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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: 2) by Arik on Friday March 16 2018, @05:57PM (9 children)
Evidence in some form that some more advanced race might be able to find? Sure. Evidence we'd be likely to notice today with our technology? I'm thinking no. But it does depend on exactly what sort of 'modern vehicles' we're talking about. And also just how it's deposited. It's probably *possible* for something to be sealed in under the ocean without coming into contact with seawater for 11k years but it seems highly improbable.
So assuming we're going to have some contact with seawater - most modern vehicles until recently were primarily composed of steel. Steel reliably dissolves in salt water. End of story on the bulk of the mass. Rubber and plastic can last longer, and of course we see *more* modern vehicles using more plastic, but the engine, drive train, wheels, etc. on automobiles are all still steel and that would simply have dissolved into the ocean long ago. I rather think plastic has replaced steel on ships significantly less than with cars but I'm not necessarily up to date on that. Most of the big ships I've seen were steel. A lot of smaller craft are wood, and that's probably more likely to be preserved than steel. It still requires special burial events. Several really ancient seawrecks have been discovered. This is an interesting one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dokos_shipwreck
Pottery survives better than steel or wood. I expect plastics and other modern materials, fiberglasses etc. would probably fare better as well. But finding ANYTHING 11k years old usually depends on more than a little good luck.
"Answering this question negatively would not mean that such a civilization existed, but answering it positively would practically rule it out."
Unfortunately the best answer is a big fat maybe :(
"If we left monolithic structures on pre-Younger Dryas coastlines, would they last?"
A monolith can be a type of megalithic structure, or a geological formation. Which is actually directly relevant here.
Stone, *depending on which stone* can stand a very good chance of lasting, yes. But would we notice it, would we know it was worth looking at and not mistake it for just another rock?
Well, probably not. A geologist might take an interest in it, and might notice that it was not of natural origin. Maybe.
"Given the general die-off during the Younger Dryas, it would be amazing if we didn't lose some amount of culture and technology. The question is how much. Are we talking about arrowhead designs, or basic metalwork? Arrowheads seem obvious, even without direct evidence. We know that hunter-gathers lose technology when they hit population bottlenecks."
[citation needed]
"Metalwork would be entirely speculative, but I don't think it's outside the realm of reasonable possibility."
With no evidence whatsoever? That's in the parlor-game 'anything is possible' realm of speculation.
Now as long as we acknowledge that, then sure, yes. Not at all impossible that there was very basic metalworking knowledge that far back. Iron is rare but not entirely unavailable without smelting or refining - from meteorites. Meteoric iron can be worked with stone tools. So cold-worked iron is possible - but the earliest evidence for it is bronze age. Gold is quite rare but does occur in fairly pure form in small quantities here and there, and can also be easily worked with stone tools. Copper and silver would be easily workable as well, but I'm not sure if there are any naturally occurring deposits pure enough to use. The vast bulk of metalworking relies on having at least some capacity to refine metals, and I think that's more often than not what we're really talking about when we say metalwork.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Friday March 16 2018, @06:23PM (5 children)
Yeah, that's a hurpadurpa moment on my part. I meant megalithic, not monolithic.
On what exactly? The mass die off? The fact that hunter-gatherers lose tech at population bottlenecks? I won't be back on tonight but I can cite either, if asked. The arrowheads and metalwork were noted as speculation.
But all possible things are not equally likely. We would be less shocked to find 12,000 year-old metal tools than 12,000 year-old airplanes. I find the question of how shocked we should be quite interesting.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Friday March 16 2018, @06:49PM (4 children)
The loss of technology thing.
Why would a population bottleneck necessarily result in loss of technology? Of course it's *possible* something is lost but typically the entire population would be expected to have nearly the entire existing skillset; it's not like there was this one hunter that made all the arrowheads and everyone bought from him. Every hunter knew how to make scrapers and points and how to repair them in the field. Specialization would have been a disadvantage, and impractical. So there's no necessary loss of technology in population bottlenecks that far back. The most recent population bottleneck may have had the opposite effect - there was an article to that effect I read recently but I can't seem to find it again easily.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @10:25PM
Actually, that's pretty much exactly how it worked (specialization). Pretty much everyone learned the basics, but mastery was generally left to the most skilled. When a bad arrow can make the difference between food or starvation, you let the best fletcher fletch and let the best hunters hunt. Everything took a lot of time and effort and considerable skill and knowledge, though it doesn't seem like much from a modern perspective.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Monday March 19 2018, @04:47PM (2 children)
One well documented example is Tasmania. I think I read this whole paper (direct PDF) [harvard.edu] a few years ago, but it might have been a similar one. Here's the abstract (emphasis added):
Consider that without writing, a culture's technology is limited by human memory. Insisting on replication of all data in all humans limits the growth of technology considerably. The less replication we insist on, the more technology we can have. We just also risk losing it if the population declines. One human can not remember all useful skills to the same degree of precision that a hundred humans can.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Monday March 19 2018, @07:16PM (1 child)
"Consider that without writing, a culture's technology is limited by human memory."
Which is why we developed poetry and all the other memory-enhancing technologies that moderns too often forget about.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Friday April 06 2018, @12:21AM
How many examples does it take to show that something *must* happen? It's not a possible task, obviously. No number of measurements can prove that an apple must drop downwards. What would you need to probabilistically convince you that this is a real effect?
On poetry and other mnemonics, you're totally correct that they increase the amount of information an individual can store, but that doesn't change the fact that a group of people using those techniques to store overlapping-yet-different sets of information can record more than a group of people using the same techniques to store the exact same set of information in every individual. Increasing bytes-per-capita doesn't change this dynamic.
(Score: 2) by t-3 on Friday March 16 2018, @10:13PM (2 children)
For copper, there used to be quite a bit of it in the upper peninsula of Michigan, in the area known as "Copper Country" (the Keewenaw Peninsula). The natives used it extensively, but IIRC they didn't forge anything. I also recall being taught about Tenochtitlan being near a mountain of silver that was used by the Aztecs and plundered by the Spanish.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Friday March 16 2018, @10:25PM (1 child)
That sounds right. The mississipians used cold-worked copper in burial goods, and they were still technically 'stone age' in toolkit though of course that's very much later nonetheless. I think there was some silver too, impure, copper-silver alloys maybe? But the lack of ability to purify and refine the ores limited the scope severely.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @10:38PM
From what I recall of "Michigan History" in school, the Keewenaw was notable for exceptional purity, basically as pure as copper gets out of the ground.