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Signs of symbolic behavior emerged at the dawn of our species in Africa
More than 320,000 years ago in the Rift Valley of Africa, some early innovators adopted a new technology: They eschewed the clunky, palm-size stone hand axes that their ancestors had used for more than a million years in favor of a sleek new toolkit. Like new generations of cellphones today, their Middle Stone Age (MSA) blades and points were smaller and more precise than the old so-called Acheulean hand axes and scrapers.
These toolmakers in the Olorgesailie Basin in Kenya chose as raw materials shiny black obsidian and white and green chert, rocks they had to get from distant sources or through trade networks. In another first, they chiseled red and black rocks, probably to use as crayons to color their bodies or spears—an early sign of symbolic behavior. "This is indicative of a gear change in behavior, toolmaking, and material culture," says evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, who studies social networks.
A trio of papers released online in Science today documents this remarkable technological transition. Although other sites have yielded MSA tools, the new, securely dated chronology nudges the transition back by at least 20,000 years, matching when our species, Homo sapiens, is now thought to have emerged. By analyzing artifacts over time at one site, the papers also show that these behaviors developed as climate swings intensified, supporting the idea that environmental variability drove innovation.
Related:
Environmental dynamics during the onset of the Middle Stone Age in eastern Africa (DOI: 10.1126/science.aao2200) (DX)
Chronology of the Acheulean to Middle Stone Age transition in eastern Africa (DOI: 10.1126/science.aao2216) (DX)
Long-distance stone transport and pigment use in the earliest Middle Stone Age (DOI: 10.1126/science.aao2646) (DX)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @05:37PM (4 children)
We don't know how certain works were achieved even in ancient society that is recognized. They don't teach that in schools.
More than a continent's worth of coastal land (you know, where most people tend to live) has been swallowed up in rising sea levels in the last few 10s of the thousands of years, and humans of modern form (physically, and as far as we can tell, mentally) go back as much as 200 thousand years. That's a lot of time, and a lot of archaeologically unexplored territory.
There are megalithic structures in Peru which are attributed to Indians of the last millennium, but even they attribute those structures to the "gods" who came before them, and Lake Titicaca would have last been striking their vicinity some 12 thousand years ago, as also evidenced by astronomical alignments of the stones, which only work at that time, too.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday March 16 2018, @06:51PM (3 children)
While the statement "We don't know how certain works were achieved even in ancient society that is recognized." is true, it's misleading. Usually we can think of several ways it it could have been achieved and can't validly choose between them. Usually when people say "There's no way they could do that" they're either revealing their ignorance of technical approaches, or they're unwilling to accept that massive an amount of labor.
E.g.: Did you know that Roman legions stationed in Carthage ate ice sherbets? The approach was simple, you dig a deep pit and line it with straw. You make a wooden cover for it, and cover that with straw. Every night you leave the lid off to the desert sky. Every day before dawn you put the lid on again. I believe it only took a few days to freeze the pot of mix. Nothing magic, no high tech, just a simple technical approach, and the legions could have a treat that in Rome only the Emperor could afford.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Friday March 16 2018, @07:08PM (2 children)
This is without a doubt the 'secret' behind many ancient wonders. The willingness to invest incredible amounts of labor over long periods of time.
Many of these things were built over multiple generations. In a world where most projects last a few month, and are obsolete before they release, many people simply cannot conceive of it, but it's true. The man who finished a project might be the grandson of the man who started it. Three generations, working diligently, if not on a daily basis at least a seasonal one, year after year, decade after decade, that was the true genius of the ancients that we have lost.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 16 2018, @08:45PM
We don't need that for most things. It doesn't take three generations to build even our largest buildings. For example, NASA built the Vehicle Assembly Building in about four years and that is one of the largest buildings in the world by internal volume.
Another problem is that a three generation project has the potential to become obsolete before it is finished. For example, a large project on the coastline might be flooded by climate change (if the warnings come true). A computation project would be forever updating on more advanced hardware. It'd be quite the challenging, moving target to plan something so many years in advance.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 17 2018, @03:36AM
Science, mathematics and technology are like that. The knowledge that started to be formalized thousands of years ago has reached incredible heights.