Research that could set humanity back 20,000 years

[dipsydoodle]

Research that could set humanity back 20,000 years: Ornaments and tools show that Modern Man emerged 44,000 years ago (much earlier than we thought)

Human behaviour, as we know it, emerged 44,000 years ago - much earlier than previously thought, according to a new study.

An international team of scientists have substantially increased the age at which we can trace the emergence of modern culture, thanks to research into hunter-gatherers in South Africa.

A key question in human evolution is when in prehistory human cultures similar to ours emerged.

Until now, most archaeologists believed that the oldest traces of the San people - a hunter-gatherer culture in southern Africa - dates back 10,000, or at most 20,000 years.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2181138/Research-set-humanity-20-000-years-Ornaments-tools-Modern-Man-emerged-44-000-years-ago-earlier-thought.html#ixzz229FKyKuq

[applegrove]

1. Here is a san man. I like to look at him because you can see all of us in him.

Last edited Tue Jul 31, 2012, 02:43 AM - Edit history (1)

[IMG][/IMG]

[DCKit]

4. I noticed that too when I saw that documentary - every racial feature of everyone is there.

They're also more genetically diverse than any other human group. Amazing.

[Snarkoleptic]

2. "Human behaviour, as we know it, emerged 44,000 years ago"

In related news, teabaggers approx. 44,000 years behind the curve.

[Odin2005]

3. The Daily Hate Mail sucks at science reporting.

The oldest evidence of "modern" behavior goes back 120,000 years ago, but it seems to flicker on and off until about 60,000 years ago. The reason is probably that the archeological evidence for "modern" behavior only shows up in societies of at least a tribal level of social organization, it does not show up in band-level societies.

[dipsydoodle]

5. This better for you then ?

Early evidence of San material culture represented by organic artifacts from Border Cave, South Africa

Recent archaeological discoveries have revealed that pigment use, beads, engravings, and sophisticated stone and bone tools were already present in southern Africa 75,000 y ago. Many of these artifacts disappeared by 60,000 y ago, suggesting that modern behavior appeared in the past and was subsequently lost before becoming firmly established. Most archaeologists think that San hunter–gatherer cultural adaptation emerged 20,000 y ago. However, reanalysis of organic artifacts from Border Cave, South Africa, shows that the Early Later Stone Age inhabitants of this cave used notched bones for notational purposes, wooden digging sticks, bone awls, and bone points similar to those used by San as arrowheads. A point is decorated with a spiral groove filled with red ochre, which closely parallels similar marks that San make to identify their arrowheads when hunting. A mixture of beeswax, Euphorbia resin, and possibly egg, wrapped in vegetal fibers, dated to ?40,000 BP, may have been used for hafting. Ornaments include marine shell beads and ostrich eggshell beads, directly dated to ?42,000 BP. A digging stick, dated to ?39,000 BP, is made of Flueggea virosa. A wooden poison applicator, dated to ?24,000 BP, retains residues with ricinoleic acid, derived from poisonous castor beans. Reappraisal of radiocarbon age estimates through Bayesian modeling, and the identification of key elements of San material culture at Border Cave, places the emergence of modern hunter–gatherer adaptation, as we know it, to ?44,000 y ago.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/07/23/1204213109.abstract?sid=966d5de8-cc5f-452d-8abc-d5fd2d4ac607

The Mail had in fact done no more than reiterate that.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. It did do more than just reiterate the paper

"Modern Man emerged 44,000 years ago" would be taken by most to mean the species, not the material culture the paper is actually about.

"Human behaviour, as we know it" is another dodgy way of putting it (the article says 'modern behavior', which is better, though I'd say the archaeologists haven't worded that well) - this is about use of specific artefacts, not our 'behaviour' as a whole. We already have cave art dating back 40,000 years ago, for instance, and evidence of burial rites well before that - possibly from Neatherthals as well as modern Homo sapiens. The Mail also left out the bit about artefacts already known from 75,000 to 60,000 years ago.