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Archaeologists in China Discover the Oldest Stone Tools Outside Africa
- ggm 8y agoThe 'out of africa' story gets more and more hard to sustain the longer people look around for other stories in the emergence of modern humans. Yes, the apes is out of africa. And then? it gets really complicated really fast. Also, reminded of the endless jokes about who is more advanced from what archeologists find in their own country: Americans find copper wire: invented primitive networks. Russians find Glass threads: invented optical networks. Irish dig up a bog and find nothing: invented wifi!
- rsynnott 8y ago“Out of Africa” refers to the theory that Homo sapiens (our direct ancestors) came out of Africa. This article is referring to tools made by Homo erectus or another homonid group. So, not our direct ancestors, more distant cousins.
- rossdavidh 8y agoSo, if we looked at all of the "oldest yet found" discoveries (that held up to later scrutiny), and plotted their date vs. the date they were found, would we see it asymptotically approaching some (presumably actual true) value? A job for an enterprising data scientist/archaeologist out there.
- garmaine 8y agoWhat would that show?
- rossdavidh 8y agoPerhaps, what the actual value could be expected to be. So, for example, you don't do a lot of work on top of the current estimates for oldest tool-using humans outside of Africa, that is likely to be overturned in ten or twenty years.
- garmaine 8y agoIt wouldn't be convergent.
- rossdavidh 8y agoInteresting if true. I could easily believe what you say, but do we know that? I don't know the field well enough to say.
- garmaine 8y agoYes it is rather trivially true. The age is getting exponentially further while discoveries are happening faster. But that reflects improvements in technology, not anything about what’s being measured.
- victor106 8y agoTIL From the article “To determine the age of the tools, the researchers took advantage of the planet’s changing magnetic field. From time to time, Earth’s magnetic field flips, turning north to south. Magnetic minerals in the soil and ocean are pushed into alignment with the field; when they are trapped in rocks, they still point in the telltale direction. Geophysicists have precisely determined the timing of these magnetic flips, which have taken place at the same time all around the world. It’s a useful way to date the material found in layers of rock.”
- hyperpallium 8y agoFunfact: key evidence for the theory of tectonic plates was the changing magnetic field direction in rocks with distance from their magma source. Always seemed like one fantastical theory being supported by another fantastical theory. (Don't worry, I'm not a tectonic skeptic.)
- njarboe 8y agoThese flips happen quickly on a geologic timescale but are not quick on a human timescale. It takes around 1-10 thousand years for the field to flip. The last one happened around 780k years ago. More often the magnetic field gets quite weak for awhile, like the field is going to flip, but then the magnetic field returns to the same strength and direction. These are called excursions and the last one of these was likely the Laschamp excursion about 40k years ago.
- Pica_soO 8y agoSuper interesting, thanks for posting about the Laschamp Event
- tomcam 8y agoWe are Laschampions.
- ericd 8y agoHuh, interesting. Do you know if anyone has looked at whether the rate of genetic mutations increases during those 10k year periods of weakened magnetic field? Seems like that would cause the magnetosphere to become less effective at deflecting cosmic radiation.
- tomlock 8y agoAs I understand it there's a strong belief amongst Chinese nationalists that the Chinese diverged early from other humans. It makes me suspicious of this announcement, as it may be playing to those beliefs. However, I'm not sure it is untrue, doesn't bother me either way.
- garmaine 8y agoWell, to that end the very first sentence of this article is wrong. These weren't carved by ancestors of anyone living today. This was homo erectus, a distant cousin.
- alecco 8y agoWell, many Chinese scholars claim the Chinese are descendants from Homo Erectus. It's even shown on a BBC documentary, they get disappointed when DNA analysis disproves their skull-shape "evidence". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incredible_Human_Journey#2._Asia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incredible_Human_Journey#2...
- garmaine 8y agoThe fact that I have healthy half-chinese kids puts the nail in the coffin of that idea... among many other things. It's about as serious an idea as a flat earth or "intelligent design".
- laretluval 8y agoI don't think even the strongest Chinese nationalist would claim that the Chinese diverged from everyone else 2 million years ago!
- johnzim 8y agoActually there was a very significant amount of money ploughed into researching that exact topic in the PRC. With significant and predictable sadness when the results didn't go their (the CCP and Chinese nationalists) way. A google search gives a good paper on the topic: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/28941533.pdf https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/28941533.pdf TLDR: CCP, seeking to shore up ethno-nationalism (not an especially rare occurance in Chinese history) spent a LOT of time and research trying to prove that Han Chinese are in fact originally descended from Homo erectus Pekinensis rather than the African Homo Sapiens. (EDIT: Spelling)
- njarboe 8y agoThe original Nature article published July 11[1]. [1]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0299-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0299-4