Oldest Stone Blades Uncovered, 500,000 years old

reply to post by bigfatfurrytexan


Hey there BFFT

Just another little peek into our past. An example perhaps that shows the rise and loss of technology until we got enough population and invented writing and language to pass ideas on to our children.

Originally posted by king9072

COMPLETELY POINTLESS THREAD! It's obvious that the proven scientific method of dating that they used HAS MADE A MISTAKE, because our lord (thank you jesus) our savior, amazing man, trust me, I love him, so great. He uh, only made the world like less than 10000 years ago, so to suggest that something intelligent made tools over 50 times the length of time before that.... well blasphemy... how dare u question thy lord???

If it were so that the dating were correct, then it is clear... god put those there to TEST MY FAITH and I shall be FAITHFUL, good day.

Bless your heart - someone must have peed in your wheaties.... or you are simply regurgitating the usual media driven stereotypical garbage...either way your post is OFF topic and purile.

reply to post by Hanslune


Come on people don't we know by know dating methods are flawed and not at all accurate?

They have dated 50 year old lava to be millions of years old.

reply to post by walker8989


Ah yes, another dude drifing thru life with a lack of science. I recommend ttwo weeks of reading. I would suggest Archaeology: Theories, Methods, and Practice, by Colin Renfrew, ISBN 978-0500287132.



[edit on 6/4/09 by Hanslune]

Originally posted by Marmota monax
I didn't see a dating method, was a method used?

This is a great question...

What dating method was used here Hans, any ideas? How does one go about dating chipped pieces of stone? And how accurate are these methods?

I'm asking here because I have no clue... I've been under the impression that
a) stone can't be dated, and
b) dates coming up that old tend to be considered anomalous in nature or erroneous.

500,000 years is incredibly old...I mean had this date come up somewhere on a Great Pyramid stone, chances are it would've been thrown right out

Originally posted by PhotonEffect

Originally posted by Marmota monax
I didn't see a dating method, was a method used?

This is a great question...

Good question and one the journalist failed to mention. I know a bit about this subject (the dating of undatable stone). You can do that - if the tools are found in a volcanic rock layer. In this case the story mentions the Kapthurin formation which is a basalt outcrop in Kenya near Lake Bogoria, basalt is a volcanic rocka and can be dated using the Argon argon dating. Usually you date the rock layer above, below and containing the subject. You then estimate based on those established ages.

So you don't date the stones themselves but the layers they are found in.

The dates actually obtain are 509,000 to 543,000 years - what 9-43 thousand years between friends?

A wiki link here en.wikipedia.org...

500,000 years is incredibly old...I mean had this date come up somewhere on a Great Pyramid stone, chances are it would've been thrown right out

Not to worry the limestone of the Giza quarries comes out at hundreds of millions of years in age. Of couse each layer, and there are dozens, dates differently. You can see the layer pattern on the Sphinx.


More information of Giza limestone than you'd ever want

Link





[edit on 6/4/09 by Hanslune]

Hiya Hans,
Don't know if you missed it ( I doubt you did), there's a short discussion about it at the Hall of Maat. Also, is Mr Raab a member on here?

reply to post by Hanslune


Fascinating find, Hanslune and thank you for sharing it. It goes to show how much more sites and old tools are still out there waiting to be found.

I can't wait to read about even older discoveries of this nature.

reply to post by Kandinsky


Mr. Raab? I would suspect not but you can always invite him!

Originally posted by kidflash2008
reply to post by Hanslune

 

Fascinating find, Hanslune and thank you for sharing it. It goes to show how much more sites and old tools are still out there waiting to be found.

I can't wait to read about even older discoveries of this nature.

We'll see more in the near future - some buzz in the emails I'm getting from associates still in the biz.

Originally posted by king9072

COMPLETELY POINTLESS THREAD! It's obvious that the proven scientific method of dating that they used HAS MADE A MISTAKE, because our lord (thank you jesus) our savior, amazing man, trust me, I love him, so great. He uh, only made the world like less than 10000 years ago, so to suggest that something intelligent made tools over 50 times the length of time before that.... well blasphemy... how dare u question thy lord???

If it were so that the dating were correct, then it is clear... god put those there to TEST MY FAITH and I shall be FAITHFUL, good day.

It is not the scientific method rather the interpretation of the results where a mistake has been made.

500,000 year old rock, that doesn't prove anything about a blade being made at the same time. Were they carving this blade out of lava? Discontinuities can occur in regions where strata have been eroded away or sedimentation has not occurred. This is what index fossils are for, if you find the blade among fossils a half million years old, something is up. But if its within a bed containing fossils that are known to have died out 9000 years ago: your thesis and grant money are hooped.

Don't even get me started on folded strata because of continental convergence zones.

reply to post by Dnevnoi
Hiya, King was joking in that post. IIRC the stone tools were found in a layer that included the jawbones of H. Heidelbergensis and at least three rock cores from which the blades were made. Geofact versus artifact? I think another expedition to Kapthurin Formation is due in early 2010. Sally McBrearty has a good pedigree.

reply to post by Hanslune


I don't understand how everyone seems to have an opinion on the blades and how they look and all that, I cannot even see anything with that link, it tells me I have to buy a membership or something.

Can anybody post the pictures here or something, I cannot afford to pay for any random thing on the internet.

reply to post by BaronVonGodzilla
The article's been archived to the subscriptions only area...you can still read the article here. The image of the tools is only available AFAIK on Johnson's own site...here. Her work on early chimpanzee populations in that area is interesting as it discusses a time when early hominids appeared to share the same territory...

Johnson and Brearty are the paleoanthropologists responsible for the finds. Brearty is a veteran who's been cited hundreds of times. She wrote a paper on the possibility of human trampling being responsible for the edges on some stones. I mention this only to add credibility to their identification of the stones as being genuine artifacts.

I'm not an anthro/ archaeologist so reading around sources helps me to gain a better picture.