Stone-tipped spears predate existence of humans by 85,000 years

UB2120
reply to post by buddha

 

Human's have been around for nearly 1 Million years. Science will continue to find evidence to support this in the coming years. I believe they will also find that humans did not originate in Africa.

I think the ideas of many people on this site could very well be correct. Really, little of the evidence that the mainstream theories are based on is strong enough to positively rule out many ideas. The evidence isn't solid enough for them to say "no, that's just not possible" to various ideas of the age of humans, the origin of humans, etc.

Consider trying to judge the whole of current humanity and other animals based on a few skeletons of bones spaced thousands or millions of years apart.

There's a big difference between "we don't have evidence to support that" and "we have evidence proving that is false" It seems sometimes scientists get a bit overconfident and think those two are the same. And sometimes us laymen misunderstand the scientists when they say "no evidence to support it" and take it as them being hard headed.

I just wish it wasn't presented in such a concrete way, as if they KNOW that's how it was. Some of this could also be related to how the media takes and twists a story, a scientist presents an idea, and a media outlet presents it as fact, so the population accepts it as fact.

reply to post by buddha

have humans been here for 200,000 years or more?

It's between 100,000-150,000...nobody really knows.

James1982There's a big difference between "we don't have evidence to support that" and "we have evidence proving that is false" It seems sometimes scientists get a bit overconfident and think those two are the same. And sometimes us laymen misunderstand the scientists when they say "no evidence to support it" and take it as them being hard headed.

I just wish it wasn't presented in such a concrete way, as if they KNOW that's how it was. Some of this could also be related to how the media takes and twists a story, a scientist presents an idea, and a media outlet presents it as fact, so the population accepts it as fact.

This right here. You nailed the problem on the head. The sciences actually take a number of years to actually have any changes to the going thinking get applied into textbooks. Often, something that is published in a textbook could be kind of archaic thinking even within a year of it being published. Science is slow in that regard and that poses a real problem when contradictory information appears because we were taught "this is the way it was" instead of "this is what we think it was like given what we've found so far". It's a huge distinction and if they actually started doing that, I think that people would be a lot less distrustful of these particular fields.

reply to post by buddha


I have said this before and don't want to go to far off track.

God created the Earth before there was a heaven or a deep space and before there was water Proverbs 8:22-24

If this statement is a preserved words of God as Promised in Psalm 12:6,7 then we can see all matter was created from God himself. God being eternal any matter from him will be hard to determine its age. The bible says he is ageless or ancient one, that is age cannot be determined.

So if you take a literal rock and try to date it using our limited isotopic deterioration based equipment (whether radiocarbon or radiometirc) you will come up with dates of undetermined age because we don't have a way to measure eternity, seeing the rock was made from material that comes from an eternal source. first we must get a sample of the eternal source and determine a time quantum for eternity then we could possibly determine what a true age of a rock is from any planet or star or galaxy.

reply to post by James1982

Facts are slipery things. Science changes and old facts become outdated. If we take the date value as presented as the most likely with our present knowledge then debate from there. IF the values are correct what does that tell us about the past. It isn't as clear as we were taught. Many things fall outside of the path. Perhaps each hominid had their day in the sun with their own brand of sophistication followed by the next big thing. When their thinking lead them into a solid dead end that was the cause of their demise. The next more flexible hominid took over and left them behind.
Consider this if we could move forward 85,000 years what would be left of todays civilization? The only true absolute survivors would be whatever we left on the moon. I'll guess that the winds of mars would wipe our our presence there. Perhaps some high orbitals could survive. So if our predececessors made it big where would we find solid evidence?
Keep your doubts close but your mind open.
Until the next civilization makes it to the moon we would only be a misty probability.

AndyMayhew
I think the real question is whether Fox News should be considered sapient?

Next week they'll be telling us that pollen shows corn was growing before humans started farming corn

I dont get it. if this is a fox news story, arent they supposed to be pro creationists?
they seem to be bashed/credited for having those christian conservative stands.
If the now come up with a story that defies the creationist dating then its also considered wrong.
is it just some fox showed it so it must be crap knee jerk reaction?

Or maybe i just did not understand the meaning of the word sapient....lol
Did a google check after commenting.

James1982


But, as I understand it, Radiometric dating can only tell the absolute age of rocks and what not. The age of the rock really isn't important in this circumstance, unless someone is implying the spear head was formed immediately after the rock was formed.

As another poster mentioned, if you use ancient rock to make a spear tip, that doesn't mean the spear tip is ancient.

Am I wrong in assuming only the absolute age of the rock can be determined with Radiometric dating?

they wouldn't date the spear, unless it say had fossilized material, such as a wooden haft that was preserved.
if it does they can use ratiometric dating to determine pretty closely when it mineralized. mostly they go by other samples they have, so if they find tools with a set of bones, like a grave site for instance, they compare the tools after they test the bones.

this is how they date a lot of fossils. creationists hold this against science but they ignore the fact that scientists always list a range of thousands of years. only creationists are nitpicky enough to think being off by a period of a few thousand years matters, life is a continuum and scientists don't work to pinpoint an exact date, only the closest they can get.

this is of course for anything over 20 thousand years, c14 dating can get within 100 years of anything under 20tya i think.

datasdream
reply to post by James1982

 

Facts are slipery things. Science changes and old facts become outdated. If we take the date value as presented as the most likely with our present knowledge then debate from there. IF the values are correct what does that tell us about the past. It isn't as clear as we were taught. Many things fall outside of the path. Perhaps each hominid had their day in the sun with their own brand of sophistication followed by the next big thing. When their thinking lead them into a solid dead end that was the cause of their demise. The next more flexible hominid took over and left them behind.
Consider this if we could move forward 85,000 years what would be left of todays civilization? The only true absolute survivors would be whatever we left on the moon. I'll guess that the winds of mars would wipe our our presence there. Perhaps some high orbitals could survive. So if our predececessors made it big where would we find solid evidence?
Keep your doubts close but your mind open.
Until the next civilization makes it to the moon we would only be a misty probability.

this is a matter of what you define a fact as first of all, in science a fact is a piece of observed information, in layman use its a unchanging truth. facts in science are a dime a dozen, its what you do with them that matters.

swans are white, this is a fact, swans are black, which one is wrong? both are right, so scientists observing swans would say, swans can be both black and white, neither fact is outdated, just incomplete.

well... every other branch of the homo genus was killed off by us, whether through out direct actions or just by our ability to out compete them, they lost the race.

demongoat

James1982


But, as I understand it, Radiometric dating can only tell the absolute age of rocks and what not. The age of the rock really isn't important in this circumstance, unless someone is implying the spear head was formed immediately after the rock was formed.

As another poster mentioned, if you use ancient rock to make a spear tip, that doesn't mean the spear tip is ancient.

Am I wrong in assuming only the absolute age of the rock can be determined with Radiometric dating?

they wouldn't date the spear, unless it say had fossilized material, such as a wooden haft that was preserved.
if it does they can use ratiometric dating to determine pretty closely when it mineralized. mostly they go by other samples they have, so if they find tools with a set of bones, like a grave site for instance, they compare the tools after they test the bones.

this is how they date a lot of fossils. creationists hold this against science but they ignore the fact that scientists always list a range of thousands of years. only creationists are nitpicky enough to think being off by a period of a few thousand years matters, life is a continuum and scientists don't work to pinpoint an exact date, only the closest they can get.

this is of course for anything over 20 thousand years, c14 dating can get within 100 years of anything under 20tya i think.

edit on 16-11-2013 by demongoat because: (no reason given)

If they found no organic material to date the spearpoint, they will make a approximation based on the depth and layer
in the ground where discovered, and then use flower pollen /corn /insects to make a ca. date.

More evidence that science cant date anything accurately with out a use by date written on the label

All a bit naff really

peter vlar
reply to post by buddha

 

Considering H. Erectus was making tools over 1.8 MYA I'm somewhat befuddled as to why this is so perplexing.
m.huffpost.com...

This.

borntowatch
More evidence that science cant date anything accurately with out a use by date written on the label

All a bit naff really

This is correct, all dating techniques that use radio active decay are bogus. They rely on the predicate that radio active decay is constant, it is not, and that makes EVERY SINGLE inferred date based on any of the 5 methods that use radio active decay for dating obsolete. All of it is wrong, every date you've ever heard given from any of those methods IS wrong.

In the meantime, it remains to be seen how these findings will affect the use of radioactive decay in technological applications. For example, if radioactive decay isn’t constant, then adjustments will have to be made for its use in dating materials, especially in the case of Carbon-14 dating. And doctors may need to look into adjusting radiation doses for cancer therapies, as they are, in part, based on radioactive decay rates.

Radio Active Decay - Not Constant


Further more, dating by strata is bogus as well. We have documented cases of people finding Iron tools (and no Im not talking about the oopart hammer) in coal strata "dated to 1.5mya" if that's the case then an ancient stone tool should be no surprise.

Two workmen signed affidavits to their amazing discovery in 1912 of an iron pot inside a large piece of coal that they were breaking up to be used in the furnace of a power plant. The pot left a clear fossil impression in the remaining pieces of coal.

Coalminers noticed a curious slab in an Iowa coal mine in 1897. Found 130 feet below ground just below the sandstone which capped the seam, it was approximately two feet long by one foot wide and was four inches deep. Its surface was inscribed with diamond shapes having the face of what seemed to be an old man in the middle of each.

It seems that we really have no reliable way to date much of anything beyond 50,000 years old as the margin of erro for both strata and nuclear dating techniques is far to high. When you look at some stratas you will find that they are often shifted in areas. While it may seem simple to look at the layering to be able to determine which pieces are "shifted" it's really just not reliable.

reply to post by vind21

This is correct, all dating techniques that use radio active decay are bogus. They rely on the predicate that radio active decay is constant, it is not, and that makes EVERY SINGLE inferred date based on any of the 5 methods that use radio active decay for dating obsolete. All of it is wrong, every date you've ever heard given from any of those methods IS wrong.

There's more than five, but we'll ignore that relatively minor error for now. There is evidence that, over the time scales we're talking about, the decay processes utilized by radiometric dating methods are constant. The gamma wavelengths we see from supernovae from billions of light years away are consistent with the decay rates of the radioisotopes used for dating.

Radio Active Decay - Not Constant

Good example of someone reading what they want to read into results as opposed to what's really there. Read the original research -- it's available all over the internet.

The short version is that the variations in decay rate have yet to be produced, so it's not entirely certain that they really saw what they think they saw. This is why science isn't decided by a single experiment but, rather, by several experiments that are in agreement. And even then, scientists will still occasionally test it to see what happens.

Further, reported variations in decay rate are cyclical on a timeframe that is shorter than a year. Meaning that, when averaged over thousand, millions, or billions of years, they are meaningless. The average decay rates are still relatively constant.

Finally, the degree of error associated with the reported variability in decay rates is negligible when compared with the order of magnitude of the dates. Read the research, do the math yourself. We're talking difference of months over periods of millennia.

Further more, dating by strata is bogus as well. We have documented cases of people finding Iron tools (and no Im not talking about the oopart hammer) in coal strata "dated to 1.5mya" if that's the case then an ancient stone tool should be no surprise.

Which is why no reputable archaeologist would be using only strata to date finds.

It seems that we really have no reliable way to date much of anything beyond 50,000 years old as the margin of erro for both strata and nuclear dating techniques is far to high. When you look at some stratas you will find that they are often shifted in areas. While it may seem simple to look at the layering to be able to determine which pieces are "shifted" it's really just not reliable.

I guess it depends on your definition of "reliable" and your understanding of the science involved in the dating methods.

Someone already expressed this on page one but I am trying to understand the implication made: The material that the tool was made out of was X age old. That doesn't mean that the maker was X, but could be Y. How does saying "something that is X is older than Y" prove anything since it is quite clear that the Earth has an extremely long history?

Even taking the above the theological realm; if humans were only 4 thousand years old, they could still, within the likely possibility, make an object out of older material.

reply to post by ownbestenemy


the implications are the problems with the dating methods... and there are a ton of them.

academia usually casts off these object that do not conform to a certain theory and presented history.

you don't hear much about them because people would begin to doubt, but as I have said there are plenty out there, you'll just have to search for them on google.

what was that one... they found a transistor radio in 1.7 million year old strata... or something like that?

reply to post by peter vlar


There's evidence of our ancestors creating camp fires over a million years ago too. I believe there's a cave or series of caves in Africa where they have dig sites.

EDIT: It's located at Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa:
en.wikipedia.org - Wonderwerk Cave...

jonnywhite
reply to post by peter vlar

 

There's evidence of our ancestors creating camp fires over a million years ago too. I believe there's a cave or series of caves in Africa where they have dig sites.

EDIT: It's located at Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa:
en.wikipedia.org - Wonderwerk Cave...

edit on 19-11-2013 by jonnywhite because: (no reason given)

the carbon from the fires would cause the calculations for the fire pit to be older that it really is. that is why carbon dating is obsolete. Even radio metric decay is a weak way to date as well because waves of different sources will affect the radiometric calculations i.e. solar waves both radioactive and sonic will affect the earth and all that is on it. Not to mention radio waves emitted by radio stations and other types of equipment from government and military sources.

that is unless you completely shield the area being tested from all types of radio and other sound waves (pasta s present) the calculations will always be higher.