**Tool-making*************************88
"The stone tools at Olduvai consist mostly of pieces of lava and quartz,
which must have been brought to the site from about three miles or more away;
they do not occur naturally at the site itself. Crude rounded pebble tools
called choppers are among the artifacts. But surprisingly advanced-looking
tools also were found. John Pfeiffer (1969:79) has noted:'...a site at the
bottom of the gorge contains eleven different kinds of stone implements, such
as engraving-gouging tools, quadrilateral 'chisels,' large and small
scrapers, and other special-purpose tools generally made of difficult-to-work
lavas and
quartz.'
"Some stone tools from the Omo River region in Ethiopia are dated at
about 2 million years; and tools found near East Lake Turkana in northern
Kenya are about 850,000 years older than the oldest tools from Olduvai. So,
the evidence for toolmaking in East Africa goes back nearly 3 million years
ago."~Victor Barnouw, An Introduction to Anthropology: Physical Anthropology
and Archaeology, Vol. 1, (Homewood, Illinois: The Dorsey Press, 1982) p. 127
**Fire:*************************************8
No animal has mastered the use of fire, yet fossil man has. The oldest
example I could find is from Europe.
" Contemporaneously with the Java and Peking representatives there were
hominids living in Europe. Remains of a pebble-tool culture in a cave on the
French Riviera, dated at about 1 million years go, were reported in April
1974 by Henry de Lumley. There was no evidence of fire in the cave.
However, the earliest evidence of fire from Europe is even older than that
from Peking, dating as far back as 750,000 years ago at the Escale Cave in
the Durance Valley, not far from Marseilles in southern France; hearths of
charcoal and ash have been found in the cave, along with the remains of
primitive wolves and saber-toothed cats. Another site of about the same age
is the Vallonet Cave in southeastern France on the Mediterranean, which
contains tools dating from between 750,000 and 1 million years ago. Two
choppers like those of Olduvai
Gorge were found, along with a few other worked stone tools and the fossil
bones of such animals as rhinoceros, elephant, horse, and whale."
~Victor Barnouw, An Introduction to Anthropology: Physical Antrhopology and
Archaeology, Vol. 1, (Homewood, Illinois: The Dorsey Press, 1982) p. 143
"These pieces of quartz must have been brought to the cave from elsewhere,
for no quartz is found within two miles of the site. Worked bits of bone and
horn were also found. Charred hearths in the cave provide the earliest
evidence in Asia of the human use of fire -- perhaps around 500,000 or more
years ago."~Victor Barnouw, An Introduction to Anthropology: Physical
Antrhopology and Archaeology, Vol. 1, (Homewood, Illinois: The Dorsey Press,
1982) p. 141
This last quote also shows that from the earliest times, these "non-human,
souless" beings were able to gather stone material from far away and bring it
back home for shaping. This is in a real sense, strip mining without the
modern tools. Also note the separation between the first and second
occurrences of fire hearths in Eurasia. They are separated by 250,000 years.
This is another point in my contention that this is the nature of any object
found in the fossil or historical record. The earliest occurences have large
chronological gaps between them with no evidence that it existed in the
interim.
**houses,***********************
"Another site dated at about 300,000 or 400,000 years ago is at Terra
Amata, part of Nice on the Riviera in France, where remains have been found
of some apparently oval-shaped dwellings about 50 feet long and 12-18 feet
wide, contianing fireplaces. Holes about 1 foot in diameter are believed to
have held upright beams. The site was near a stream running into the sea.
Remains of rhinoceros, Elephas antiquus, rabbit, deer, and wild boar have
been found."~Victor Barnouw, An Introduction to Anthropology: Physical
Antrhopology and Archaeology, Vol. 1, (Homewood, Illinois: The Dorsey Press,
1982) p. 144
and
Terra Amata 400,000 years ago
"The most interesting results of the excavation were the traces in the
sand of a series of eleven large, carefully constructed dwellings, each built
on roughly the same spot as the previous year's. They were oval in shape and
roughly measured 12 metres (40 feet) long by 6 metres (20 feet) wide. They
were constructed from walls of young branches supported in the center by a
row of sturdy posts. The people of Terra Amata placed large stones around
the base of the walls so as to add extra support against the northwest wind.
"The importance of the discovery is not so much the construction itself
but the glimpses of activity within. A hearth was built near the centre of
each hut. A scatter of stone flakes indicated the work of a tool-maker, and
an area in the middle which was clear of flakes showed the place where he
squatted as he worked. One set of eleven flakes could be reassembled to form
the original pebble: clearly the tool-maker knapped some flakes and then made
little use of the products. The hut dwellers used animal skins for comfort,
probably both for sitting on and for sleeping on. A curious depression in
the sand could have been made by a long-vanished wooden bowl. Most
intriguing of all, though, are traces of worn ochre of the sort that French
historian Francois Bordes has suggested was used for body-painting.
"Remains of red deer, elephant, an extinct species of rhinoceros,
mountain goat and wild boar reveal the hut dwellers' tast for meat. many of
the animals brought to the camp were young, indicating that they were hunted
rather than scavenged. Shells of oysters, mussels and limpets show that
these people made some use of the resources of the sea. As usual, there is
little to suggest what plant foods were collected and eaten although the
groves of bushes and trees beyond the beach must surely have provided many
items of food.
"Henri de Lumley knows that the seaside camp was occupied during late
spring from an analysis of pollen contained in the occupants' fossilized
faeces. the faeces contained the pollen of broom which flowers only in late
spring. He also knows that each year the newly built camp was inhabited for
just a short wile: a longer occupation would have compacted the sand in the
area of the hut."~Richard E. Leakey, The Making of Mankind, (New York: E. P.
Dutton, 1981) p. 124
The ochre may be one of the earliest evidences of art even if it is body art.
**Building of walls*****************************
"The Leakeys uncovered a simicircular wall at Olduvai, which may have
served as a windbreak and has been dated at around 2 million years old +/_
280,000 years --the oldest man-made structure known."~Victor Barnouw, An
Introduction to Anthropology: Physical Antrhopology and Archaeology, Vol. 1,
(Homewood, Illinois: The Dorsey Press, 1982),p. 126
and
.
"At Terra Amata, in present-day Nice, we have evidence of
seasonal habitations on coastal dunes. There are ovoid
arrangements of stones with regularly spaced post holes. Within
the shelters these represent, the floors were covered with
pebbles or animal hides (imprints are preserved). Hearths occur
in holes or on stone slabs sheltered by low stone walls. Food
residues include elephant, deer, boar, ibex, rhinoceros, small
mammals, and marine shells and fish. The industry is of Early
Acheulean type, and includes a few bone artifacts."p. 385
~Bernard Campbell, Human Evolution, (Chicago: Aldine Publishing
Co., 1974), p. 385
and
"What may well be the first discovered ruins of Middle Palaeolithic
dwellings have been found at open-air sites. At Molodova I these consist of
an oval ring of mammoth bones, some 10 metres by 7 metres in exterior
dimensions, containing extremely dense stone artifact and food-bone remains
and fifteen hearths. The mammoth bones have been interpreted as weights to
hold down a superstructure of streched skins over a light wooden framework.
More disturbed remains of what may have been a similar structure were found
nearby, at Molodova V. At Orangia, in South Africa, semi-circular rubble
walls ahve been interpreted as supports for windbreaks. Deliberate
structural modifications of cave interiors are also known in western Europe:
for example, remnants of dry-stone walls were found in Mousterian levels at
Morin and Pech de l'Aze, and the paving of living floors with rubble or
cobbles is known from several caves, including La Ferrassie and Combe Grenal.
A single posthole was also recovered at the last site. At La Baume de
Peyrards an arrangement of large blocks may represent an elongated hut, some
11.5 metres by 7 metres in size, with a series
of fireplaces along its centreline, the whole being constructed against the
face of a rockshelter. There are peculiar arrangements of debris in several
other sites, but their interpretation is usually less certain. Especially
striking is an artificial conical mound of stones battered into spherical
shapes, bone splinters and stone tools, constructed by Mousterian peoples in
an artesian spring at El Guettar, Tunisia."~Leslie Freeman, "The Development
of Human Culture," in Andrew Sherratt, editor, Cambridge Encyclopedia of
Archaeology, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 84-85
**religious beliefs*********************
"There are other implications of religious beliefs held by Neanderthals
in the collections of bear skulls found in their caves. The mere
preservation of skulls need not suggest anything religious, but in some cases
special attention was given to their placement. In one cave, five bear
skulls were found in niches in the cave wall. The skulls of several cave
bears in a group have been found surrrounded by built-up stone walls, with
some skulls having little stones planced around them, while others were set
out on slabs.
"All this suggests some kind of bear cult, like that practiced until
quite recently by the Chippewa and other North American Indians. After a
Dhippewa hunter had killed a bear, he would cut off the head, which was then
decorated with beads and ribbons (in the period after contact with
Europeans). Some tobacco was placed before its nose. The hunter would then
make a little speech, apologizing to the bear for having had to kill it.
Bear skulls were preserved and hung up on trees so that dogs and wolves
could not get at them. Bear ceremonialism of this and related kinds had a
wide circumpolar distribution--from the Great Lakes to the Ainu of northern
Japan through various Siberian tribes, such as the Ostyaks and the Orochi, to
the Finns and
Lapps of Scandinavia. So wide a distribution of this trait, associated as it
was with other apparently very early circumpolar traits, suggests great age.
It is possible, therefore, that some aspects of this bear ceremonialsim go
back to Middle Paleolithic times."~Victor Barnouw, An Introduction to
Anthropology: Physical Antrhopology and Archaeology, Vol. 1, (Homewood,
Illinois: The Dorsey Press, 1982) p. 156-157
**drawing, engraving, sculpting and art*******************
"From Neanderthal sites have come pendants made a reindeer phalanx and a fox
canine; a bovid shoulder blade coverd with fine parallel lines; and a carved
mammoth molar, dated by radiocarbon at around 50,000 B. C. The latter piece,
which is quite beautifle shows skilled workmanship. It is reproduced in
color in Marshack 1976:143. Also reproduced in coloy by Marshack is a
remarkably elegant statuette of a horse carved in mammoth ivory found at
Vogelherd in South Germany in 1931 and dated at more than 30,000 B. C>, near
the end of the Mousterian period. This work of art is 10,000 years or more
older than the cave paintings of Lascaux and Altamira."~Victor Barnouw, An
Introduction to Anthropology: Physical Antrhopology and Archaeology, Vol. 1,
(Homewood, Illinois: The Dorsey Press, 1982) p. 156
and
"From the time of the Vogelherd figures onwards, the artistic output of
our forebears in Europe and Africa was prolific. But what were its origins?
There are paintings of animals on rock slabs in a cave in southern Africa
dating from about 29,000 years ago. These have a good claim to be the
earliest form of wall art. But engraving and carving apparently have a
longer history. For instance, there is a pendant made from a reindeer's foot
bone from La Quina in France which is at least 35,000 eyars old. A fragment
of bone marked with a zig-zag motif from the Bacho Kiro site in Bulgaria
stems from the same period. And from a 50,000-year-old site at Tata,
Hungary, comes an intriguing object: a
mamoth molar tooth that has been carved, shaped and worn smooth with use. On
at least one occasion it had also been coloured red with ochre. 'Here,' says
Marshack, 'the artisan planned for a 'non-utilitarian' symbolic object.' The
oldest engraved object so far discovered and dated takes us back an
incredible 300,000 years, to the site of Pech de l'Aze in France. There, in
1969, Francois Bordes discovered an ox rib that had been engraved with a
series of double arcs. The motif, once again, is a frequent feature of the
art that was to follow more than a quarter-of-a-million years later."~Richard
E. Leakey, The Making of Mankind, (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1981) p. 137
************************************************
With all this evidence of human-like activity, how can one reasonably expect
their child to still believe your explanation after a semester of this? He
or she will probably then want to take a geology course and from personal
experience, the YEC explanation won't work and your child will be in deep
trouble. I know a well known YEC whose son went into geology, and now
believes nothing his father does..
My goal is to point out that Christianity needs to somehow account for
this data, not to hurt Christianity. My view will do explain the scientific
data! But I know people are repulsed by the very different course I say we
ought Views like Hugh Ross's which believe in a relatively recent creation of
man, simply leave out the data from an earlier time period. Only a view
which allows mankind to have existed far longer than Christians have
historically wanted can explain the data; all others must explain the data
away.
There are two approaches to explaining this data away. First you can say
these guys really weren't human, inspite of all the evidence that their
actions are like modern hunter-gatherers. This view holds that the
activities are merely animal instinct. Second, you can take the tack of the
young-earth creationists and say that the dating processes don't work and the
earth is really only 10,000 years old. Thus, these "men" lived within the
past few thousand years (probably post-flood people). Then there is my view
which says human history is much much older and the flood was 5.5 million
years ago. I can not think of another approach to incorporate human
activities into a Christian world view.
Which option do you choose?
glenn