Research that could set humanity back 20,000 years!

[TxRad]

So 'human behavior as we know it' is defined as 'using digging sticks with perforated weights'?

Hmmm. Somehow I thought it involved watching pornography and stealing from the poor...

Only in Chicago, Doc.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

So 'human behavior as we know it' is defined as 'using digging sticks with perforated weights'?

Hmmm. Somehow I thought it involved watching pornography and stealing from the poor...

No, Doc; that's modern human behaviour. Post Malthus and Smith, you know. Oh. wait a minute; it may be a bit older than that...

 

[feverman]

Early Hunting Tools

I remember reading several reports on this finding a few years back. The article is a bit dated, but...

World’s Oldest Spears by Arlette P. Kouwenhoven

Radiocarbon dating has confirmed that three wooden spears found in a coal mine in Schöningen, near Hannover, Germany, are the oldest complete hunting weapons ever found. Some 380,000 to 400,000 years old, the six- to 7.5-foot javelins were found in soil whose acids had been neutralized by a high concentration of chalk near the coal pit. They suggest that early man was able to hunt, and was not just a scavenger. The development of such weapons may have been crucial to the settling of Stone Age northern Europe, whose cold climate and short daylight hours limited hunting.
The spears show design and construction skills previously attributed only to modern humans. "They are really high tech," says Hartmut Thieme of the Institut für Denkmalpflege in Hannover, who discovered them while excavating in advance of a rotary shovel digger used in the mine. "They are made of very tough Picea [spruce] trunk and are similarly carved." Their frontal center of gravity suggests they were used as javelins, says Thieme.
The only comparable find dating to the same period is a yew lance tip from Clacton-on-Sea, England, discovered in 1911. Thieme says the Schöningen discovery is important because it proves that the Clacton lance tip was not just a chance find and that spears were probably being made in large quantities. The Clacton lance tip suggested that people may have been hunting; the three spears from Schöningen now make it fairly certain that they were not merely scavenger-gatherers. That early man hunted big game is supported by the recent discovery of a fossilized rhinoceros shoulder blade with a projectile wound at Boxgrove, England, dated to 500,000 years ago. Studies revealed the wound was probably caused by a spear. As paleoanthropologist Wil Roebroeks of the University of Leiden points out, however, "we still haven't determined whether early man hunted in large groups, or whether they used pits to trap the animals first."
Thousands of pieces of horse, elephant, and deer bone were also found at Schöningen. The bones showed cut marks from stone flints found with grooved wooden tools that probably held the flints. If Thieme can prove the flints were hafted in the wooden tools, they will be the oldest known composite tools in the world.

http://www.archaeology.org/9705/newsbriefs/spears.html

 

[Tio_Narratore]

What we run into here, feverman, isn't a question of data, but a question of what we mean by "early man." 400,000 years ago is not early man. Early hominins (bipedal primates) are from 7 to 4 million years ago. Early Homo (our own genus) are around 2.5 million to 1.5 million or so. Its these early humans - Homo habilis - who we know were scavengers. With the evolution of what we term Homo erectus, around 1 million years ago, we see the shift from scavenging to hunting. By 750,000 years ago, there is clear evidence of hunting and the controlled use of fire.
And the spears are even more interesting than you think. The Clacton spear was long ago shown to have been tempered: it was heated in a fire to make the tip harder. Tempering wood isn't an easy thing to do, by the way; if you overheat it, it becomes brittle, so our H. erectus ancestors were pretty bright (remember, these are the same folks who I earlier noted as spending two weeks on the Riviera every summer). I expect the same is true of these.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

Spoil sport! This is a porn site remember, and the alien abduction hypothesis gives us a lot more probing with odd objects and strange genitalia then people trying not to sink or starve as they migrate from island to island

...And the mainlanders heard of these far-off islands where the males all had bifid penises. The men worried that they would be made to feel inferior by these supermales, but the women,,,Now, the women were another story...

"How might we get to these islands," a nubile virgin asked eagerly, "I would surely like to have a double for my first."

The other women laughed, thinking of how different it would be to ride a two-headed beast...

And so, with their skills in creating new things, the women on the edge of the cmainland fashioned watercraft fit to cross the wide and deep sea of the Wallace line...

(The native mammals of Australia are all marsupials, and have bifid penises. The early English settlers saw that in Virginia, focused on the only two holes close enough together, and concluded that Opossums had nasal sex.)

That a bit better, 3113?

I'm afraid the two-headed penis wasn't exotic enough for 3113; she prefers the alien abduction because it offers the opportunity for tentacular sex. As the founder of this thred, she deserves satisfaction, but I'd still like to keep it on earth...

The women set out for the land of the two-headed penises just before dawn, before the men would awake and attempt to stop their purposeful migration. By the end of the first day, they were far from the sight of land, and steered by the feel of the current. As night came on, all the women save she who had the night watch fell asleep.
The one who watched, who kept them on course, dipped her hand into the ocean to feel the angle of the current. As she began to draw it back, she found her wrist seized. In the light of the moon she could see clearly that it was a tentacle. All the women were familiar with tentacles from their sea-side foraging; after all, octopi were delectable dishes, but this tentacle was unlike any she had ever seen or felt. Its size was the first thing about that caught her attention; it's tip was as thick as her forearm. But then...it widened, widened into a two-foot long flatish oblong before its shaft was circular once more. And even stranger, it seemed to be palpating her flesh, squeezing rubbing, massaging her arm as the coils of its shaft held her by the wrist. As she contemplated this new creature, another tentacle and then another emerged from the sea, tentacles of the more familiar form, though almost as large as the first.
Anxiety overtook curiousiy at this point, and she opened her mouth to scream for help from her fellow women. But no sound came forth: the beast - whatever it was - had thrust the tip of one of these other wriggling appendages between her parted lips to muffle her. She was in its grasp completely, now, and she resigned herself to the creature havings its way with her yielding flesh...

OK now, 3113?

 

[feverman]

What we run into here, feverman, isn't a question of data, but a question of what we mean by "early man." 400,000 years ago is not early man. Early hominins (bipedal primates) are from 7 to 4 million years ago. Early Homo (our own genus) are around 2.5 million to 1.5 million or so. Its these early humans - Homo habilis - who we know were scavengers. With the evolution of what we term Homo erectus, around 1 million years ago, we see the shift from scavenging to hunting. By 750,000 years ago, there is clear evidence of hunting and the controlled use of fire.
And the spears are even more interesting than you think. The Clacton spear was long ago shown to have been tempered: it was heated in a fire to make the tip harder. Tempering wood isn't an easy thing to do, by the way; if you overheat it, it becomes brittle, so our H. erectus ancestors were pretty bright (remember, these are the same folks who I earlier noted as spending two weeks on the Riviera every summer). I expect the same is true of these.

If my memory serves me correctly, some of the other articles on the referenced find indicated evidence of fire-hardening of the spears used. And, that the target prey was horses.

I find it interesting to observe the anti-hunting sentiment so emotionally expressed by a very vocal minority these days. In addition to the vocal vegans, with the advent grocery-store-packaged meat it seems many have lost all sense that something has to die for one to have even a cup of chicken noodle soup. Much more out of mind to the masses is that hundreds of generations of our ancestors depended on meat for their very survival and as a major source of protein. Protesting something that was a necessity for ones very existence just strikes me as a ludicrous, or totally naive at best. Those protesting eating meat are protesting things that they wouldn't exist without having occurred countless times for hundreds of thousands of years.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

If my memory serves me correctly, some of the other articles on the referenced find indicated evidence of fire-hardening of the spears used. And, that the target prey was horses.

I find it interesting to observe the anti-hunting sentiment so emotionally expressed by a very vocal minority these days. In addition to the vocal vegans, with the advent grocery-store-packaged meat it seems many have lost all sense that something has to die for one to have even a cup of chicken noodle soup. Much more out of mind to the masses is that hundreds of generations of our ancestors depended on meat for their very survival and as a major source of protein. Protesting something that was a necessity for ones very existence just strikes me as a ludicrous, or totally naive at best. Those protesting eating meat are protesting things that they wouldn't exist without having occurred countless times for hundreds of thousands of years.

It is an issue I have to face often, particularly from colleagues in the Humanities who are all happy to lecture me on my lack of understanding of human dentiton. Suffice it to say that the rapid and significant encephalization (brain expansion) of our genus occurred with the initiation and development of hunting by H. erectus. And we still are omnivorous.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

That dentition argument is totally bogus. Human teeth are perfectly appropriate for eating cooked food and according to Wrangham, cooking began with H. habilis and is what allowed erectus and sapiens to evolve. If we were natural herbivores, we'd have the intestinal tracts of gorillas.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

That dentition argument is totally bogus. Human teeth are perfectly appropriate for eating cooked food and according to Wrangham, cooking began with H. habilis and is what allowed erectus and sapiens to evolve. If we were natural herbivores, we'd have the intestinal tracts of gorillas.

Yes, our dentition is omnivorous, Bear, and has been reduced in robustness since we started farming and eating porridges some 10,000 years ago (it's called a secular trend). But there is no physical evidence for cooking or any use of fire by the habilines; we don't see that in what we have of the archaeological record until quite a while later - around 750,000 years ago right now. We may find new sites or better interpret older ones, and then we'll adjust our interpretations, but until then, I work from the known to explain and understand things, not fom the hypothetical.

B...and why are we wandering away from sex again...?

 

[R. Richard]

B...and why are we wandering away from sex again...?

Tio Narratore, you gotta have nutrition, to have energy for sex. it all ties together.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

Tio Narratore, you gotta have nutrition, to have energy for sex. it all ties together.

Damn right, R. Richard. Damn right! Now let's get out after that herd of elk!

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Besides, oily, messy food goes so well with sex! A little wine doesn't hurt, either.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Only in Chicago, Doc.

Mmm... Maybe that's why I always get funny looks when I travel.

Well, maybe stealing from the poor is a later development, but porn has been with us since mankind discovered rocks:

http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/17mpe641nudxwjpg/original.jpg
The World’s Oldest Cave Engraving Is a Vagina​

This is a wall engraving from Abri Castanet, a shallow cave in southern France's Vezere valley. It's the oldest known cave etching, probably dating back around 37,000 years—and the researchers claim it depicts female genitalia.

Since 1994, a team of researchers has moved its focus from the other oldest inhabited caves in France, at Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc. Instead, the team has settled down to work in Abri Castanet, and has found evidence of occupation dating back as far as 40,000 years.


And this is either a very short tooth or...
http://images.fineartamerica.com/images-small/1-cave-art-vulva-granger.jpg


The Money Shot...
https://encrypted-tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTvHovCYbMs0jcuteX-XoAAa5Mm-WWubfhk3_H5ghavzNQV08D6


The new dates for these pieces suggest they were done by Neanderthals, who are only slowly losing their cartoon caveman image as dumb, brutish sub-humans with clubs. You can be sure that, if they hunted, they had language, they did art, and we have evidence that they had religion.

They're also probably the first to use the line, "Wanna come up and see my etchings?"

 

[R. Richard]

Damn right, R. Richard. Damn right! Now let's get out after that herd of elk!

Tio, since this is a porn site and just for claification, are we after the herd of elk for meat for the tribe or for sex with the female elk? TIA.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

Tio, since this is a porn site and just for claification, are we after the herd of elk for meat for the tribe or for sex with the female elk? TIA.

Most meat = most women; besides, the elk aren't happy to get speared, so the hunt tends to reduce the competition.

 

[Cruel2BKind]

I pop out for a bit and now there's bestiality going on.


Good to know that the AH has stayed focused.