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In what is quite an amazing discovery, scientists have confirmed that a bracelet found in Siberia is 40,000 years old. This makes it the oldest piece of jewelry ever discovered, and archeologists have been taken aback by the level of its sophistication.
The bracelet was discovered in a site called the Denisova Cave in Siberia, close to Russia's border with China and Mongolia. It was found next to the bones of extinct animals, such as the wooly mammoth, and other artifacts dating back 125,000 years.
The cave is named after the Denisovan people — a mysterious species of hominins from the Homo genus, who are genetically different from both Homo sapiens and Neanderthals.
[...] Strangely, however, DNA evidence also suggests that, at some point, the Denisovans must have interbred with an as yet unknown and undiscovered species of humans beings.
Skeletal remains show that the Denisovans were probably far more robust and powerful than modern humans, and were, until now, assumed to be a more primitive, archaic type of humans than us.
But, the discovery of the bracelet suggests this was far from true. Amazingly, the skill involved in making this adornment shows a level of technique at least 30,000 years ahead of its time.
It is an astonishing find, having been exquisitely crafted 30,000 years before the Stone Age, which is considered to have begun 10,000 years ago. It is like discovering a 747, made a thousand years before the Wright Brothers ever flew...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 17 2017, @03:57PM (4 children)
Yeah, carbon dating is bunk. The Earth is 6,000 years old. They can't even get that basic figure right.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday May 17 2017, @04:12PM (3 children)
I was talking to a guy in meatspace who got me pretty good for a couple minutes last weekend because he claims the carbon atoms are in fact eleventy bazillion years old or WTF the physicists and astronomers say, but his shtick was the physical arrangement as "Earth" is only 6000 years old. Kinda like the atoms that make up our bodies are a lot older than we are.
Damn. That's a good one. How can this debate be that old and tired, and I never heard that one before? I was stunned, and impressed.
After a couple minutes I tossed back the whole sedimentary rock thing and erosion / grand canyon etc, keeping it moving.
There's still evolution (LOL) going on in the arguments for creation science. I was impressed.
Anyway a halfway serious on topic point to be made is caves is caves and if my son camps in a cave formerly inhabited by natives 3000 years ago and loses his ipad, you know that 100000 years from now some archeologist is going to be mystified that 103000 years ago people were using ipads that officially were not invented until 100000 years ago and there's gonna be PHDs written and defended on the topic and all that happened is a cave is just a cave and two groups happened to use it and the junk inside it at different times.
(Score: 1) by dvader on Wednesday May 17 2017, @06:14PM (2 children)
Next time you could tell him the earth is actually just 5 years old. It is the fourth version of a simulation that always starts in 2012. The first three versions did not include a Higgs boson which made scientists very upset about not finding one, causing widespread panic and riots, ultimately leading to nuclear war and total annihilation.
All your memories, historical records and archeological evidence was just programmed to be there (obviously).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 17 2017, @06:40PM (1 child)
What? I was certain we were on the sixth version by now. Anyway, I prefer counting from the emergence of one integral anomaly to the emergence of the next. How do you figure it's the fourth?
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday May 17 2017, @08:14PM
He only counts major versions. We are at version 4.1 now.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.