I was slow on the uptake (Wo de naojin hen man - as the chinese say)
earlier today. Let me ask. Do your elephants carry the pretty object for
up to 30 miles to deposit it at a base camp? What exactly is the example
in the book? It will take me a while to get the book.
But let me point out something so you can put the fossils in context.
During the period from 200,000 to 40,000, the period of the Neanderthals,
objects were carried or traded and they ended up quite far from their
original site. Consider this:
"The greatest distance traced over which raw materials were transported
during this time, some 200,000 years ago, is about 100 km (62 miles),
but this was an exception. In the later Middle Palaeollithic (130,000-
40,000 years ago) the situation is different, and occasionally distances
of up to 300 km (186 miles) have been recorded. Distances were generally
greater in central and eastern Europe because conditions during the last
glacial cycle were harsher, increasing the size of territories over
which groups had to forage and hunt. There may even have been some
rudimentary alliance networks between groups and individuals, as
described earlier. But these social networks were still very limited in
scale and complexity, and most of the time raw materials for making
stone tools only travelled local distances."~Chris Stringer and Clive
Gamble, In Search of the Neanderthals, (New York: Thames and Hudson,
1993), p. 174
**
Middle palaeolithic tool travel distance
Radius from site km % of flint on a site % of flint used to
make tools
Local >5 55-98 1-5
Region 5-20 2-20 10-20
Exotic 30-80 <5 74-100
~Chris Stringer and Clive Gamble, In Search of the Neanderthals, (New
York: Thames and Hudson, 1993), p. 174
Do your elephants do this sort of thing? :-)
glenn
Foundation,Fall and Flood
http://members.gnn.com/GRMorton/dmd.htm