400,000 year old German 7 ft long spears!

Humans?

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/a4099d3b400a.jpg[/atsimg]

Maybe so, however how long before hand were our anscestors doing it?

A male orangutan, clinging precariously to overhanging branches, flails the water with a pole, trying desperately to spear a passing fish.

It is the first time one has been seen using a tool to hunt.

Daily Male

Did he learn that from observing humans, or have they always had this skill like chimps and tools for getting ants and crushing nuts?

reply to post by BeastMaster2012

Originally posted by BeastMaster2012
Chimpanzees are so smart and so human like it is unreal. The only thing they really lack is vocalizing skills. I am almost sure if they could speak to each other they would be a tribe of clothing wearing chimpers in the congo.

Oh not soo quick my friend, cant they vocalise? they seem to be starting and certainly have a very good grasp of language if taught right!

I know you find the following threads very very interesting, infact anyone who doubts the great apes ability to have complex societies, and their language skills:

Humans Closest and Sex Mad Relative Under Threat of Extinction

And one of the best ever Documentaries (audio and Realplayer) ive heard on Chimpanzee communication and language fascinating totally, have a listen do they speak? Or are starting to?

BBC Chimpanzee to Chimpan A Homepage

Enjoy!
Kind Regards,

Elf

reply to post by 4nsicphd

the artifacts are clearly 400,000 years old, based on the well-known age of the 10-meter-deep geological layer in which they were uncovered.

The way this type of dating doesn't work is when for instance the spears were introduced into this layer at a later date by a flood, earthquake, etc.

Originally posted by spikey
reply to post by BeastMaster2012

 

Nice one OP.

Shows once again, the 'experts' know bugger all really.

It's not really their fault i suppose, it's what they've been taught in Uni, by other experts that got it completely wrong.

The trouble is though, they form a theory, sack or withhold funding those that don't stick to their version of events, and then find they were completely wrong by 1000% in years.

The fact that Humans were clever up to half a million years ago, doesn't surprise me. I think it goes back a lot longer than that, in a cyclic way.

Rise, fall. Rise, fall. Probably around the time we complete one galactic revolution, every ~65 - 70 million years.

The really curious and interesting thing for me, is not what they've found, but what they haven't found, or at least, what they are not telling us they've found...human bones!

In settlement where there is extensive evidence of protracted human occupation (10,000's of large animal skeletons), there should be human skeletons too.

I wonder why we are not being told about those? i

The reason you find 1000's of animal remains and tools at a site like this but no human remains is that this isn't a "settlement" as you say in your post. These people were nomadic hunter gatherers and didn't stay in place the entire year. It is analagous to native american tribes of the great plains following seasonal herds. The herds tend to follow similar migrations yearly and as such the nomads following them would also come back to the same places seasonally to butcher and cook their prey. A site containing 1000's of different animal specimens can indicate longterm use by a specific small group of people. Back to why there are no human remains and many animal remains. the animals didn't go there of their own accord, they were butchered at the site where the humans who were hunting them died elsewhere and were either buried by their companions(though theres little evidence of this currently) or left to the elements or possibly cannibalized by their companions, which there is evidence of in some ancient sites.

400.000 years ago....... no worrys about money... and plenty of food........

we evoluated in an bad thing.....:-(

[edit on 7-4-2010 by ressiv]

Did the OP really just post an article dated back to 1997? lol Current news plz not something thats as old as the dinosaurs

Forgive my ignorance, how does wood remain buried and not rot away? I know today we have chemicals to treat wood to make it last forever. How does wood that is untreated not rot away?

The ground looks moist, which should indicate that the wood would be rotting if it was left for that long. Maybe our dating measurement is very wrong, or maybe there is a chemical in the ground that hinders our ability to accurately tell the age of something?

Originally posted by ressiv
400.000 years ago....... no worrys about money... and plenty of food........

we evoluated in an bad thing.....:-(

[edit on 7-4-2010 by ressiv]

Right, we just worried about low infant survival rate, being eaten by said food, or trampled by it, ect.

Seriously, it's like most of the human race wants to go back to being kids.

reply to post by Equinox99

A few of their spears were preserved over the eons because they were waterlogged

www.thefreelibrary.com...

From one of the links in the OP.
Water isn't bad for preserving wood, a lot of deep freshwater wrecks are around because there's not a lot of anerobic lifeforms that feed on wood like there is in saltwater, and swampy conditions can do wonders for preserving organics.
Look up the bog mummies sometime.

reply to post by Kandinsky
[more
Hi Kandinsky,I would certainly tend towards the first option that you presented.

but also,let us not forget that the theory of evolution is just that. A theory,dismissed not too long ago but accepted now.

I have read a lot of your posts before,and I am fairly new,so regards mate

Originally posted by ressiv
400.000 years ago....... no worrys about money... and plenty of food........

we evoluated in an bad thing.....:-(

[edit on 7-4-2010 by ressiv]

Don`t kid yourself , there were plenty of things to worry about . And i`m sure food security was certainly an issue from time to time . It wasn`t until we begun to farm ,and create surpluses of food to store in case of times of scarcity that the spectre of starvation begun to lift.(though this brought its own nutritional problems)
Not to mention the variety of wild animals , poisonous plants containing tannins alkaloids and defensive toxins and xenophobic conflicts with `other` groups- all of which posed unique risks and substantial stresses.

This is of course , all provided on you surviving childbirth . !

Originally posted by plumranch
reply to post by 4nsicphd

 

the artifacts are clearly 400,000 years old, based on the well-known age of the 10-meter-deep geological layer in which they were uncovered.

The way this type of dating doesn't work is when for instance the spears were introduced into this layer at a later date by a flood, earthquake, etc.

Geologists and paleontologists are apparently more well-informed than yourself on the matter.

Such deposition by flood or by avalanche or even by purposeful burial leaves obvious evidence which not even a grad student would miss (unless he/she was drunk or high, maybe. And I'm sure a lot of them are!)

Harte

Originally posted by RuneSpider
reply to post by Equinox99

 

A few of their spears were preserved over the eons because they were waterlogged

www.thefreelibrary.com...

From one of the links in the OP.
Water isn't bad for preserving wood, a lot of deep freshwater wrecks are around because there's not a lot of anerobic lifeforms that feed on wood like there is in saltwater, and swampy conditions can do wonders for preserving organics.
Look up the bog mummies sometime.

Thanks for the bog mummies reference, i will be looking that up.

What some people need to understand is, is that some of the advances in the human species seem to have been centered around a better understanding of the human mind AKA psychology. Obviously the word 'psychology' was not used back in those times, who knows what humans thought they had stumbled onto. But the idea of burying a deceased member of their society shows an increase in the ability to understand human emotion and the idea of 'closure' don't you think? Not to mention, burying a body helps keep disease away from a rotting corpse and such - but I don't know if this is another reason bodied were buried but still, it makes you wonder.

I think we have much to learn about the human species... obviously. There have been advanced civilizations, we just have no exact proof or knowledge for the most part, but the signs are all here, are they not?

Originally posted by Kailassa

Originally posted by RRokkyy
If you were alive then that is who you would have been.

Imagine millions of years evolving from a small chimpanzee like ape,to
a javelin throwing creature, living with sabre toothed tigers and woolly mammoths.

What do you think about that?

As a "javelin throwing creature, living with sabre toothed tigers and woolly mammoths", I'd have been ignorant of the mechanics of evolution, and probably lacked the patience or intellectual capacity to benefit from any attempt to explain such things to me.

We've come a long way since then.

Or have we?

Actually that is completely false if somehow a baby from that era was frozen in time and brought up in today's age he'd be just as smart as anyone else

Humans were just as smart as us back then, its just they hadn't invented the tools and technologies yet.

i think i've seen some old skeletons that had a larger brain area.

I wonder if there were any really large early human/apes.. that would be awesome to see.

reply to post by Harte

Geologists and paleontologists are apparently more well-informed than yourself on the matter.

Thanks!

Archeological Intrusion:

DEFINITION: Not indigenous to the deposit in which found, including infiltrated remains created after the deposit. nonintrusive archaeology:

Usually obvious sometimes not.

The case that comes to mind is the steel hammer head found in TX embedded in a layer dated 300,000 years. It was thought to be a hoax, but a good one.

If this is true, how stupid are we? Or should I say "were we"?

There seems to be an awful lot of time before the gushing in of civilization. Hundreds of thousands of years we roamed around homeless grunting at each other and killing things with rocks and spears, then all of the sudden we are building enormous civilizations in just a spread of several thousand years.

There just seems to be something missing here.

Some huge evolutionary trigger must have occurred overnight. Or perhaps some unknown intervention.

Originally posted by zosimos
reply to post by Kandinsky

 

if going with the second theory that you presented, i think that some early human ate some Psilocybin mushrooms or some other psycoactive substance that completely changed their perspective of the world. but i dont know. just speculation

That is illogical speculation. Temporary psychosis will not improve the neural pathways required to achieve higher functioning. Greater understanding comes from physical changes.

Take the chimps. We have worked with them for years, and still not a speaking chimp. They just lack the capacity. The neural pathways. We could feed them all the mushrooms in the world, while they listen to Pink Floyd and drop sheets of acid. None of that crap really works unless the capacity is there in the first place (and even then, it is debatable).

Originally posted by PowerSlave
If this is true, how stupid are we? Or should I say "were we"?

There seems to be an awful lot of time before the gushing in of civilization. Hundreds of thousands of years we roamed around homeless grunting at each other and killing things with rocks and spears, then all of the sudden we are building enormous civilizations in just a spread of several thousand years.

There just seems to be something missing here.

Some huge evolutionary trigger must have occurred overnight. Or perhaps some unknown intervention.

Agriculture .

Yes , it may not sound like the flashiest answer and it did not happen over night , but it certainly was the catalyst which launched our species on the path we are on today.

reply to post by UmbraSumus



We have come a very long way in just a few thousand years, compared to hundreds of thousands of years. To suggest I am sitting here typing on my laptop because man figured out how to grow stuff?

I just cannot afford to buy it.