One of the valid criticisms of my view has concerned the lack of cultural
remains found in times earlier than when the genus Homo first appeared,
around 2.4 million years ago. In the recent years, this gap has begun to
disappear. Tools have been found at African sites such as Gona, Ethiopia,
as old as 2.6 million years, with only Australopithecus being present. This
raises the possibility that a being not of our genus, much less our species,
was making and useing stone tools.
One of the interesting things about these finds is the light they shed on
the mental capacities of these early hominids. First, obviously, these
creatures had the ability to know that stones could be fashioned into tools.
Secondly, they had more knowledge of rock mechanics than chimpanzees are
able to master. Toth tried to teach a bonobo, Kanzi, how to make stone
tools. Kanzi never mastered the ability to strike the stone tool at the
optimum angle for the maufacture of a sharp edge. He took to smashing stones
on the floor and looking for sharp flakes produced by accident. But the
early tool maker from 2.6 million years ago had the knowledge as his tools
are not made by accident.(Ian Tattersall, The Fossil Trail (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1995), p.207; Kathy D. Schick and Nicholas Toth, Making
Silent Stones Speak, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993), p. 136)
Secondly, it meant that the creature had to know WHERE to find appropriate
rocks and what rocks were suitable for making stone tools and which weren't.
Limestone is not good for making stone tools. Neither is sandstone. Thus,
this being 2.6 million years ago needed to be able to tell the difference
between igneous and other fine grained rocks and coarse sandstones,
conglomberates and limestone--thus he was the first primitive mineralogist.
Thirdly, these beings acted like you and I do in the presence of
abundance--they are wasteful in the presence of abundance. One sees great
outdoor fountains in rainy areas but rarely in dry deserts where water is
precious. I will cite Heinzelin et al,
"At the nearby Gona site, abundant Oldowan tools were made and discarded
immediately adjacent to cobble conglomberates that offered excellent, easily
accessible raw materials for stone-tool manufacture. It has been suggested
that the surprisingly advanced character of this earliest Oldowan technology
was conditioned by the ease of access to appropriate fine-grained raw
materials at Gona. Along the Karari escarpmetn at Koobi Fora, the basin
margin at Fejej, and the lake margin at Olduvai Gorge, hominids also had
easy access to nearby outcrops of raw material. In contrast, the diminutive
nature of the Oldowan assemblages in the lower Omo [made on tiny quartz
pebbles] was apparently conditioned by a lack of available large clasts."
Jean de Heinzelin et al, "Environment and Behavior of 2.5-Million-Year-Old
Bouri Hominids" Science 284(1999):629
Fourthly, there is evidence of great planning abilities and forethought,
which is the most important trait we can find in these hominids because it
is precisely this which allows us to follow moral commands (see Morton, G.
R. (1999) Planning Ahead: Requirement for Moral Accountability, Perspectives
on Science and Christian Faith, 51:3:176-179 )
When the Bouri hominids, that Hinzelin et al are describing and which are of
the same age as the Gona hominids, are faced with scarcity, their behavior
is different in a typically human way. There are no great heaps of thrown
away tools at Bouri, just an occasional tool. Yet we know that they were
using stone tools to butcher animals because they left cut marks on the
bones. Heinzelin et al write:
"The situation on the Hata lake margin was even more difficult for early
toolmakers. Here raw materials were not readily available because of the
absence of streams capable of carrying even pebbles. THere were no nearby
basalt outcrops. The absence of locally available raw material on the flat
featureless Hata lake margin may explain the absence of lithic artifact
concentrations. The bone modification evidence demonstrates that early
hominids were transporting stone to the site of carcass manipulation. The
paucity of evidence for lithic artifact abandonment at these sites suggests
that these early hominids may have been curating their tools (cores and
flakes) with foresight for subsequent use. Indications of tool curation by
later hominids have been found at the more recent Pleistocene sites of Koobi
Fora [Karari escarpment versus Ileret] and Swartkrans [polished bone tools
in a single repository]." Jean de Heinzelin et al, "Environment and Behavior
of 2.5-Million-Year-Old Bouri Hominids" Science 284(1999):629
Of this area Berger writes:
“Ghari, which means ‘surprise’ in the Afar dialect, is the latest ape-man
form to have been discovered. Unearthed by Tim White in 1997 near the
village of Bouri in the Middle Awash region northeast of Addis Ababa, ghari
appears to be more advanced than afarensis. The description of the
fragmentary skull and upper jaw still have to be published, but from
preliminary accounts, ghari displays a mixture of gracile and robust
characteristics; and from the size of its teeth, it seems more closely
related to africanus rather than afarensis. The intriguing aspect of ghari,
which has been dated to 2.5 million years ago---and possibly the factor that
surprised White—is that it has been found in association with stone tools,
long thought to be an invention of Homo. These tools, made from rocks not
found at Bouri, may have been carried from Gona, 59 miles away. Gona is the
site of the world’s earliest known stone tools, dating back 2.6 million
years. Until the ghari findings are published, however, it would be idle
speculation to suggest that this species was the first toolmaker or even, as
some researchers are suggesting, the ape-man that gave rise to Homo.” Lee R.
Berger, and Brett Hilton-Barber, In the Footsteps of Eve, (Washington, D.
C.: National Geographic Press, 2000), p.36-37
Berger misspells Garhi consistently, and the garhi findings were published
last year in the article I am citing and from Asfaw, et al,
"Australopithecus garhi: A New Speicies of Early Hominid from Ethiopia."
Science 284(1999), pp 629-635
If these creatures, whoever it is, were carrying tools 59 kilometers, that
is about a 2 day walk and means that the creature could plan 2 days in
advance. For comparison, a chimp can plan only about 20 minutes ahead. That
is the longest time they have been observed carrying a stone with which to
break open coula nuts. Clearly the people living 2.5 million years ago, were
far away more advanced than a chimp. And given their ability to plan ahead
for at least 2 days, it strongly implies that they would have understood
consequences (i.e. make tool, carry tool to Bouri lake, kill animal, use
tool to butcher animal) They didn't miss sight of the consequence of
killing the animal and then going to Gona to make a tool and come back with
it to butcher the animal. The animal would have been eaten or rotted by the
time they came back.
The fact that they carried their tools away with them means that they
understood the consequence of not having the tool and planned ahead for
future kills.
Interestingly, the only creature found at Bouri, was Australopithecus
garhi--a creature not of our species but whose hands were very human like in
their abilities:
“This new Australopithecus hand seems, like that of the modern human, to be
relatively unspecialized in that it has a short palm and fingers compared
with those of apes.” Ron Clark, “Discovery of Complete Arm and Hand of the
3.3 Million-Year-Old Australopithecus Skeleton From Sterkfontein,” South
African Journal of Science, 95(1999):477-480, p. 480
What is the importance of this planning ahead? It implies that this
creature, one we don't even allow into our genus, was capable of
understanding moral imperatives and the consequences of not obeying a
command of God. I have long argued that Adam was much longer ago than most
theologians want to accept. Here is evidence that a creature existed 2.5-2.6
million years ago who could manufacture complex tools, who could plan
ahead, who could act like a human in response to plenty, and who could
understand consequences be they physical or moral. What more is needed to be
able to call this creature, Man (or Adam in the Hebrew)?
glenn
see http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
for lots of creation/evolution information
anthropology/geology/paleontology/theology\
personal stories of struggle
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