Looks like we were moving out Africa earlier..

Wibbs

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11327442 seems while the DNA evidence says later, the stone tools put us leaving Africa 10's of 1000's of years earlier.

Yitzhak Rabin

How do paleontologists distinguish between the stone tools of Sapiens vs Erectus or Neanderthal?

Is there something distinctive in the way they are made?

Also, has any reason been given as to why there is the discrepancy between the age indicated by the DNA studies, versus the tools?

Is it because, the current population are descended from a later migration, with the earlier migrations dieing off or being replaced by the later ones? Or is it just that the 'genetic mutation clocks' just aren't nearly as accurate as we thought?

Giuseppe55

I suppose there may have been continuous migration of hominins out of Africa for 100,000's of years.

Wibbs

yekahs wrote: »

How do paleontologists distinguish between the stone tools of Sapiens vs Erectus or Neanderthal?

Is there something distinctive in the way they are made?

Yea there are tell tale signs. Moderns used different techniques and generally had more of a wide ranging toolkit. We also used pressure flaking which was an innovation. Neanderthals had cruder tools, but both of these humans were far ahead of Erectus. Erectus main tool was the handaxe. Expertly made, but that was your lot. Though in the UK in the Clactonian layer erectus didnt seem to use hand axes at all and relied more on struck flakes(though I have one that's handaxe "like").

Is it because, the current population are descended from a later migration, with the earlier migrations dieing off or being replaced by the later ones? Or is it just that the 'genetic mutation clocks' just aren't nearly as accurate as we thought?

Possibly the former, though I suspect the latter. I have great faith in genetic data where the source data is wide ranging and high in quantity. I have less personal faith where its not and I have a bit of suspicion where genetic clocks are given full credence in the absence of other evidence.

marco_polo

Interesting. It certainly lends support to the disputed datings surrounding a few sites in Australia which suggest humans may have arrived there about 60,000 years ago, rather than the more widely accepted 45,000 years.

Yitzhak Rabin

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11408298

BBC wrote:

Neanderthals were keen on innovation and technology and developed tools all on their own, scientists say.

A new study challenges the view that our close relatives could advance only through contact with Homo sapiens.

The team says climate change was partly responsible for forcing Neanderthals to innovate in order to survive.

The research is set to appear in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory in December.

"Basically, I am rehabilitating Neanderthals," said Julien Riel-Salvatore, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Colorado in Denver, who led the seven-year study.

"They were far more resourceful than we have given them credit for."

Sort of related. Its a new study which found that a group of Neanderthals in southern Italy were able to develop sophisticated tools and ornaments including projectile points, ochre, bone tools, ornaments and possible evidence of fishing and small game hunting.

So it goes back to the questions I was asking about how they can tell the difference between Neanderthal tools and human tools, when both could produce fairly high levels of technology.

Wibbs

yekahs wrote: »

So it goes back to the questions I was asking about how they can tell the difference between Neanderthal tools and human tools, when both could produce fairly high levels of technology.

Methods used mostly. We used pressure flaking as well as struck flaking. We also used more of a piece of stone, where we would stroke off blade flakes from a core. We had a slightly larger toolkit too. EG needles. None have been found in Neanderthal sites. Not yet anyway.

Then again I have some problems with this too. They may have used needles etc but because some of these finds aren't in known Neanderthal sites they may be ascribed to sapiens. This seems to be the case with jewelry until recently. It had been assumed that they had jewelry, but only after contact and copying us. A chap in Spain spotted some of this jewelry and found after dating that it was well before we showed up in Europe. He also found ground pigments. They even found a lump of very concentrated pigment that looks like it got that way because it was held in a leather pouch that rotted away in the intervening years. The finds even included mica ground down to add sparkle to the main pigment just like what's fashionable now with the ladies. They sound very colourful people and even a bit bling Way more than we would have thought. Indeed the same researcher posits that its possible we learned this stuff from them. Or at least previous instances by our species died out, but bumping into our heavy browed cousins re ignited this in us and it stuck that time.

That's the problem with innovations in small populations who aren't literate. One genius comes along and he or she innovates, but because of a small population the meme doesnt propagate and is more vulnerable to dying out. Increase the population and add in cross fertlisation with another human and it's much more robust(and an element of competition comes in too). Maybe this is why we see small examples of cultural innovation in Africa as far back as 90,000 years ago, but they're followed by 10's of 1000's of years of apparently nothing. The later crossroads of the middle east/Europe seems to kick it off because the higher population kept it going.

What is impressive about this finding is that these guys could innovate and do so quickly enough to survive and thrive in local shifts in climate and food sources.

As an aside, I read of a couple of researchers in practical archaeology who decided to try and use the Neanderthal toolkit to see how they got on. Plenty of flintnappers have done this with later sapiens tools, but few if any had tried he early stuff. It turned out that while their tools appeared more primitive, they were actually more practical and just as good as ours. They were much quicker to make and didnt require as precise a choice of stone type either, so were more flexible.

marco_polo

Thiught this was best placed in here.

Scientists have discoved hominid fossil remains in the Zhiren Cave in south China that are at least 100,000 years old and appear to show a mixture of modern and archaic features. Should the discovery hold up it would moves the earliest known date for moderns in the region by about 60,000 years.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101025172924.htm

More details and a few images on Nat Geo.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/10/101025-oldest-human-fossil-china-out-of-africa-science/

steddyeddy

Thanks for this wibbs I love stff like this, In my view the average person has a completly wrong view of the history of our species. Im glad they found something like this. In my view humans, hominids or whatever probaly walked out of africa from the birth of bipedalisim!

I get annoyed when people see the acceptable arrival of humans in ireland as 10,000 years, I cant be sure of the exact date but I sure as hell dont think its ten thousand years considering remote islands in indonesia ect were occupied at least a hundred thousand years earlier!

Wibbs

marco_polo wrote: »

Thiught this was best placed in here.

Scientists have discoved hominid fossil remains in the Zhiren Cave in south China that are at least 100,000 years old and appear to show a mixture of modern and archaic features. Should the discovery hold up it would moves the earliest known date for moderns in the region by about 60,000 years.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101025172924.htm

More details and a few images on Nat Geo.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/10/101025-oldest-human-fossil-china-out-of-africa-science/

Ho ho. Pigeons insert cat. Watch previous scientific naysayers back pedal like crazy. So hard not to email a couple of experts in this field and say "I told you so" with a side order of Naw naw na naw na

Funny I was reading the article on Ozzy Osbourne's DNA map in the sunday times yesterday and dropped into the middle of it was an aside about how he has some Neanderthal DNA. Yet a year ago I suggested the possibility on another forum and pretty much everyone poo pooed the notion.

It also throws more doubt on the over reliance(IMHO) of genetic "clocks". Well either that or the other almost unthinkable idea to out of Africa people, that parallel evolution of erectus was happening in Asia. They're not modern Africans who moved earlier than was thought at all, but locally evolved Erectus. TBH I favour the latter(of course ). It would explain a helluva lot of things we find in the stones and bones. The biggest is cultural. Their tool set. The thing is the genetic clocks do agree with the time lines for the new modern tool set and sophistication showing up in Asia. Which makes sense as the evolved north east African erectus spread out as genetics seem to show. It makes no sense to believe the same Africans with their new toolset made it all the way to Asia 100,000 years ago, but forgot that tool set along the way? So yep I don't think them moderns, but the Asian version of Neanderthals with a more limited erectus toolset. Well a toolset that had worked very well thank you for millions of years in the area. Indeed up to 12000 years ago in the case of Flores. More extreme climate pressures may have driven the European erectus to more innovation. Ditto for the African erectus with all the climate upheavals in the rift valley etc. Asia in the same period was more stable. It was also bigger with less barriers on land so even when ice came in the north it was easier to move south away from it. In Europe and Africa that was a lot less easy, so maybe that's why?

steddyeddy wrote: »

Thanks for this wibbs I love stff like this, In my view the average person has a completly wrong view of the history of our species. Im glad they found something like this. In my view humans, hominids or whatever probaly walked out of africa from the birth of bipedalisim!

I get annoyed when people see the acceptable arrival of humans in ireland as 10,000 years, I cant be sure of the exact date but I sure as hell dont think its ten thousand years considering remote islands in indonesia ect were occupied at least a hundred thousand years earlier!

I would agree. Erectus got as far as Java and Flores 2 million years ago and were in southern Britain at least 600,000 years ago. Of course they were here. I'd bet the farm on that. Problem is the lack of evidence and worse the lack of strata evidence could be found in. The ice sheets scraped it all away down to the bedrock pretty much. If you look at the geology of southern Britain, they're lucky as that area remained ice free so they have a much greater range of strata from the period. Though in our national museum there is a Neanderthal tool. It's explained away as an erratic brought by the ice. Why? I have no idea. Maybe its the wrong rock type? It's just as likely to be more local, but again that's another "oh noes, it has to be that, sure we never had humans here before the last ice ages"..

darjeeling

Another new paper on anatomically modern humans in Arabia around 125kya came out in Science a couple of weeks ago. It's based on excavations in the United Arab Emirates that found tools similar to those seen in East Africa around the same time period. Dating using optical luminescence on the surrounding sand grains gave dates from 95kya to 127kya. The dates fit with the 2nd last ice age, which would have locked up water, lowering sea levels in the Red Sea allowing humans to cross more easily. The Arabian climate is thought to have been much wetter then, too, so well able to support a population of humans.

Science Daily's report is here. Original (pay-per-view) article is here.