One item in the anthropological record that Christians dealing with fossil
men must come to grips with is the implications of stone tool manufacture
has for the intelligence of the stone tool maker. We must also come to grips
with who made the first stone tools--members of our genus (Homo) or were
Australopithecines the first stone-tool makers? As shown below, the earliest
stone tools are now dated at 2.5-2.6 million years old and the
sophistication of the tools leads researchers to believe that the real
origin of stone tool-making is several hundred thousand years prior to this
time. That would place the tools squarely into a time before there were any
members of our genus on earth. There is an interesting paper that will be
given at the upcoming Paleoanthropological Society meeting which discusses
how widespread toolmaking was 2.5-2.6 million years ago--something we didn't
know of 5 years ago when I began advocating that human moral accountability
has been on earth for several million years. The first part of the abstract
reads:
Further 2.5-2.6 million year old artifacts, new Plio-Pleistocene
archaeological sites and hominid discoveries of 1999 from Gona, Ethiopia.
S. Semaw1, K. Schick1, N. Toth1, M.J. Rogers2, J. Quade3, S.W. Simpson4, M.
Dominguez-Rodrigo5.
1CRAFT, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, U.S.A.
2Anthropology, Southern Connecticut State College, New Haven, CT, U.S.A.
3Geosciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, U.S.A.
4Anatomy, CWRU-Medicine, Cleveland, OH, U.S.A.
5Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
"The team of scientists organized under the Gona Palaeoanthropological
Research Project (GPRP) continued field research in Ethiopia. Fieldwork was
reinitiated in 1999 with the large multidisciplinary group organized from
CRAFT, Indiana University. Our systematic survey resulted in the discovery
of numerous 2.5-2.6 Ma artifact localities within the Kada Gona, Ounda Gona,
Dana Aoule and Busidima drainages. Excavations carried out at some of these
localities have led to the recovery of in situ artifacts and associated
fauna. The oldest artifacts well-dated to 2.5-2.6 Ma were originally
documented from East and West Gona. The discovery of equally old localities
in areas like Dana Aoule and Busidima which are 10 km away from Kada Gona
imply that the first tool makers ranged in a wider area over the ancient
landscape. Preliminary observations of the raw materials available in the
conglomerates associated with the new localities (eg. at Ounda Gona)
indicate that the hominids preferentially selected large-size and
finer-grained cobbles for making artifacts. A wider variety of finer raw
materials was utilized for making the artifacts documented at the new
localities compared to East Gona, where trachyte was the most preferred
type. In addition, more bifacial and multifacial flaking was observed on the
artifacts documented from the new 2.5-2.6 Ma localities. "
http://www.paleoanthro.org/asbt2001.htm
accessed 1/24/00
This selection of stone type is clearly very sophisticated. Kalb notes this
when discussing the Gona discoveries of the past few years:
“Semaw’s concerns about Gona were understandable, because the site had in
fact produced the oldest stone tools known, dated securely at between 2.5
and 2.6 million years at the prospering Berkeley Geochronology Center. The
presence of artifacts at Gona, and the IHO discovery of artifacts and the
Homo jaw dated at 2.3 million years at upper Hadar, suggest that the first
appearance of humans and stone tool manufacturing is still at least several
hundred thousand years earlier than present evidence allows. Semaw and his
colleagues cite the sophisticated understanding of rock breakage that
characterizes the Gona technology, implying that the hominids living there
2.5 to 2.6 million years ago ‘were not novices to lithic technology,’ and
thus,’ even older artifacts will be found.’” Jon Kalb, Adventures in the
Bone Trade, (New York: Copernicus Books [Springer-Verlag], 2001), p. 298-299
What are the implications of stone tool manufacture? Many. In order to make
a stone tool, the maker must understand rock fracture mechanics--not the
math but from a practical level.
1. One needs to know that finer-grained stones make sharper cutting
surfaces.
2. One must know how to use a tool to make a tool--something at this moment
that only mankind is known to engage in(T. Wynn and W. C. McGrew, "An Ape's
View of the Oldowan," Man, 24:383-398, p. 389). McGrew notes:
"While we cannot watch Oldowan tools being made, we can identify some of
the steps in procedure. Two are of special interest because they appear on
the surface to be sophisticated: selectivity of raw material and the use of
tools to make tools. In the Oldowan assemblages from Olduvai Gorge there is
a marked tendency of the smaller tools to be made of quartz and quartzite
and for the larger tools to be made of lava. The quartz and quartzite had
to be carried for a distance of at least two kilometres. Thus, it seems
that for reasons unknown the tool-users selected certain kinds of raw
material for certain kinds of tools. this in turn implies a certain amount
of foresight and suggests that tool-use was not entirely spur-of-the-moment.
The knappers also needed to use stone hammers to make the flaked stone
tools; in other words they used tools to make other tools. This striking
point has achieved some notoriety in discussions of the evolution of
intelligence and has become a kind of threshold marker dividing ape from
human technology." ~ T. Wynn and W. C. McGrew, "An Ape's View of the
Oldowan," Man, 24:383-398, p. 389
3. One needs to know where and how to strike the stone:
"To manufacture them, you need only choose a pebble or a flint nodule of the
proper shape and chip it by means of several blows with a hammer applied
perpendicularly to the flat surfaces. But as simple as the procedure is, it
is very much beyond what a monkey could do. As soon as the worker must turn
the stone around to chip the other surfaces, he must make a judgment. In
choosing the places to hit to create a point, the worker must possess a real
sense of the structure of matter and be able to control the force of the
blows; in a word, he must have foresight.
"Let's imagine that today all technical knowledge were to be suddenly lost
and that men had to start again. They would probably need several centuries
to rediscover the use of flint; then, for generations, they would be able to
make only the objects that can be fashioned without too much apprenticeship,
that is, Clactonian flakes; then they would come to choppers, finally to
discover the excellent cutting properties of the biface." ~ Andre Leroi
Gourhan, The Hunters of Prehistory, transl. Claire Jacobson, (New York:
Atheneum, 1989), p. 69-70
4. one needs to understand consequences, which means they must understand
cause and effect.
While people think it is easy to bang stones together and make a lovely
stone tool, it just isn't that way at all. One mistake and the stone tool is
useless. One must understand that if you strike the stone near a fracture,
the stone might split in two or if you strike it at the wrong angle, the
wrong cuttng edge will be made. To make a stone tool takes foresight, an
ability to plan ahead, knowledge of rock mechanics, and then on top of that,
an ability to keep in one's mind the purpose for which you are making the
silly tool in the first place be it for cutting down a sapling or for
killing an animal. One must have enough of a memory to know PURPOSE. All of
these abilities are way beyond that of the ape. Someone who can manufacture
such a tool has the ability to understand moral commands and consequences.
And this is the serious implication of ancient stone tool manufacture--moral
accountability was possible among the hominids demonstrably as long ago as
2.5 million years. I advocate that such intelligence was on earth even
longer ago--and most authorities believe it was--just not as long ago as I
want it to be. However, During my lifetime we have gone from the oldest
hominids being dated at 500,000 years to 5.2 million years and the oldest
stone tools have gone from 500,000 years to 2.5 myr. I wonder what the next
life time will bring.
glenn
see http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/dmd.htm
for lots of creation/evolution information
anthropology/geology/paleontology/theology\
personal stories of struggle
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