Paleolicthic Ireland ? what you aren't told in school

hi wibbs.

So if a modern reused say a Neandertal scraper it would be very easy to see.

What if they broke it in bits and made arrow heads? You are presuming the use would be the same or similar. Scrapers or any other flake tools are ideal for making arrow and spear tips or microliths:

A microlith is a small stone tool usually made of flint or chert and typically a centimetre or so in length and half a centimetre wide. It is produced from either a small blade (microblade) or a larger blade-like piece of flint by abrupt or truncated retouching, which leaves a very typical piece of waste, called a microburin. The microliths themselves are sufficiently worked so as to be distinguishable from workshop waste or accidents.
Two families of microliths are usually defined: laminar and geometric. An assemblage of microliths can be used to date an archeological site. Laminar microliths are associated with the end of the Upper Paleolithic and the beginning of the Epipaleolithic era; geometric microliths are characteristic of the Mesolithic and the Neolithic. Geometric microliths may be triangular, trapezoid or lunate. Microlith production generally declined following the introduction of agriculture (8000 BCE) but continued later in cultures with a deeply rooted hunting tradition.
Regardless of type, microliths were used to form the points of hunting weapons, such as spears and (in later periods) arrows, and other artifacts and are found throughout Africa, Asia and Europe. They were utilised with wood, bone, resin and fiber to form a composite tool or weapon, and traces of wood to which microliths were attached have been found in Sweden, Denmark and England. An average of between six and eighteen microliths may often have been used in one spear or harpoon, but only one or two in an arrow.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microlith

Erectus was around for about the most amount of time of any hominid, but even within that time there was evolution. The fact that they evolved into Neandertals and Denisovans and Sapiens in different environments show this.

Agreed no problem there.

Nope. That's not how human evolution worked. One million years ago we had erectus, a separate species to modern humans and very different in habit and morphology. They were not the same species.

I would not agree with this. Erectus is not a separate species from modern humans, it is ancestor of modern humans as you said yourself. This is very different. I don't understand how you can say two completely opposite things in two consecutive sentences. A reflex from old paleontology i guess, still taught in schools, which invented all these different human species based on scull shape. And which we now know was just that, an invention.

If you met an Erectus you'd be looking into the eyes of someone on the way to becoming human, but there would be much of the "animal" behind those eyes.

Can you please point me to data that led you believe that the above is true?

For your theory to work, erectus would have to evolve into a different species, modern human in a tiny area, while all the other erectus' around the world also evolved locally into moderns, while somehow keeping constant genetic contact so we're all(very) related today.

No this is not true actually. For my theory to work, Erectus (or i would prefer to call it human if you don't mind), would have to start spreading earlier then "out of Africa" story would want us to believe. This is what you find on Wikipedia, and what most people, including archaeologists, believe to be true:

In paleoanthropology, the recent African origin of modern humans, frequently dubbed the "Out of Africa" theory, is the most widely accepted model describing the geographic origin and early migration of anatomically modern humans.[1] The theory is called the (Recent) Out-of-Africa model in the popular press, and academically the recent single-origin hypothesis (RSOH), Replacement Hypothesis, and Recent African Origin (RAO) model. The concept was speculative until the 1980s, when it was corroborated by a study of present-day mitochondrial DNA, combined with evidence based on physical anthropology of archaic specimens.
Genetic studies and fossil evidence show that archaic Homo sapiens evolved to anatomically modern humans solely in Africa, between 200,000 and 150,000 years ago,[2] that members of one branch of Homo sapiens left Africa by between 125,000 and 60,000 years ago, and that over time these humans replaced earlier human populations such as Neanderthals and Homo erectus.[3] The date of the earliest successful "out of Africa" migration (earliest migrants with living descendants) has generally been placed at 60,000 years ago as suggested by genetics, although migration out of the continent may have taken place as early as 125,000 years ago according to Arabian archaeology finds of tools in the region.[4] A 2013 paper reported that a previously unknown lineage had been found, which pushed the estimated date for the most recent common ancestor (Y-MRCA) back to 338,000 years ago.[5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_African_origin_of_modern_humans

Based on this "out of Africa" date, humans only reached Andaman some time after 70,000 bc:



They could not have reached Andaman earlier, because humans only evolved 200,000 and 150,000 years ago based on genetic data they say. They should really update Wikipedia and school books more often.

I don't know if you have read my paleo wandering on Vinca thread? Start from here:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=87133994&postcount=205

I don't want to repeat things here i said there about out of Africa expansion. But i want to add one thing here that i forgot to say there. The date of our common ancestor has been moved further back in time by a discovery of a african american guy who had a completely unrelated Y chromosome to anyone else.

But even these studies are missing pertinent data, says Michael Hammer of the University of Arizona in Tucson. In March, Hammer and colleagues reported in the American Journal of Human Genetics the discovery of a rare Y chromosome in an African-American and other Y chromosomes from the same lineage in 11 men in western Cameroon. Hammer’s team traced the most recent common ancestor of the Y chromosome back 338,000 years.

In this scenario, the Y chromosome ancestor is much older than the mitochondrial DNA ancestor — and even predates the earliest known fossils of Homo sapiens by more than 100,000 years. The great antiquity may imply that H. sapiens is older than the fossil evidence currently suggests or that early humans mated with a closely related hominid species that contributed to the Y chromosome gene pool.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/y-chromosome-analysis-moves-adam-closer-eve

Now what do you recon is the human population at the moment? I stopped counting at 6 billion. And what do you recon is the number of people genetically tested so far? I would recon not more than 10 million. What do you think is the chance that they will discover another even older Y chromosome? I say huge. What about extinct human groups and tribes, whose dna we will never know? Do you believe that there is no chance that humans could be even older than 338,000 years? I believe that humans are a lot older than that, and that there could have been many migration before the "out of Africa" one 100,000 years ago. Even if we say that 338,000 years is the oldest ancestor we will ever find, that leaves 338,000 years for that ancestor to wander out of Africa or what ever place he peeped out of first, and get to Andaman. Do you have sea level data for before 150,000 years ago?

We have data for ice ages:





http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html

And sea levels:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level

Going back hundreds of thousands of years.

You can see how sea level went up and down many times within last 350,000 years, giving people many chances to cross to today's islands over today's shallow seas, and which were at the times of glacial maximums just plains, or land bridges...

So wibbs, when you say:

There are quite the few examples of archaic peoples getting to places that required a trip across open water before 10,000 bc. They got there somehow.

You are ignoring all this and sticking to your "the only way they could have gotten there is by boat" theory. They did't have to have boats, they could have walked.

I do have to say that i have made an error, dating the earliest hafted axe to about 10,000 bc. It is quite possible that people had them earlier, but not earlier than 30,000 years. These are oldest known polished stone tools or axes. Hinatabayashi B site, Shinanomachi, Nagano. Pre-Jōmon (Paleolithic) period, 30,000 BC. Tokyo National Museum.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Paleolithic

As you can see they are possibly axe heads, but this is not sure, as there is no evidence of them being hafted.

Then we have stone axes found in Siberia, dated to 20,000 bp

In Siberia the oldest ground axes date to 20,000 bp
in the valley of Yenisei (Oda & Keally 1973, 19, cited
by Anderson & Summerhayes 2008, 49).

The first ground-edge axes are found at the
beginning of the Mesolithic in Ireland, such as at
Lough Boora (Co. Offaly), in habitation levels dated
to 7160–6260 bc.

http://connectingcountry.arts.monash.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Geneste-et-al-20122.pdf

So theoretically people could have been able to make a sea going vessel after 30,000 bp. But not earlier. In Europe, polished stone axes appear much later, and you can't chop wood without polished stone axes. If you can't chop wood, you can't make canoes or rafts. No rafts or boats, no people in Ireland without land bridge...Unless you steal the logs from a beaver, which possible and it probably did happen before people learned how to chop trees themselves.

In the sense of a set of mutations over time that led to a subspecies of archaic hominid, not a pathological mutation like you suggested.

What is a pathological mutation? Laron dwarf are immune to most modern diseases that we are all dying from. I wouldn't call that pathological mutation, if they end up surviving all of us "normal" humans. It is all about adaptation and survival. Life experience creates epigenetic changes, which cause genetic changes....

Slowburner, i am glad you are finding this interesting.

Post deleted.
Reason: ignored moderator instruction.

Call down for coffee some day

http://www.waterfordcoco.ie/en/services/conservationandheritage/archaeology/firstirishpeopleindungarvanvalley/

I linked to a pdf on the caves before, could find the link again if anyone interested, can't remember what thread it was. I think a good few locations have not been explored due to instability or collapse, or of how awkward they are to get to.
Pity Shandon cave was totally destroyed, it was easily accessible.

Also, I found some a sea shell fossil and one of these fossils of the little spirally really geometric things up at the start of the Knockmealdowns. (a bit like the big "wormy type" one center and center left) http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/Haeckel_Tetracoralla.jpg

There, to be precise. (don't know how to put a marker in Google maps)
https://maps.google.ie/maps?hl=en&ll=52.24884,-7.792756&spn=0.000913,0.002642&t=h&z=19

I remember reading too in "Reading the Irish Landscape" that indeed, the top of the Knockmealdowns for example, could have been relatively spared by the ice sheets.
Sort of makes sense when you look at the topography of the area. I guess everything would have been diverted down the valley to the East, especially since I seem to remember that even river wise, the course of the Suir was not what it is today and might have flown down this way ? (think I read that on an information sign near Cappoquinn by the Blackwater.)
I don't understand timelines very well, so maybe the rivers info is irrelevant because posterior...

it's eerie finding sea shell fossils on the mountains... I love it

it's fascinating to think there could be remnants from paleolithic visitors under the sea, but a bit depressing too, how far exactly would they have been dragged away ?

I think I remember again from R the IL that the migrating ice sheets, under the pressure from the Eastern/Irish Sea ones, were pushed South-Westwards... so Sunny South East paleo people's stuff could well be in Cork/Kerry as has been suggested. With all the fishing you'd think something might have come up.