Here's the Oldest Engraving EVER. Made 430,000 to 540,000 Years Ago.

a reply to: theantediluvian

I'm going to pass on this. Technology being what it is these days to hoax a simple scratch in a seashell and make it appear authentic is too easy. Excuse me while I go counterfeit some cave paintings.

a reply to: suz62

Maybe it was? We don't know for sure.

*If* it was 'scratched out of curiosity,' it would still be evidence in favour of intentionality. Someone would have had to hold the shell in one hand and chosen a sharp point to intentionally scratch the surface. That's at least three decisions to indicate forward planning and tool-use.

At the time of its carving, the shell likely had a dark covering, and the marks would have appeared as white lines, Joordens said. Her team tried to engrave present-day freshwater shells and found the task difficult. "You had to use a lot of strength in your hands," Joordens said. "You had to be precise to make those angles. [But] if you engrave that dark surface and the white appears, that must have been quite striking for Homo erectus."

We just don't know if it was scratched by a person (artefact) or whether it's a natural outcome of the shell being scratched by an inanimate object (sort of a geofact).

I question calling it an engraving. I think that's really reaching/grasping at straws.

It quite clearly says MUM



*IF* it was really drawn so long ago, then maybe it was a simple map. Looking at image B it resembles two mountain peaks with a pass between them, so maybe it was left somewhere to show others which way to go.

OR

Aliens

a reply to: theantediluvian
Sorry but I think homo erectus could have been a little bit smarter than a monkey now is. So it's not impossible he made this marks. But human consciousness as we know it came on this world as a big bang some 32.000 years ago.
I believe there was an alien race coming from a still unknown planet (unknown to us poor citizens) but from that alien race no one of us will ever find a trace (yes because there are mighty people that keep those traces away from us or that make us doubt until we are death meat).
But an alien race made the Homo sapiens sapiens some 32.000 years ago in the south of France. I believe.

www.evawaseerst.be... (see the red dots)

What annoys me about this is that people can be easily convinced that a few marks on a shell were done via a bored ancestor with a shark tooth, however you show anybody skull on mars and it's a natural formation.

I'm really surprised that so many posters are having a hard time accepting these marks were created by homo erectus. Oldowan tools were in use from about 2.6 to 1.7 million years ago when the Acheulean toolkit shows up and there is evidence of controlled cooking fires in the Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa that date back more than a million years.

originally posted by: theantediluvian
I'm really surprised that so many posters are having a hard time accepting these marks were created by homo erectus. Oldowan tools were in use from about 2.6 to 1.7 million years ago when the Acheulean toolkit shows up and there is evidence of controlled cooking fires in the Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa that date back more than a million years.

The average HE had a brain capacity of 900 cc. That is rather small but the same size of some very human acting little people and midgets, of course the organization of the brain was probably different.

Whether the scratches meant anything will never be known, or even if they were intentional.

Many of the features that distinguish Homo erectus from other hominin species—both earlier and later species—are seen in the skull. The average brain size of Homo erectus is estimated to have been roughly 900 cubic centimeters (cc.), which is larger than Homo habilis, but smaller than that of Homo heidelbergensis and other later forms. The size of the Homo erectus brain is negligibly larger than in Homo habilis when it is considered as in relation to body size—i.e., brain size increased substantially in Homo erectus, but, because body size also increased, the relative size of the Homo erectus brain is not considerably larger than that of Homo habilis. The absolute in brain size, however, caused changes in the brain case; for instance, the braincase is higher than in Homo habilis, but lower than in later hominin species. The Homo erectus braincase is also very long relative to its height, giving the skull a football-shape when viewed from the side. The braincase and the face and jaws of Homo erectus were very heavily built, with thick bones and extreme thickenings along some of the skull sutures (where two skull bones connect). For instance, the browridges were massively built and continuous across the face and large, bony prominences existed in the back of the skull (the occipital torus and angular torus). Due to these prominences, the cranium of Homo erectus is pentagon-shaped when viewed from behind, with the widest area coinciding with the bottom of the cranium.

Becoming human

originally posted by: zandra
a reply to: theantediluvian
Sorry but I think homo erectus could have been a little bit smarter than a monkey now is. So it's not impossible he made this marks. But human consciousness as we know it came on this world as a big bang some 32.000 years ago.

that's a rather specific point in time you have there. Why 32,000 BP? What exactly occurred at that point and what is the difference between HSS from say 60,000 BPE and any random HSS remains from 20-30 KYA?

I believe there was an alien race coming from a still unknown planet (unknown to us poor citizens) but from that alien race no one of us will ever find a trace (yes because there are mighty people that keep those traces away from us or that make us doubt until we are death meat).

Why exactly do you believe this and if everyone else is so in the dark, what is special about you that you have been chosen for such illumination? It's kind of a doozy to state that you believe this and then end the very same statement
matter of factly saying that nobody will ever find a trace. can you see how that's a bit of a non sequitor?

But an alien race made the Homo sapiens sapiens some 32.000 years ago in the south of France. I believe.
www.evawaseerst.be... (see the red dots)

How exactly did they make homo sapiens in france 32 KYA and what is different about the French HSS from that period and the HSS from Ethiopia from 150KYA? it's a bit of a conundrum for you homo sapiens to be "created" over 150KY after the first definitively homo sapiens remains that we know for certain.

a reply to: theantediluvian

Hello AnteD,

Like Hans says, the object and scratches aren't enough to break out the party tinsel and definitively attribute them to deliberate actions.

The part I quoted about the scratches being emulated on a modern shell are indicative and still a skitch short of conclusive.

Some folk have wider issues with science in general and will baulk at just about anything that runs counter to Creationist ideology. Others doubt science despite the fact that they're using it to communicate their disapproval

originally posted by: Kandinsky
a reply to: theantediluvian

Hello AnteD,

Like Hans says, the object and scratches aren't enough to break out the party tinsel and definitively attribute them to deliberate actions.

The part I quoted about the scratches being emulated on a modern shell are indicative and still a skitch short of conclusive.

Some folk have wider issues with science in general and will baulk at just about anything that runs counter to Creationist ideology. Others doubt science despite the fact that they're using it to communicate their disapproval

This type of evidence is a 'believe or not as you might wish' as 19th century scientists use to say. plausible, probable and possible does not mean proven.

Do you know of incidents of Bonobos or Chimps ever scratching hard surfaces?

a reply to: Hanslune

Nope.

They'll need to find more shells with scratches and they'd need to look more patterned and deliberate to get close to conclusive.

originally posted by: Kandinsky
a reply to: Hanslune

Nope.

They'll need to find more shells with scratches and they'd need to look more patterned and deliberate to get close to conclusive.

Yeah

Here is the closest thing I can find to Chimps using a hard object to processing food (and perhaps making marks in another hard substance)

Going for the fruit, hammer and anvil

Chimps have brain a 35 to 60% of the size of a HE.

a reply to: Hanslune

By coincidence I've got a ripped video of a BBC doco showing S American monkeys using 'hammer and anvil' to crack nuts. I've been itching to repost it after YT had it pulled numerous times for copyright infringement.

In danger of being off-topic...the monkeys 'appear' to have piled up rocks to push down on approaching predators. Thread from the same article (2009)

Im quite surprised by the attitudes of some of the more knowledgable members, in their reluctance to accept the subject of this article as being purposeful. Did you'all not read the article? The shells, and not just one, have holes bored in them to release the shell muscle. That in and of itself shows intent and purposeful thinking, why would one think that its sch a stretch of intelect to make scratches on the shell that had just been bored into?

FRom the smithsonian mag article,

Exactly what the shell was used for is impossible to know. A previous study suggested that cut marks on ancient cow bones found on Java likely came from shell tools, which could have been used to butcher animals, cut plants or clean fish. Neanderthals, which lived about 200,000 to 40,000 years ago, also used shells as tools, though there’s evidence that they broke the shells and then sharpened them, notes Enza Spinapolice, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute in Germany.

www.smithsonianmag.com...



Its not the only isntance of HE doing "modern" things, by the way.


Homo E and dwellings,

The first houses were thought to be windbreaks made of animals skins stretched over a frame. There is evidence that Homo Erectus constructed 50-foot-long branch huts with stone slabs or animal skins for floors.

The oldest recognized buildings in the world are twelve 400,000-year-old huts found in Nice, France in 1960. Uncovered by an excavator preparing to build a new house, the oval shelters ranged from 26 feet to 49 feet in length and were between 13 feet and 20 feet wide. They were built of 3-inch in diameter stakes and braced by a ring of stones. Longer poles were set around the perimeter as supports. The huts had hearths and pebble-lined pits and were defined by stake holes.

Ancient humans thought to be Homo erectus that lived 350,000 years ago near present-day Bilzingsleben, East Germany constructed shelters similar to those of Bushmen in southern Africa. Circular bone and stone foundations were discovered for three huts between 9 and 13 feet across. In the middle of on circle, archaeologist found an elephant tusk, which they speculated was a center post.

Homo E and symbolic thought

At the 350,000-year-old site in Bilzingsleben, archaeologists found pieces of bone and smooth stones arranged in a 27-foot-wide circle. "They intentionally paved this area for cultural activities," Dietrich Mania off the University of Jena, told National Geographic. "We found here a large anvil of quartzite set between the horns of a huge bison. Near it were fractured human skulls."

Describing an elephant tibia engraved with a series a regular lines found at Bilzingsleben, Mania said, "Seven lines go in one direction, 21 go in the other. We have found other pieces of bone with cut lines that are also too regular to be accidental. They are graphic symbols. To us they are evidence of abstract thinking and human language." The tibia was dated at around 400,000 years ago.

Scientists debate whether 400,000-year-old hominids were capable of symbolic thinking, often regarded as hallmark of language. If Mania’s conjectures are correct, then ancient hominids could have been much more advanced than previously thought.

In Zambia, scientists found what they said were 350,000-year-old ocher crayons. If these crayons had in fact been used to make drawings or markings they could be regarded as the oldest known attempt to paint, suggests that early man attempted create art much earlier than people thought.

factsanddetails.com...

a reply to: Kandinsky

What I'm not understanding is why this thread has drifted into a discussion about whether or not HE would have even been capable of engraving the shell at all. This site is dated to well over a million years after the first appearance of Acheulean tools and is well within the most generally accepted date for the use of fire so I don't think that's an issue.

On top of that, the same site has various other shells that show evidence of modification including the one that had been worked into some sort of scraper/knife and several bearing holes that could have been made by an awl (the oldest bone awls date back well over a million years).

a reply to: punkinworks10

I'm inclined to agree with you that there was definite purpose and intent behind these markings. Certainly it's just my opinion and based entirely on speculation and a splash of deductive reasoning, ` but I'm of the opinion that any hominid that was capable of building a boat and traversing distances beyond the line of horizon then they had to have had the ability to use their imagination and comprehend abstract thought. Some of the distances HE is thought to have sailed are pretty impressive and would have required a lot of balls and imagination to undertake such a voyage. Even shorter ocean voyages to islands within range of site but too far to swim would have required the use of not just imaginative abstractions but some dare I say, complex problem solving skills as well. Maybe it started off with them seeing elephants undertake a lengthy swim to a somewhat far off island near the horizon line. Much too far for HE to attempt a swim but with a little resourcefulness, not too far for a few brave souls and a raft. It's no small undertaking by any means and requires a lot of planning as well as the ability to communicate new ideas and concepts to one another in order to build a raft large enough for several people as well as plan for food and water rations to make the journey. We know that undertakings of this nature occurred so to me, it's kind of a no brainer that if they were able to communicate these ideas to one another that they would likely seek out a method of preserving their plans in some rudimentary fashion. If they were able to carve or engrave things of that nature then some form of artistic or recreational engraving or etching would not be too far behind. Somewhat like whittling that is seen as both an artistic expression or outlet as well as basic time occupying non artistic process. Just my two cents on the topic.

LOL


Even Better


Archaeologists find blade 'production lines' existed as much as 400,000 years ago
Date:
October 17, 2011
Source:
American Friends of Tel Aviv University
Summary:
Archaeologists report that large numbers of long, slender cutting tools were discovered at the Qesem Cave outside Tel Aviv. They report that every element of the system points to a sophisticated tool "production line" to rival technologies used hundreds of thousands of years later.
www.sciencedaily.com...

Archaeology has long associated advanced blade production with the Upper Palaeolithic period, about 30,000-40,000 years ago, linked with the emergence of Homo Sapiens and cultural features such as cave art. Now researchers at Tel Aviv University have uncovered evidence which shows that "modern" blade production was also an element of Amudian industry during the late Lower Paleolithic period, 200,000-400,000 years ago as part of the Acheulo-Yabrudian cultural complex, a geographically limited group of hominins who lived in modern-day Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.

Interesting but I think it's jumping to conclusions to call it a carving or engraving. Of course it could be but doesn't indicate high intelligence to be scratching objects. I'm sure when they had an itch they scratched themselves as well. It's not really a cool design. I don' t see geometric, just because there's a zig zag.
Could very well be accidental or scraped at by sharp rocks or other broken shells, or some animals with sharp teeth or claws. Too easy to end up in the design of an ' m' or zig zag from a random scraping, that tends to be the marks you end up with. All too common a mark.

If they were into eating whatever food was in the shells, perhaps they were hard to pry open and they used their sharp teeth?

Since this conversation is essentially about homo erectus eating shellfish ,

What would HE have thought of this,
Clams and shrimp with garlic,onions,chilies, tomatoes with splash of soy sauce and lemon, on steamed rice
mmmmmmm.