What we learned from Homo erectus

From: glenn morton (mortongr@flash.net)
Date: Thu Jun 15 2000 - 17:20:57 EDT

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    For those who may not have heard, I am moving to Scotland. I have left most
    of the lists I was on because I don't have time to go through about 100
    e-mails a day and still get done what I want to do before my move. I am
    trying to catch up on my note taking before I go to Scotland. I may do a few
    more posts like this before I actually move. I won't respond to e-mails in
    reply to this.
    But I thought that maybe I should send a few of these to the evolution list
    which I left last Fall just to remind people who I am and that I am still
    alive.

      I am reading the book 'Fairweather Eden' by Michael Pitts and Mark
    Roberts. One of the things that is impressive in this book is the
    description of the life of Homo erectus circa 500,000 years ago at Boxgrove,
    England. They describe a site where 6 or 7 H. erecti sit around a dead horse
    and fashioned stone tools so that the horse could be butchered. It was an
    amazingly human sort of thing to do. In this post, the thing I want to
    emphasize is the invention of a particular style of stone tool manufacture
    by Homo erectus. It was this manufacturing technique that allowed modern
    humans to improve tremendously their skill in making stone tools. And it was
    this increase in technology that led eventually to the Neolithic and
    eventually to the Agricultural revolution.

    Most people unfamiliar with flint knapping (the making of stone tools) think
    that stone tools are primitive; that they are made by stupid people; and
    that they are easy to make. Nothing could be further from the truth--this is
    true even for the very earliest KNOWN stone tools made by men 2.6 million
    years ago. Much planning and foresight goes into the manufacture of a stone
    tool. One must plan each blow so that an acute angle is formed which will be
    suitable for cutting. The slightest screw up and the tool is no good. To
    make a stone tool one needs a hammer (which strikes the stone being turned
    into a tool). Often this hammer is another stone. But with the most
    sophisticated stone tools, like acheulean hand axes, arrow heads etc, one
    needs a soft hammer like bone or antler. These soft hammers each chip the
    stone in a unique fashion, leaving a flake whose shape can be analyzed to
    determine what kind of hammer produced it.

    I needed to tell you this because the decision of which kind of hammer to
    use in the manufacture of a stone tool and the decision of when to use it
    requires great planning and foresight. Once again, messing up means that the
    stone tool is useless. Pitts and Roberts state:

    "This was no surprise, as knappers had been saying this was the case for
    many years--although it was perhaps the clearest demonstration of the fact
    yet presented. The most significant features were the presence or absence of
    a point of percussion (common on hard hammer flakes, rare on soft) and the
    surface area relative to flake thickness (soft flakes were wide and
    thin)--see fig 42. But what was especially interesting was that the flakes
    from handaxes finished with bone or antler were also distinguishable from
    each other. And furthermore, the flakes from the First Handaxe Trench[at
    Boxgrove], which were clearly struck with a soft hammer, looked as if they
    might have been made with bone.
        "This was the first substantial demonstration that soft hammers had been
    regularly used as much as half a million years ago. And as Francis wrote in
    the publication of the project that eventually appeared in 1989, there might
    be implications for the intellectual processes of early hominids. It could
    not be assumed that suitable bone or antler for making hammers would be just
    lying about at the very moment they were needed to make a handaxe, implying
    that a little future planning was necessary: a soft hammer would likely have
    been made at some time before it was needed, and then kept. 'Once this level
    of planning is reached in any one activity', wrote Francis, 'it is
    reasonable to expect planning and organisation to be occurring in all
    aspects of the life-style.'" "And then, right at the end of November 1994,
    seven years after two of his former excavation supervisors sat down and made
    handaxes to prove that a Boxgrove creature had once used a hammer of bone or
    antler, Mark, with a beaming face and booming voice, held out some scraps of
    bone to attentive audiences in London. They were, he said, by around 400,000
    years the world's oldest bone hammers. They had been used to make handaxes
    and this implied something about the way the hominids thought." Michael
    Pitts and Mark Roberts, Fairweather Eden, (New York: Fromm International,
    1997), p. 220-221

    This planning ability--the ability to see a future need is far beyond the
    abilities of a chimpanzee. They can't seem to plan more than 20 minutes in
    advance. As I pointed out in my article 'Planning Ahead: Requirement for
    Moral Accountability,' in Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith,
    51(1999):3:176-180, such ability to foresee consequences is absolutely
    essential for moral accountability. If we are to be morally accountable, we
    need to be able to see the consequences of our actions far into the future.
    The soft hammers used at Boxgrove show that Homo erectus was capable of
    planning actions at a future time.

    1.5 million years ago, Homo erectus was capable of planning his life days in
    advance. They made hundreds of rare obsidian handaxes at one place and then
    carried them 100 kilometers away so that they could be used at Gadeb,
    Ethiopia! That is a 3-4 day march carrying heavy obsidian handaxes. A
    creature with this type of temporal planning would be capable of
    understanding the moral command "You are free to eat from any tree in the
    garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and
    evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."

    Look at what else H. erectus invented. I will post part of my web
    page, chron.htm, to give you the dates. But H. erectus invented (and we
    still use) woodworking, engraving, clothing, jewelry, art, masonry, altars,
    counting, spears, boomerangs, mineral collection, the domestication of the
    dog, boats, fire, bedding, tanning hides, ritual dismemberment of human
    remains, the artistic portrayal of the human face, and huts for habitation
    With a list like that, if we had to pay on patents for those inventions, we
    would all be poor indeed. Here is the list (a.H. s.= archaic Homo sapiens):

    240 kyr upper Paleolithic blade tools Kenya ?
    240-700 kyr woodworking Gesher Benot Ya'aqov Homo
    erectus
    250 kyr Invention of Mousterian tools Vaufry Cave, France ?
    300 kyr geometric engraving Pech de l'Aze Homo
    erectus
    300 kyr Siberia inhabited-clothing needed Diring Yuriakh ?
    300 kyr jewelry various Homo
    erectus
    330 kyr Depiction of human form Berekhat Ram, Israel Homo
    erectus/a.H.s
    >350 kyr Oldest rock engraving Bhimbetka, India a.H.s/Homo
    erectus
    >350 kyr stone wall Bhimbetka, India a.H.s/Homo
    erectus
    3-400 kyr Scalping Bodo,Ethiopia Homo
    erectus
    3-400 kyr European huts Bilzingsleben,Germany Homo
    erectus
    3-400 kyr sacrificial altar Bilzingsleben,Germany Homo
    erectus
    3-400 kyr oldest evidence of counting Bilzingsleben,Germany Homo
    erectus
    400 kyr wooden spears Schoningen, Germany Homo
    erectus
    400 kyr 3 component composite tools Schoningen, Germany Homo
    erectus
    400 kyr tools made by other tools Schoningen, Germany Homo
    erectus
    400 kyr wooden boomerang Schoningen, Germany Homo
    erectus
    500 kyr mineral collection Zhoukoudian, China Homo
    erectus
    500 kyr dog domestication Zhoukoudian, China Homo
    erectus
    500 kyr Asian fire Zhoukoudian, China Homo
    erectus
    700 kyr Asian over ocean travel Flores, Indonesia Homo
    erectus
    750 kyr European fire Escale Cave, France Homo
    erectus
    800-900 kyr Homo erectus bedding Wonderwork Cave, S. A. Homo
    erectus
    970 kyr European structure Soleihac Cave Homo
    erectus?
    1.0 MYR tanning hides Swartkrans, S. Africa Homo
    erectus
    1.4 MYR ritual dismemberment of Human Sterkfontein, S.Africa Homo
    erectus
    1.5 MYR evidence of fire use Swartkrans S. Africa H.
    erectus A.robustus
    1.5 MYR woodworking Koobi Fora, Kenya Homo
    erectus
    1.6 MYR Man-made representational art Olduvai Gorge Homo
    erectus?
    1.6 MYR working with animal hides Swartkrans A.
    robustus
    1.6 MYR bone tool Swartkrans A.
    robustus
    1.7 MYR Human compassion East Africa Homo
    erectus
    1.9 MYR Right-handedness Koobi Fora Homo
    erectus
    1.9 MYR Stones Thrown as Weapons Olduvai Gorge,Tanzania Homo
    habilis
    1.95 MYR Larynx capable of Speech Africa Homo
    erectus
    2.0 MYR Brain structure for Language Lake Rudolf Homo
    habilis
    2.0 MYR Windbreak structure Olduvai Homo
    erectus
    2.0 MYR Oldest Toothpick use Ethiopia Homo
    erectus

    So the next time you use a toothpick, remember your ancestor, H. erectus who
    invented it. And he doesn't even ask for royalties. And in spite of this,
    many Christian apologists want to say that he was not human and that
    spiritual man could not be older than 60,000 years. Why? I don't know. I
    have never been able to get anyone to tell me what theologian determined
    that the Bible could accomodate a 60,000 year old Adam but fail to
    accommodate a 60,001 year old Adam! Does anyone here know of what theologian
    made that rather dubious claim and what is the reference?

    glenn

    Foundation, Fall and Flood
    Adam, Apes and Anthropology
    http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm

    Lots of information on creation/evolution



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