving a watermelon and a large hammer, it would be really bad!

Re: Human History

Reply #23
I choose to believe that there is no God of any kind, but since no one has ultimate knowledge of that, I am an agnostic atheist.  You have no ultimate knowledge of God either (if you can be honest about that), so you are an agnostic theist.

You "choose to believe" that there's no God, I didn't '"choose to believe" that there is God.
I've concluded solely by means of reason that the world would be not possible without the existence of God with the characteristics generally attributed meaning omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent and morally Good. As such,human reason can't simply have the ultimate knowledge of a being that has no limits or boundaries, and this is a perfectly logical, sound, rational conclusion. Therefore, I'm no agnostic.

For anthropology, ignoring the unique dimension of Man's nature, that puts him apart from all other forms of life, is no way of studying Man. Man is not a monkey that, by chance, got slightly more intelligent.
As for theology, people keeps on confusing theology with philosophy. Theology is totally dogmatic respecting things as the existence of God, what theology does is trying to understand his will, what God wants to express to man. I find it, at least, problematic and probably a boring thing to do.
A matter of attitude.

Re: Human History

Reply #24
It may indeed be impossible to study man properly without getting into religion simply because humans have been worshiping something ever since-----....


Let's just say that there are many subfields in anthropology with the primary focus remaining on Biological Anthropology and the evolution of humans and near-humans (apes, monkeys, as well as our fossil ancestors).  Cultural Anthropology, on the other hand, focuses on  such things as the social and political systems, family patterns, marriage patterns, economic patterns, and religious beliefs of different societies.  Linguistics and Archaeology are other branches of anthropology, of course.  Therefore, when it is all added up, it seems that the bulk of all anthropology can be done without touching on religion at all.   :knight:  :cheers:
James J