For those who may not have heard, I am moving to Scotland. I have left most
of the lists I was on because I don't have time to go through about 100
e-mails a day and still get done what I want to do before my move. I am
trying to catch up on my note taking before I go to Scotland. I may do a few
more posts like this before I actually move. I won't respond to e-mails in
reply to this.
But I thought that maybe I should send a few of these to the evolution list
which I left last Fall just to remind people who I am and that I am still
alive.
I am reading the book 'Fairweather Eden' by Michael Pitts and Mark
Roberts. One of the things that is impressive in this book is the
description of the life of Homo erectus circa 500,000 years ago at Boxgrove,
England. They describe a site where 6 or 7 H. erecti sit around a dead horse
and fashioned stone tools so that the horse could be butchered. It was an
amazingly human sort of thing to do. In this post, the thing I want to
emphasize is the invention of a particular style of stone tool manufacture
by Homo erectus. It was this manufacturing technique that allowed modern
humans to improve tremendously their skill in making stone tools. And it was
this increase in technology that led eventually to the Neolithic and
eventually to the Agricultural revolution.
Most people unfamiliar with flint knapping (the making of stone tools) think
that stone tools are primitive; that they are made by stupid people; and
that they are easy to make. Nothing could be further from the truth--this is
true even for the very earliest KNOWN stone tools made by men 2.6 million
years ago. Much planning and foresight goes into the manufacture of a stone
tool. One must plan each blow so that an acute angle is formed which will be
suitable for cutting. The slightest screw up and the tool is no good. To
make a stone tool one needs a hammer (which strikes the stone being turned
into a tool). Often this hammer is another stone. But with the most
sophisticated stone tools, like acheulean hand axes, arrow heads etc, one
needs a soft hammer like bone or antler. These soft hammers each chip the
stone in a unique fashion, leaving a flake whose shape can be analyzed to
determine what kind of hammer produced it.
I needed to tell you this because the decision of which kind of hammer to
use in the manufacture of a stone tool and the decision of when to use it
requires great planning and foresight. Once again, messing up means that the
stone tool is useless. Pitts and Roberts state:
"This was no surprise, as knappers had been saying this was the case for
many years--although it was perhaps the clearest demonstration of the fact
yet presented. The most significant features were the presence or absence of
a point of percussion (common on hard hammer flakes, rare on soft) and the
surface area relative to flake thickness (soft flakes were wide and
thin)--see fig 42. But what was especially interesting was that the flakes
from handaxes finished with bone or antler were also distinguishable from
each other. And furthermore, the flakes from the First Handaxe Trench[at
Boxgrove], which were clearly struck with a soft hammer, looked as if they
might have been made with bone.
"This was the first substantial demonstration that soft hammers had been
regularly used as much as half a million years ago. And as Francis wrote in
the publication of the project that eventually appeared in 1989, there might
be implications for the intellectual processes of early hominids. It could
not be assumed that suitable bone or antler for making hammers would be just
lying about at the very moment they were needed to make a handaxe, implying
that a little future planning was necessary: a soft hammer would likely have
been made at some time before it was needed, and then kept. 'Once this level
of planning is reached in any one activity', wrote Francis, 'it is
reasonable to expect planning and organisation to be occurring in all
aspects of the life-style.'" "And then, right at the end of November 1994,
seven years after two of his former excavation supervisors sat down and made
handaxes to prove that a Boxgrove creature had once used a hammer of bone or
antler, Mark, with a beaming face and booming voice, held out some scraps of
bone to attentive audiences in London. They were, he said, by around 400,000
years the world's oldest bone hammers. They had been used to make handaxes
and this implied something about the way the hominids thought." Michael
Pitts and Mark Roberts, Fairweather Eden, (New York: Fromm International,
1997), p. 220-221
This planning ability--the ability to see a future need is far beyond the
abilities of a chimpanzee. They can't seem to plan more than 20 minutes in
advance. As I pointed out in my article 'Planning Ahead: Requirement for
Moral Accountability,' in Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith,
51(1999):3:176-180, such ability to foresee consequences is absolutely
essential for moral accountability. If we are to be morally accountable, we
need to be able to see the consequences of our actions far into the future.
The soft hammers used at Boxgrove show that Homo erectus was capable of
planning actions at a future time.
1.5 million years ago, Homo erectus was capable of planning his life days in
advance. They made hundreds of rare obsidian handaxes at one place and then
carried them 100 kilometers away so that they could be used at Gadeb,
Ethiopia! That is a 3-4 day march carrying heavy obsidian handaxes. A
creature with this type of temporal planning would be capable of
understanding the moral command "You are free to eat from any tree in the
garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."
Look at what else H. erectus invented. I will post part of my web
page, chron.htm, to give you the dates. But H. erectus invented (and we
still use) woodworking, engraving, clothing, jewelry, art, masonry, altars,
counting, spears, boomerangs, mineral collection, the domestication of the
dog, boats, fire, bedding, tanning hides, ritual dismemberment of human
remains, the artistic portrayal of the human face, and huts for habitation
With a list like that, if we had to pay on patents for those inventions, we
would all be poor indeed. Here is the list (a.H. s.= archaic Homo sapiens):
240 kyr upper Paleolithic blade tools Kenya ?
240-700 kyr woodworking Gesher Benot Ya'aqov Homo
erectus
250 kyr Invention of Mousterian tools Vaufry Cave, France ?
300 kyr geometric engraving Pech de l'Aze Homo
erectus
300 kyr Siberia inhabited-clothing needed Diring Yuriakh ?
300 kyr jewelry various Homo
erectus
330 kyr Depiction of human form Berekhat Ram, Israel Homo
erectus/a.H.s
>350 kyr Oldest rock engraving Bhimbetka, India a.H.s/Homo
erectus
>350 kyr stone wall Bhimbetka, India a.H.s/Homo
erectus
3-400 kyr Scalping Bodo,Ethiopia Homo
erectus
3-400 kyr European huts Bilzingsleben,Germany Homo
erectus
3-400 kyr sacrificial altar Bilzingsleben,Germany Homo
erectus
3-400 kyr oldest evidence of counting Bilzingsleben,Germany Homo
erectus
400 kyr wooden spears Schoningen, Germany Homo
erectus
400 kyr 3 component composite tools Schoningen, Germany Homo
erectus
400 kyr tools made by other tools Schoningen, Germany Homo
erectus
400 kyr wooden boomerang Schoningen, Germany Homo
erectus
500 kyr mineral collection Zhoukoudian, China Homo
erectus
500 kyr dog domestication Zhoukoudian, China Homo
erectus
500 kyr Asian fire Zhoukoudian, China Homo
erectus
700 kyr Asian over ocean travel Flores, Indonesia Homo
erectus
750 kyr European fire Escale Cave, France Homo
erectus
800-900 kyr Homo erectus bedding Wonderwork Cave, S. A. Homo
erectus
970 kyr European structure Soleihac Cave Homo
erectus?
1.0 MYR tanning hides Swartkrans, S. Africa Homo
erectus
1.4 MYR ritual dismemberment of Human Sterkfontein, S.Africa Homo
erectus
1.5 MYR evidence of fire use Swartkrans S. Africa H.
erectus A.robustus
1.5 MYR woodworking Koobi Fora, Kenya Homo
erectus
1.6 MYR Man-made representational art Olduvai Gorge Homo
erectus?
1.6 MYR working with animal hides Swartkrans A.
robustus
1.6 MYR bone tool Swartkrans A.
robustus
1.7 MYR Human compassion East Africa Homo
erectus
1.9 MYR Right-handedness Koobi Fora Homo
erectus
1.9 MYR Stones Thrown as Weapons Olduvai Gorge,Tanzania Homo
habilis
1.95 MYR Larynx capable of Speech Africa Homo
erectus
2.0 MYR Brain structure for Language Lake Rudolf Homo
habilis
2.0 MYR Windbreak structure Olduvai Homo
erectus
2.0 MYR Oldest Toothpick use Ethiopia Homo
erectus
So the next time you use a toothpick, remember your ancestor, H. erectus who
invented it. And he doesn't even ask for royalties. And in spite of this,
many Christian apologists want to say that he was not human and that
spiritual man could not be older than 60,000 years. Why? I don't know. I
have never been able to get anyone to tell me what theologian determined
that the Bible could accomodate a 60,000 year old Adam but fail to
accommodate a 60,001 year old Adam! Does anyone here know of what theologian
made that rather dubious claim and what is the reference?
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
Lots of information on creation/evolution
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