India: Stone Axes Over a Million Years Old Found

[dipsydoodle]

Source: La Prense Latina News

Washington, Mar 26 (PL) Stone instruments of an antiquity ranging between one million and 1.7 million years were discovered in India, which might help to explain the migration of the hominids in south of Asia.

According to Science magazine, among the pieces found in a deposit of Attiramapakkam, in the state of Tamil Nadu, in the Indian southeast, double-edged stone axes were found, as well as cutters and other instruments of the so-called Achelense technology.

The Achelense technology is characterized by the planned and standardized manufacture of stones axes. Its distinctive elements are the bifaces (stone axes, picks and cleavers) carved in complex forms on both faces.

In Attiramapakkam, they located more than 3,500 instruments of rocks of quartzite in hand axes that began to be made some 1.6 million years ago, which can help to understand the migrations of hominids across Asia.

Read more: http://www.plenglish.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=275216&Itemid=1

[leapinggnome]

1. It was Satan

You know as well as I do that Satan placed them there to test our faith in God. After all, the world is only 4000 years old. It's the only explanation. Snark, just in case someone thinks I'm really a creationist....MUAHAHAHAHAHA)

[sarcasmo]

25. +1, you beat me to the punch.

[MrMickeysMom]

34. I beg to differ....

According to Michelle Bachman worshipers, it's 6,000 years old!



And, for your information it was their God (You know... the one who's better than anyone else's) who is testing us!

[Enthusiast]

36. Just look at that fucking hair do.

WTF? Loony toons.

[AlbertCat]

42. Just look at that fucking hair do.

Hair is a changing fashion... tho'... YIKES!

Look at the glazed eyes! They're permanent.


And it should read "Get Caught Lying!"

[MrMickeysMom]

48. "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful..."

:rofl:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hz8ul-gmLyA

[AsahinaKimi]

73. I have SEEN that SMILE before.... where?? hmmm

oh, yeah! Now I remember...

[Major Hogwash]

100. Hahahaha!!!! Too dog goned funny.

I didn't even know she knew how to read after hearing her version of history recently.

[TheDebbieDee]

35. I came in here to say, "This is just another example of God

saying, 'Psych to all you losers that don't believe in me. You should all know by now that the earth is only 6,000 years old.'"

BTW, I'm snarking, too.

[MH1]

46. +1, that was my first thought too

what a sad country we live in, huh? when the first thing that comes to mind is how the pro-stupidity cult will twist something like this.

[Kurmudgeon]

90. How do you measure the time before the sun and earth are created?

Our present time system is based on the revolutions of the earth around the sun.
You read the account in The Bible, do you think you can actually pinpoint a time when to start counting the 4000 years or whatever arbitrary length of time you care to choose? Would that be before or after the Sun was created?

I could have a nice laugh at your utter lack of curiousness before you decided to criticize, but it's so common, it's just not that funny any more.
By the way, all Satan accomplished was lying to a woman and getting tossed out on his ass, so much for your hero.

[mtnester]

92. Oh dear

[Maine-ah]

93. ,

:popcorn:

[Kablooie]

2. I wonder if they ever check for traces of dna on ancient hand tools?

[secondwind]

3. wouldn't that be an interesting idea. I think it is too prohibitive, though.

[bluedigger]

18. I have never heard of DNA testing on stone tools.

But they can sometimes test for blood protein residue. This can sometimes identify animal species the tool was used on. I know of one project that then determined that the site was used seasonally because the fish species identified were only locally available at certain times. Archaeologists have a lot of tools in their kit but each is only appropriate under the right circumstances. No organic residues are going to survive the timescale advocated for these artifacts; testing for human (hominid) DNA would only confirm that hominids produced them, which they already know, and there isn't any pre homo sapiens DNA that even exists to compare to, as far as I am aware.

[Teaser]

44. long since digested.

you'd have better luck finding some bones and working with them.

[LibertyLover]

58. I don't think you can do so on tools this old, however

I believe that tools from the neolithic and mesolithic have been tested for blood and some has actually been found.

[Botany]

4. So was this Homo erectus or Homo ergaster?

Homo ergaster




Homo erectus

[dipsydoodle]

8. Well if had been Lisa they found in Africa instead of Lucy

then I suppose it could be Homo Simpson.

[hwmnbn]

41. LOL... nice one

[westerebus]

11. Care free and single party-gaster.

Compared to the happily married erectus.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

[onecent]

14. Lol...you made me laugh Westerebus....

[westerebus]

28. It was just too good to pass up...glad you enjoyed

[66 dmhlt]

27. Remember William Kostric, that gun-toting Teabagger who ...

Thought it was time to "Water the tree of liberty" by packing heat to a Pres. Obama rally?



There does seem to be a resemblance, doesn't there?

[AlbertCat]

43. There does seem to be a resemblance, doesn't there?

One looks pensive.... thinking...

And one looks clueless.

[gtar100]

87. I think I'd trust the guy on the right before the other guy.

[freshwest]

89. Wow, they still walk among us. Gotta love 'em.

[W T F]

30. Looks more like Homo teabaggus.

[postulater]

47. How't they get photos 1.7 million years ago?

I think those photos are fake.

[Botany]

60. they used the old film cameras not the digital ones

[ooglymoogly]

50. Hair plugs on ergaster

this is really earth shattering....who knew?

[bertman]

57. Looks to me like Ergaster was the homo who discovered The Weed.

[Bandit]

97. Those are the guys that built the pyramids or at least were the teachers

and passed on the knowledge of exactly how to do it...:shrug:

[semillama]

98. er, what?

The first pyramids were the Mesopotamian ziggurats, built ca. 4000 BC. H. ergaster died out 1.7 million years ago. H. erectus may have survived in refuges in SE Asia up to around 50,000 years ago. You think there's a connection there? or am I missing a joke somewhere?

:shrug:

[Change Happens]

5. Do I understand this correctly? This article is saying

Someone made an axe out of a stone some 1.5 million years ago? Would this be a human? or some other type thing which had that much intelligence?

[hobbit709]

7. Genus homo, which species not sure, definitely not sapiens-too early.

[KurtNYC]

9. that stuck out for me also, had to check

the period for this type of stone tool is 1.6mil to 100,000 years ago. They are putting this find on the earliest end of that range.

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&u=http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achelense&ei=ezGPTeePJYacgQfL8ZiwDQ&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCMQ7gEwAA&prev=/search%3Fq%3DAchelense%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26prmd%3Divnsb

A fair number of animals make and use tools but the manual skills needed to bang one rock with another would indicate a species with opposable digits.

[Richard D]

29. There's a lot of skill . . .

. . . that goes into making stone tools. Much more than just banging two stones together.

[greiner3]

12. In a million years;

This axe could be a representative object dividing the hominid and a Tea Bagger. In the case of the Tea Bagger, it would be the loss of ability to make the object and not the leap forward evolution usually teaches us.

[LiberalEsto]

13. Teabaggers have opposable tongues

and very, very tiny brain cavities.

[ooglymoogly]

51. +1

[cui bono]

86. And opposable beliefs/opinions! n/t

[TheEuclideanOne]

15. Actually I think that the Tea Bagger started back then and has been moving backwards

ever since.

A different, unrelated theor is that since these tools were found in India, that they were the very first tools used for technical support.

[Beartracks]

53. Love how he's got games on the screen...

... unless the manager is standing there.

ROFL -- too funny!! Thanks for sharing.

---------------------

[SteppingRazor]

17. It wouldn't be human, as in homo sapiens, but the date isn't really unusual.

The earliest stone tools we've found date to about 2.5 million years ago. And keep in mind that's just the earliest we've found; there could easily be earlier still waiting to be discovered. These tools, however, were definitely not made by homo sapiens, but instead by h. ergaster, erectus or, in the case of those earliest stone tools, even a subspecies of Australopithecus, A. Garhi being the most likely candidate.

[InvisibleTouch]

23. Did Australopithecus make it out of Africa?

My understanding was that it's a strictly African genus, but I'm not that up on the hominid family tree.

Either way, ancient finds like this are always exceptionally cool.

[SteppingRazor]

40. No. They came up somewhere in Eastern Africa, spread throughout the continent, and died out.

4M to 2M years ago. It took Homos big brains to get out of Africa and also to perfect stone tools. Of course, they didn't have anything but stone tools for the next couple million years, so it's not exactly like they were a bunch of Einsteins.

The tools in question being in India and a million years old are probably H. erectus. Like the earlier Australopithecus, H. ergaster never made it out of Africa as far as I know.

And speaking of as far as I know, that's about as much as I know on the subject. :)

[aquart]

45. "As far as you know" is what's known so far.

They keep digging up stuff that changes everything. We have theories based on the evidence before us, that's all. We have so very little evidence.

[Taverner]

56. We actually have quite a bit of evidence

Check out Dawkins' "The Greatest Show on Earth"

We have a lot of evidence backing up evolution, and specifically the evolution of man.

[InvisibleTouch]

59. Lots of evidence for evolution, as you say...

...but human and hominid fossils actually are pretty few and far between. That's a function of the environment in which early hominids lived - dry open grasslands, which don't preserve fossils as well as some other conditions. What that means is that every time a new discovery is made, the whole family tree gets re-shuffled. It's hard to tell sometimes if an individual (or fragments thereof) represents a new species, or just variation within a species. But it's always a fascinating subject.

[aquart]

67. Yeah, we got a lot to make up the broad outlines.

Which, you may notice, we keep changing.

I had no idea this was a discussion on whether there was enough proof of the evolution of man, however.

What we lack is detail and anything more certain than today's best guess. Although nailing the genome was the BEST thing EVER. And we are finding out more about our genetic history every second. But we were shocked a few years ago to find out the Venus of Willendorf showed evidence of weaving. We keep pushing back dates of when Man knew what, but it's really slow going.

War in the cradles of mankind does not help.

[Kevin Cloyd]

82. Stone tools are all that remain

They no doubt used lots of other materials that did not survive.

[Turbineguy]

72. Yeah

Some guy made a stone axe, then fashioned a flying saucer with it and left for parts unknown.

[harmonicon]

74. probably homo erectus

They lived from about two million to two hundred thousand years ago, and were the first species that would be really recognizable to us today as being anything like humans; smaller brains, bigger frames, but basically human. Some hung on in south east asia until about 80,000 years ago, and based on where fossils have been found, it's likely they were also the first of our ancestors to use boats. As for stone tools, this is by no means the oldest; the ancestors of homo erectus were making them millions of years earlier, but this is interesting for the time and place the tools were found.

[undeterred]

6. The first off-shoring.

[liberal N proud]

10. That's not possible

extreme :sarcasm:

[trusty elf]

16. ......

[Jackpine Radical]

22. Who the hell are they,

the Glenn Beck Fan Club?

[RKP5637]

24. Glenn Beck U Graduation Ceremony! Recognize the top left guy? n/t

[Jackpine Radical]

32. *blush* I missed that.

There are maybe a couple others in that crowd that I should recognize.

Here's one I'm pretty sure isn't the same species, since he's never made a tool and is only known to break things that others have made:

[Submariner]

38. Ditto-headimus erectus

The gene pool that originated on the slime that grows between a clump of whale poop and the seabed off Jersey Shore.

[ooglymoogly]

55. Top left is misplaced....should have been Ardipithecus ramidus and placed to botom far right

commonly called earliest bushman or Fukupus stupidicus.
Most identifiable trait: Walks backward.

[tabasco]

66. Fuckinay funny!!

[Lost Jaguar]

94. Obviously prior to...

...the invention of the Wonder Bra.

[TheCowsCameHome]

19. John McCain cut wood there as a boy.

Well, it's possible......:shrug:

[Hardrada]

84. Yes, the real Not-So-Missing Link!

[RedCloud]

20. Direct ancestors of modern tea baggers found!

[LiberalEsto]

26. Do you mean the hominids or the tools

They're still tools, FWIW

[Poll_Blind]

21. We go back that far, and weren't even too freaky-looking either.

Take that number and cut it in half, so 750,000 or so years ago. Whatever kind of humans they were were already building basic settlements and separating rooms by function.

That's one thousand years- and if we're lucky we get 60-90 before we die. Times 750. Ago.

LOL, that's just crazy. I love it.

PB

[bemildred]

31. Very cool, that is really old.

Probably means they were talking and hanging out in larger groups already too.

[Jackpine Radical]

33. Indeed they seem to have been.

Their tools were almost standardized, etc. Google Homo ergaster to learn some amazing stuff.

I've always loved paleo-anthropology, and so much has been discovered in the years since I took physical anthro in 1962!

[ruggerson]

37. My preacher just told me this occurred on the fourth day

I believe my preacher over the fuzzy math of secular humanists with an AGENDA.

[Zorra]

39. More lies from pro-evolution hippies that hate us for our freedom. nt

[RBInMaine]

49. Uh uh. Can't be true. Couldn't have been more than 6000 years ago. Palin and the Bible said so.

[Taverner]

52. So does this mean that Homo Sapiens is in fact, over 1 million years old?

And not 200K years old as previously thought?

Or were these the tools of one of our ancestors (Eregaster, etc)

[harmonicon]

75. ancestors (nt)

[Corruption Winz]

54. I don't remember this is the Bible at all. n/t

[pam4water]

61. 1.7 million year that is way too early. Even if it's an axe it not from an "ancestor".

There are a lot of dead branches in the evolutionary tree, but I still think that is too long ago. Homo sapiens start between 200,000 and 70,000 years ago. There was program on PBS that tracked the migration of humans out of Africa by looking at the progressive mutations in the genes. They track everyone back to Africa between 45,000 and 30,000 years ago.

Sounds more like that sight in China they thought was human habitation, but turn out to be a bend in a river that deposited animal bones after a forest fire. Stones break it doesn't have to be by a hand with opposable thumbs.

[DRoseDARs]

65. Well, seeing as predecessor species had stone tool making at least 2.6mya before Homo sapiens...

...you might want to at least double-check Wikipedia. Hell, even today there are non-homonid species that engage in simplistic tool-making and use, though obviously not to the level of sophistication of crafted stone tools like those of our ancient ancestors or their predecessors. Anatomically modern Humans aren't the only smartypants on the planet. ;)

[harmonicon]

76. check your science.

Sure, probably not direct ancestors, as this was in India, but definitely by a hominid which is an ancestor to modern humans; homo erectus. This isn't speculation or up to debate. What is up for debate, and part of why this is interesting, is how quickly these ancestral human populations spread, and what sort of contact they had once dispersed. For instance, the recent finding that many non-africans posses some Neandertal DNA illustrates how fluid the lines between these different "species" may have been.

[On the Road]

62. This is Big

That is a very long time ago. We know about hominids that lived long before then, of course, but stone tools are a different matter.

[DRoseDARs]

64. Yes and no-ish: We have ev. of stone tls in Afr. going back 2.6mil years, this just helps paint a...

...better picture of how the craft of tool-making of this order (there are several non-homonid species that engage in tool-making and use at simpler levels) slowly spread with our predecessors into Eurasia from Africa. By about 1.8mya it had reached Java (Indonesia) and 1.6mya it had reached into North China. This latest discovery in India looks to be right in the correct timeframe in relation to other sites...

...just as Satan planned it. ;)

[On the Road]

68. OK. So Australopithecus Had Stone Tools?

I haven't kept up with this stuff the last thirty years. But the India find is solidly in Homo Erectus territory, no?

[harmonicon]

77. yep - erectus all the way. nt.

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

63. They thought like us, loved their children like us and

looked up into the same night sky with the same wonderment as us.

[AngryAmish]

96. I would not think so

Now we don't have any homo erectus to ask but they were a different species. What other animal around now looks at the sky in wonderment? Orangutans?

The human emotions are still human emotions.

(But yeah, most animals that have slow developing young are rather attached to them)

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

101. Not that different a species judging by their tool making alone.

but they used fire, hunted in groups, planned ahead and yes, most likely thought like humans. What is so surprising about that.

[TrogL]

102. My dog looks at the sky in wonderment

He is NOT impressed by the Northern Lights and starts howling.

[Major Hogwash]

69. So what. They have a talking fossil in the Senate called John McCain.

And no one gets excited over that.

[bjobotts]

70. Yeah, John McCain. An evolutionary dead end."We are all hominids now"

[Turbineguy]

71. Some sort of new iteration

of the Nigerian Scam, I venture.

[Oldtimeralso]

78. These Tools Must Be Inspected.

If they have Craftsmen on them they can be taken to Sears and traded for new ones!

[DeadEyeDyck]

79. I am mostly a lurket here so I am not a name that most will

reconize. My few comments are usually ignored, which I take as racist since I am a well educated bi-racial male. I also believe my uncle knows Dave Skinner in person. Having said that, I do not see a contradiction between old earth and Christianity.

I believe in a God and accept that the Earth has been around for billions of years. Why are you so intolerant of other beliefs? It is not either or. I accept the existence of dinosaurs and do not follow biblical time. Have you not seen Inception? Paul talked about the 7 levels of Heaven.

Simple Darwinism falls apart five minutes into an intelligent discussion. I know, discussion is what I do. The educated leave religion. The wise return to it with a fervor.

[Arugula Latte]

83. "Simple Darwinism falls apart five minutes into an intelligent discussion."

Uh, yeah, no it doesn't. Darwinism is a major foundation of biology. Darwinism holds up.

Religion -- now that silly mythology falls apart.

[harmonicon]

91. +1 (nt)

[Codeine]

95. You need to have better discussions. nt

[TroglodyteScholar]

103. You think it's racist for people to ignore you when you say silly things? n/t

[jtuck004]

80. Some things never change. Leave your tools out, they are gonna walk off. eom

[and-justice-for-all]

81. But the world is only 6000 years old!

:sacasm:

there were several migrations by many species from Africa

[obxhead]

85. I wonder what they called their magic space man.... nt

[freshwest]

88. But, but, they don't look old. They look so nice and clean. Duh...

No matter what, no worries, I needed a laugh or two tonight.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

99. That's Satan fucking

with us again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRx7fU2Y0UA




.

[DearAbby]

104. It's God's sense of humor

likes fecking with your brains.