Check out the crystal tools ancient Americans used to kill their dinner

[n2doc]

By Marissa Fessenden

Paleo diet adherents can add another food item to their menu: a four-tusked, elephant-like animal that roamed the Americas during the Miocene and Pliocene.

Scientists has discovered the bones of just such a creature in Mexico along with evidence that they were nommed by early Native Americans.

The trunked animals are now extinct, so you can’t really eat them, but eating a truly Paleo diet was always a questionable proposition. The findings do, however, have some neat implications for how humans first came to the Western Hemisphere.

The tusked giants were called gomphotheres. Scientists didn’t realize that humans preyed on gomphotheres because they never found any evidence for that—gomphotheres are rare in the fossil record. The new discovery, dug up in the Sonoran Desert at a site called El Fin del Mundo, shows that humans and gomphotheres did clash, to the detriment of the latter. Two sets of gomphothere bones were found with 27 stone and bone tools used by the so-called Clovis people, the earliest well-characterized group of humans in the Americas.

To add to the already cool finding, one of the artifacts was a clear quartz crystal point, embedded just one meter away from a gomphothere. These early Native Americans hunted in style. The findings were published July 14 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.



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http://www.dailydot.com/geek/ancient-americans-hunted-crystal-tools/

[Fred Sanders]

1. Crystal spears, there is something new under the sun. Why do cons hate science, rejecting science

is a rejection of wonder?

[bluedigger]

2. It's a beautiful point.

I found a small crystal quartz Levanna point on a survey west of Philadelphia myself about 20 years ago. Wasn't even looking for anything and just saw it at my feet as I crossed a meadow to meet up with some coworkers, just lying on the surface. It happens some times. Difficult material to work, but probably irresistible to early flint knappers.

[Warpy]

3. I was given an onyx arrow tip when I first came out here

that was probably used to hunt prairie dogs, jackrabbits, or other small stuff in the desert. In its way, it's just as beautiful as the quartz point, but much easier to make, I'm sure.

I have to think the hunter was pissed off to have lost such a beautiful thing in game that refused to drop.

[eppur_se_muova]

4. "El Fin del Mundo" -- The End of the Earth ...

There's not a huge crater there, is there ?

[Sheepshank]

5. ERRRRRRR I'm sure there will be a show linking it to Ancient Aliens

getting pretty sick of all that linkage of aliens to actual really cool stuff.

[Jackpine Radical]

12. I always think of what Carl Sagan said about Erich von Daniken:

(from memory "Von Daniken attributes everything he doesn't understand to Ancient Astronauts. Unfortunately, there is a great deal that von Daniken doesn't understand."

[blackspade]

6. That is a beautiful point.

In the 25 years I've been an archaeologist I have never seen anything like this.

Spectacular.

[A Round Tuit]

7. Beautiful.

I've often wondered just how these points (other than linking to the location) can be "aged".

I know a man that can knap these things in literally seconds and you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between his and an ancient one.

His best are made with modern tools, but he can do it with bone, wood and other stone implements.

He taught me the basic methods of knapping, but it takes talent and much experience to make a functional knife or arrow head.

[Jackpine Radical]

13. I think they're mostly aged by attributes and context.

Clovis points, for example, have a distinctive fluted shape, etc. & are generally found all over our continent in association with carbon that dates to 12-15000 years ago, with game fossils of that rough era, etc.

[DhhD]

8. Paleo Period Points of the Carolina-Piedmont. Some clear crystals.

http://www.arrowheads.com/index.php/flint-artifact-collections/432-paleo-period-points-of-the-carolina-piedmont

[DhhD]

9. Cumberland Gap Quartz Arrowhead Finds From the Clovis Culture.

http://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search;_ylt=A0LEVizHFM9TqiUA_4UPxQt.;_ylu=X3oDMTBsa3ZzMnBvBHNlYwNzYwRjb2xvA2JmMQR2dGlkAw--?_adv_prop=image&fr=yhs-aztec-default&va=Cumberland+Gap+Crystal+Arrowheads&hspart=aztec&hsimp=yhs-default

[csziggy]

10. One of my classmates practiced making points from coke bottles

He'd use the bottoms since they were thicker and made some really nice points. He also made some green ones from 7-Up bottles. Good flint and chert are hard to find in Florida so he improvised in the Applied Anthropology class.

[packman]

11. Those ancient hunters

liked their bling. Only the rif-raf used flint the cool guys used the crystal stuff made by a guy called Walter.