3.4-Million-Year-Old Bones Found to Have Marks Indicative of Butchering
30 replies, posted
[url="http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml"]Forbes[/url]
[url="http://www.archaeology.org/news/3604-150814-ethiopia-butchered-bones"]Archeology.org[/url]
[url="http://phys.org/news/2015-08-million-year-old-bones-due-trampling-analysis.html"]Phys.org[/url]
[url="http://esciencecommons.blogspot.ca/2015/08/marks-on-34-million-year-old-bones-not.html"]Press Release[/url]
[t]http://blogs-images.forbes.com/kristinakillgrove/files/2015/08/2-markson34mil.jpg[/t]
[quote]In the Dikika region of Ethiopia, researchers have found fossilized skeletal remains of ancient hominins as well as animal bones with marks on them suggestive of butchery. But while we used to think that tool-use and meat-eating were the sole province of our genus, research published today has confirmed a much older date for the first clear evidence of butchery: 3.4 million years ago. Writing in the Journal of Human Evolution, lead author Jessica Thompson of Emory University and colleagues reanalyzed two fossil animal bones that date to the same time period as the earliest documented stone tools in the region and have provided further proof that stone tools were used to butcher animals well over three million years ago.
The evidence from Dikika appears to jettison the idea that these bones were merely trampled. Whether the bones represent an adaptation among australopithecines for regular meat-eating or whether they are evidence of short-term or one-time processing of animals in the absence of more preferred foods, though, remains a mystery.[/quote]
I can't even comprehend 3.4 millions years. This is crazy.
Damn. I wish I knew what life was like way back then.
[QUOTE=BazzBerry;48474064]Damn. I wish I knew what life was like way back then.[/QUOTE]
Very boring if you wanted human interaction or entertainment. Very exciting if you were hoping for basic survival and constant danger of death.
[QUOTE=Mr. Someguy;48474249]Very boring if you wanted human interaction or entertainment. Very exciting if you were hoping for basic survival and constant danger of death.[/QUOTE]
Sign me up!
[editline]16th August 2015[/editline]
I wonder how frustrating it was to try and hack apart an animal with a sharp rock.
[QUOTE=Mr. Someguy;48474249]Very boring if you wanted human interaction or entertainment. Very exciting if you were hoping for basic survival and constant danger of death.[/QUOTE]
Hard to say it would be boring for those of the time per se. We can say it, having been pampered with the simplicities of modern life; but back then they could not have known of anything different. Likely, they found ways to keep themselves entertained through stories, music, and song. Even games like Tag or Catch may have been pretty prevalent.
Of course, it's likely that a lot of time was spend learning to hunt and gather. Possibly, it's that boredom that forced humans to stretch their minds and capabilities to create things like tools, weapons, clothes, etcetera.
Definitely a compelling period in human history to reflect on.
[QUOTE=-Ben_Wolfe-;48474518] Likely, they found ways to keep themselves entertained through stories, music, and song.[/QUOTE]
Do we know if humans could even communicate 3.4-Million years ago? Let alone write stories and songs. I assume that far back, communication would be roughly the same level as ape-to-ape.
[QUOTE=BazzBerry;48474064]Damn. I wish I knew what life was like way back then.[/QUOTE]
Take a look at the wilds of the savannah and you've got a pretty good idea. That far back there was no society, we were still just another animal on the African plains.
[QUOTE=Mr. Someguy;48475076]Do we know if humans could even communicate 3.4-Million years ago? Let alone write stories and songs. I assume that far back, communication would be roughly the same level as ape-to-ape.[/QUOTE]
True, maybe not necessarily that far. But I'd imagine they could make early, crude methods of music with their hands and legs and primal sounds. An actual language may or may not have been developed at the time, but possibly pantomime and gestures that are slightly more advanced that apes developed.
ok it has to be aliens
i mean homos haven't been around that long. (this is not a gay joke btw)
[QUOTE=Sableye;48475218]ok it has to be aliens[/QUOTE]
Occam's Razor much?
[QUOTE=Sableye;48475218]i mean homos haven't been around that long. (this is not a gay joke btw)[/QUOTE]
Technically true, but we have homininae and homini specimens considerably older than 3.4 million years ago.
- sNip -
[QUOTE=BazzBerry;48474064]Damn. I wish I knew what life was like way back then.[/QUOTE]
It was really boring.
All the stone-men mostly killed themselves to make way for us, the modern (fun) humans.
[editline]17th August 2015[/editline]
But no seriously, it was "boring." You can easily imagine. Remove everything around you, clothes, the entirety of infrastructure, every industrial product, and so on and there you have it.
Just imagine NEVER brushing your teeth or actually taking a warm shower, let alone with shampoo.
[editline]17th August 2015[/editline]
Also, they have found butchered bones before, even the butchered bones of some our ancestors. Just not as far as 3.4 million years back.
Hey it couldn't have been THAT boring. I am quite sure they had psilocybin mushrooms.
Wonder if that was how culture and religion and shit originally started.
[QUOTE=Bat-shit;48476934]It was really boring.
All the stone-men mostly killed themselves to make way for us, the modern (fun) humans.
[editline]17th August 2015[/editline]
But no seriously, it was "boring." You can easily imagine. Remove everything around you, clothes, the entirety of infrastructure, every industrial product, and so on and there you have it.
Just imagine NEVER brushing your teeth or actually taking a warm shower, let alone with shampoo.
[editline]17th August 2015[/editline]
Also, they have found butchered bones before, even the butchered bones of some our ancestors. Just not as far as 3.4 million years back.[/QUOTE]
Remember this is all relative. You've grown up with technology in a modern country. 3.4 million years ago there would've been a totally different way of life.
Indeed.
I'm sure their days were actually filled with even more activity than some of us today. They did have to actively hunt and gather for food, for example. And crafting was more time-consuming.
Hell, they probably felt less bored with their lives than we do most of the time. They certainly enjoyed some level of freedom that we can never truly experience.
[QUOTE=UberMensch;48477223]Remember this is all relative. You've grown up with technology in a modern country. 3.4 million years ago there would've been a totally different way of life.[/QUOTE]
I remember a time before I had a computer or gaming console capable of playing games.
I couldn't imagine a life without LEGO or saturday morning cartoons. Now I can't imagine a life without a beefed up gaming rig and a high speed internet connection.
Luxuries feel like necessities to those that experience these luxuries daily.
[QUOTE=A B.A. Survivor;48474393]Sign me up!
[editline]16th August 2015[/editline]
I wonder how frustrating it was to try and hack apart an animal with a sharp rock.[/QUOTE]
There are rocks that cut meat better than steel.
[QUOTE=Mr. Someguy;48475076]Do we know if humans could even communicate 3.4-Million years ago? Let alone write stories and songs. I assume that far back, communication would be roughly the same level as ape-to-ape.[/QUOTE]
even apes are known to inherit certain sounds, gestures, habits within the tribes
[QUOTE=Bat-shit;48477316]Hell, they probably felt less bored with their lives than we do most of the time. They certainly enjoyed some level of freedom that we can never truly experience.[/QUOTE]Except you can experience the exact same thing by staying active and productive, which is what their entire existence was.
Living before the invention of permanent settlements was constantly battling three things: exposure, starvation, and dehydration. There's a reason why hunter-gatherer isn't hunter-hunter or gatherer-gatherer, and there's also a reason why you shouldn't wander the forest looking for berries if you're trying to survive. Foraging and gathering is an opportunistic behavior, it's something you do to take a break from a more strenuous task, if you wander all over looking for berries you're going to fucking die. You'll burn all your energy looking for something that won't give you much return, that's why hunting was so goddamn vital because meat is a boatload of good stuff for your body.
Seriously, you're acting like they were somehow liberated from the dreadful throes of boredom in our modern society. They weren't bored because they were always almost dying [i]all the time.[/i]
What I meant by the freedom they "enjoyed" was simply the lack of society in any shape or form. It's not that enjoyable probably. You can't liberate yourself from something that didn't exist yet..
Anyway I'm not acting like anything, certainly not acting to be some expert historian here. I barely contemplated over their lives. Also what do you mean by "more strenuous tasks" btw? Like, creating tools/weapons?
[QUOTE=Mr. Someguy;48474249]Very boring if you wanted human interaction or entertainment. Very exciting if you were hoping for basic survival and constant danger of death.[/QUOTE]
Well, that's the environment we're evolved for. Maybe it would be a much more satisfying, fulfilling life.
3.4 million years ago the Arctic ice cap was just forming, and the world receding from a dominant tropical ecosystem, replace with grass lands and mullticlimate vegetation. This was likely a turning point for our species to be able to learn how to construct buildings beyond the point of crude shelters to more complex homes and store houses and such. It's easy to think of ourselves as Ape like barbarians but we probably had a good tribal system going by this point, although almost definitely the most barbaric of barbarians.
[QUOTE=Bat-shit;48484996]Also what do you mean by "more strenuous tasks" btw? Like, creating tools/weapons?[/QUOTE]Oh, yes, everything they did was a painful chore. They didn't likely even have anything we'd recognize as tools, show a person a picture of a hand axe and they'll go "okay, it's a rock???" and not even think twice about it. Handles for things didn't come about until later, and even then there was a long evolution between "this is my favorite pointy rock" to "this is a sharpened rock I have that was made to cut up things." You can simulate the conditions yourself, go find a sharp rock, wash it, and try to cut up some meat. You'll quickly hate everything about it because it [i]sucks[/i] because there's an extraordinarily larger amount of effort to do even that simple task than you're used to. Once people figured out how to lash handles on to things they didn't look back, a simple handle alone makes a job far easier for a variety of a reasons.
That's just addressing the simple act in itself, it's not taking into account all the factors that would contribute to the whole experience. You're cutting with your rock in a nice, cozy shelter wearing thin, woven clothes that don't restrict what you're doing, and you're absolutely safe from predators, others like you, bugs, and that damn sun that's making everything awful. (mind you, this is in Africa after all) You also enjoy something they didn't: animals innately know to fear you, they've had thousands upon thousands of years to learn that you've mastered tools, fire, and tactics, you're basically a walking murder machine and just about every single creature on the planet knows to keep you at some distance. Hell, other predators that do fuck with humans still will avoid you because you smell funny and you're likely more trouble than your worth. Seriously, somebody from 3.4 million years ago would look at you like you're a fucking [i]wizard[/i] because you look and act the part. If I went back in time with some of the things I've bushcrafted I'd likely be looked at the same way even though that's all primitive by our standards.
They'd be amazed that you can sit down and do [i]nothing[/i] for most of the day and actually can be concerned about getting fat. [i]Fat![/i] That would likely be the first thing they'd notice about you since they'd likely be "starving" by our standards. To them your life would be impossible, such a world of leisure and relaxation simply could not exist at all.
[QUOTE=Mr. Someguy;48475076]Do we know if humans could even communicate 3.4-Million years ago? Let alone write stories and songs. I assume that far back, communication would be roughly the same level as ape-to-ape.[/QUOTE]
Humans as we know them may not have existed that far back. That is why this article is remarkable. We believed that only [I]homo sapiens[/I] were capable of butchery using tools. In that case, it isn't unreasonable to believe that our ancestors like [I]h. erectus[/I] could produce complex vocalizations or have more advanced communication.
Language is based on a physical ability, not a cultural one. Vocalizations are directly tied to anatomy, and anatomically modern humans emerged about 3 million years ago. So yes, even back then they could probably form basic linguistics and sing, although it would be fairly primitive. I mean, you can teach a fucking parrot language to the point where they can communicate (see [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_(parrot)"]Alex the Parrot[/URL] as an example of an animal that actually voluntarily used vocabulary instead of mimicry) thoughts and desires independently so it isn't far-fetched to believe that early humans could form language. If anything, complex vocalizations likely arrived in our genus because the primates from which we evolved developed differing calls for various predators as a warning (primates mostly communicate in body language but use vocals to alert others). The animals that could do those calls survived easier and could pass on their genes, with each generation furthering their ability to make variable vocalizations and eventually leading to language.
So yes, 'humans' could communicate 3.4 million years ago, and we have evidence that they had culture such as music and through making pictographs. I mean, music doesn't even need a basis for language; lots of Hanz Zimmer's scores use bullshit words that aren't actually Latin, they are more or less just improved vocalizations and howls.
[QUOTE=BananaFoam;48489490]We believed that only [I]homo sapiens[/I] were capable of butchery using tools.[/quote]
We've known that homo habilis was capable of butchery for decades, this isn't exactly new. Stone tools have been dated back to about 2.6 million years ago. Virtually all of the genus homo used them.
[quote]Vocalizations are directly tied to anatomy, and anatomically modern humans emerged about 3 million years ago. So yes, even back then they could probably form basic linguistics and sing, although it would be fairly primitive.[/quote]
No? Modern anatomical humans appeared about 150,000 years ago, whereas the evolutionary adaptions that make speech (and more importantly, being able to hear and understand the sounds being made) only really date back about 500,000 years or so.
[quote]So yes, 'humans' could communicate 3.4 million years ago, and we have evidence that they had culture such as music and through making pictographs.[/QUOTE]
Actually the first musical instruments barely date back about 40,000 years ago, while the earliest examples of carved symbolic pictures or markings date back about 80,000 years ago.
[QUOTE=JumpinJackFlash;48488684]Oh, yes, everything they did was a painful chore. They didn't likely even have anything we'd recognize as tools, show a person a picture of a hand axe and they'll go "okay, it's a rock???" and not even think twice about it. Handles for things didn't come about until later, and even then there was a long evolution between "this is my favorite pointy rock" to "this is a sharpened rock I have that was made to cut up things." You can simulate the conditions yourself, go find a sharp rock, wash it, and try to cut up some meat. You'll quickly hate everything about it because it [i]sucks[/i] because there's an extraordinarily larger amount of effort to do even that simple task than you're used to. Once people figured out how to lash handles on to things they didn't look back, a simple handle alone makes a job far easier for a variety of a reasons.
That's just addressing the simple act in itself, it's not taking into account all the factors that would contribute to the whole experience. You're cutting with your rock in a nice, cozy shelter wearing thin, woven clothes that don't restrict what you're doing, and you're absolutely safe from predators, others like you, bugs, and that damn sun that's making everything awful. (mind you, this is in Africa after all) You also enjoy something they didn't: animals innately know to fear you, they've had thousands upon thousands of years to learn that you've mastered tools, fire, and tactics, you're basically a walking murder machine and just about every single creature on the planet knows to keep you at some distance. Hell, other predators that do fuck with humans still will avoid you because you smell funny and you're likely more trouble than your worth. Seriously, somebody from 3.4 million years ago would look at you like you're a fucking [i]wizard[/i] because you look and act the part. If I went back in time with some of the things I've bushcrafted I'd likely be looked at the same way even though that's all primitive by our standards.
They'd be amazed that you can sit down and do [i]nothing[/i] for most of the day and actually can be concerned about getting fat. [B][i]Fat![/i] That would likely be the first thing they'd notice about you[/B] since they'd likely be "starving" by our standards. To them your life would be impossible, such a world of leisure and relaxation simply could not exist at all.[/QUOTE]
Wait, you're assuming I'm fat?
Other than that yeah, that is some nice insight into the lives of stone men.
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;48492896]
No? Modern anatomical humans appeared about 150,000 years ago, whereas the evolutionary adaptions that make speech (and more importantly, being able to hear and understand the sounds being made) only really date back about 500,000 years or so.
Actually the first musical instruments barely date back about 40,000 years ago, while the earliest examples of carved symbolic pictures or markings date back about 80,000 years ago.[/QUOTE]
Can you cite a source for that info?
[QUOTE=CoilingTesla;48494139]Can you cite a source for that info?[/QUOTE]
[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_African_origin_of_modern_humans[/url]
[quote]Genetic studies and fossil evidence show that archaic Homo sapiens evolved to anatomically modern humans solely in Africa between 200,000 and 60,000 years ago[/quote]
[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_heidelbergensis#Language[/url]
[quote]The morphology of the outer and middle ear suggests they had an auditory sensitivity similar to modern humans and very different from chimpanzees. They were probably able to differentiate between many different sounds.
H. heidelbergensis was a close relative (most probably a migratory descendant) of Homo ergaster. H. ergaster is thought to be the first hominid to vocalize,[9] and that as H. heidelbergensis developed, more sophisticated culture proceeded from this point.[/quote]
[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blombos_Cave[/url]
[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_flutes[/url]
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;48492896]We've known that homo habilis was capable of butchery for decades, this isn't exactly new. Stone tools have been dated back to about 2.6 million years ago. Virtually all of the genus homo used them.
No? Modern anatomical humans appeared about 150,000 years ago, whereas the evolutionary adaptions that make speech (and more importantly, being able to hear and understand the sounds being made) only really date back about 500,000 years or so.
Actually the first musical instruments barely date back about 40,000 years ago, while the earliest examples of carved symbolic pictures or markings date back about 80,000 years ago.[/QUOTE]
Yes, this is accurate, thank you for correcting him for me.
[QUOTE=Bat-shit;48493255]Wait, you're assuming I'm fat?
Other than that yeah, that is some nice insight into the lives of stone men.[/QUOTE]To them we'd all be fat giants capable of magic and sorcery.
But yeah, you start to really appreciate modern society when you learn bushcrafting and wilderness survival and then to think the techniques used by the Native Americans and other indigenous groups are [i]extremely[/i] advanced compared to the people we're talking about.
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