1. Tracing Lost Megalithic Cultures From 9500 BC To The Present
2. Was The Egyptian Pyramid Complex Built Up Over Time? From About 10,500 BC To About 2,500 BC?
3. Evidence Of A Rock Cutting Machine In The Ancient World That Has Been Lost To Time
4. Geologists Agree That The Sphinx Has Rain Erosion Patterns On It Indicating It Was Built Before 5000 BC! 2500 Years BEFORE Mainstream Egyptologists Claim It Was Built!
5. A Look At The Fall Of Civilizations (With An Emphasis On The Fall Of 1200 BC & Lost Knowledge Through Library Burnings)
Its well known that the stone megaliths at Goblekli Tepe (the worlds oldest megalithic site so far, dated to 8-9000 BC), begin rather large and diminish over time, as if technology has decreased over time. This means that the tradition of stone carving must have developed elsewhere and THEN moved to Gobekli Tepe. This post looks at a stone bracelet with signs of drilling and polishing (i.e. advanced stone working skills with signs of machining or at least the beginnings of one!) that is believed to be 65,000-70,000 years old... so old that there is no reason to doubt that there was not only tens of thousands of years of development of stone architecture in the ancient world but there are possibly stone structures at the very bottom of the ocean (i.e. where the shoreline was 26,000 years ago when the ice age was at its height) as the development time from 50 - 60 thousand years ago is more than enough for stone carvings to develop a ridiculous extent.
The Siberian Times - Denisova Cave bracelet
Daily Mail: World's oldest known stone bracelet could rewrite the history of early man: 70,000-year-old bangle suggests our ancestors were far more sophisticated than thought
The green hued bracelet was found in 2008 in the Denisova Cave in Siberia
Ageing techniques suggest the sediment was 30,000 years older than thought
This would make the beautiful object between 65,000 and 70,000 years old
The manufacturing technology used is seen as typical of much later periods
Archaeology.org: Stone Bracelet May Have Been Made by Denisovans
Extracts from the Scientific American:
Cave That Housed Neandertals and Denisovans Challenges View of Cultural Evolution Researchers have deduced which early human species occupied Denisova Cave and when, drawing surprising conclusions about who made the sophisticated artifacts found there
Archaeologists have been unearthing artifacts from Denisova Cave since the 1980s. The site contains frustratingly little in the way of hominin fossils, however. Most of the bones from the site are mere scraps, too incomplete to assign to a particular species on the basis of their physical characteristics. But in the last decade researchers have managed to recover ancient DNA from some of these fossil bits and from sediments in the cave. The DNA shows both Neandertals and another archaic group known as the Denisovans hung out there. And last year a team reported they had retrieved DNA from what was apparently a hybrid individual who had a Neandertal mom and a Denisovan dad. But for all that scientists have been able to piece together about Denisova, the timing of hominin occupation of the site has remained uncertain, thanks to certain quirks of site formation and preservation as well as the limitations of various techniques used to date archaeological and fossil material.
...
Most of the human fossils are too old for radiocarbon dating, which maxes out at around 50,000 years. So the team determined the so-called relative genetic ages of the human fossils from the site by comparing their DNA sequences with those obtained from other human fossils and counting the differences between them. Such mutations accumulate at a known rate in modern humans. Using that rate the researchers were able to convert the ancient DNA differences to time. Douka, Higham and their colleagues then fed all of the ages obtained from the radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence methods, along with timing data from the genetic studies and the stratigraphic layers themselves, into a statistical model that calculated the most probable ages for the human fossils.
The results of these studies reveal Denisovans and Neandertals occupied the cave intermittently from at least 200,000 until around 50,000 years ago during both cooler and warmer climate phases. Denisovans were the first of the two groups to move into the cave and the last to abandon it. They probably overlapped there around 120,000 years ago, and possibly at other times as well.
The time line hints at a tantalizing possibility for who made the early Upper Paleolithic artifacts at the site, which include animal tooth pendants, a stunning stone bracelet and a needle and other tools crafted from bone. The radiocarbon dates obtained from some of the pendants and bone tools put them at 43,000 to 49,000 years old. There are no known hominin remains of that age from the site—the youngest specimen is a Denisovan fossil that dates to between 52,000 and 76,000 years ago. Yet Douka, Higham and their colleagues think creators of these artifacts are likely to have been Denisovans. Neandertals appear to have checked out of the cave by around 80,000 years ago. A fossil from the site of Ust’ Ishim documents the presence of our species in western Siberia around 45,000 years ago, which is the right time for it to be the maker of these artifacts. But that site is hundreds of kilometers from Denisova. “Our Russian colleagues have rightfully argued that we have no modern human fossils at Denisova and no modern human DNA from Denisova sediments, so why invoke modern humans” to explain the onset of the Upper Paleolithic at the site, Douka says. “One might say that given [the Ust’ Ishim fossil], we should assume modern humans made the pendants and bone tools at Denisova, but we don’t have modern human fossils in the Altai at that time.” Higham adds: “It could be modern humans but the most parsimonious explanation for the moment is that it’s Denisovans.”
The suggestion Denisovans developed the Upper Paleolithic artifacts at the site bears on a hot topic in paleoanthropology: the origins of modern behavior and cognition. Once upon a time, archaeologists thought only H. sapiens made symbolic items such as jewelry and advanced technology such as standardized bone tools. Then discoveries in the 1970s ignited debate over whether Neandertals also might have invented such items. In recent years evidence has mounted in support of a more sophisticated Neandertal. For instance, last year researchers reported cave paintings in Spain pre-date the arrival of H. sapiens to the region by thousands of years and must therefore be Neandertals’ handiwork. Neandertals, however, are not the only archaic hominin species to show signs of advanced cognition: In 2015 archaeologists unveiled their discovery of a shell that was engraved with a geometric design some 500,000 years ago—long before the origin of modern humans or Neandertals—the implication being that an earlier human ancestor known from this time period, Homo erectus, must have been the designer.
Could Denisovans have independently developed modern cognitive capabilities, too? Archaeologist Francesco d’Errico of the University of Bordeaux in France, who was not involved in the new studies, contends the paucity of relevant archaeological material from the site and insufficient description of these remains “make it difficult to reach a firm conclusion.” But “I’m not against the idea,” he says. “I do not see why archaic hominins could have not invented personal ornamentation independently and repeatedly, and a lot of evidence from Europe is now supporting this view.”
No comments:
Post a Comment