Two million year old find!

Is that a trick question?

How has archaeology misled you?

Is it just me or am I not getting what is so sensational to all of you about this find. Yes, so it may put the use of tools some few thousand years back than we thought... a few thousand years, when the time range is 2 million years, isn't that GREAT of a deal.
Anyway, as always, every find in archaeology makes the whole picture in the puzzle of human history more complete.

Actually we have found very advanced beings that lived here millions and hundreds of thousands of years ago. The hominids. Yup, our ancestors.
Do you know what a huge leap from the rest of the creatures on Earth it was to walk upright, discover how to make a fire, learn how to make and use tools, learn that if they stayed together in bands and had a division of labor their odds of survival would be greater?

I call that amazingly advanced.

The stones are reported to have been found in caves and stream beds. Because they are rocks and contain no organic material, Carbon-14 dating cannot be used. No other method of radiometric dating has been applied to the stones. Because the supposed locations of their alleged discovery have not been disclosed, it is impossible to estimate their age based on nearby geological strata. Furthermore, even a confirmation of the rocks' age would not prove that the engravings upon them had not been produced at a later date.

Neil Steede, an archaeologist who was investigating the Ica stones for The Mysterious Origins of Man (a film which attempted to make the case that humans had existed far earlier than previously thought), said that he found no patina on the engravings but that the rocks themselves showed patina, suggesting that the engravings are indeed younger than the rocks

In 1998, Spanish investigator Vicente Paris declared after four years of investigation that the evidence indicates that the stones are a hoax. Among the proofs presented by this investigator were microphotographs of the stones that showed traces of modern paints and abrasives. The strongest evidence of fraud as claimed is the crispness of the shallow engravings; stones of great age should have substantial erosion of the surfaces.

reply to post by haika

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I would think that is obvious - would be fairly difficult to engrave on magma.

Anyway, this is now going off topic and if there is an issue with Ica stones then a separate thread should be created for that debate.

OP - good post and looking forward to future developments on this.

While I agree, it is far tooooooooo early to start the high fiving, eh?

C'mon.. lets not get overwhelmed by something until it is overwhelming. The article is short and alone. (I've only read the thread so far!!) Need more info.


/not learning lesson to read entire thread before replying..

I've called the McGregor Museum in Kimberley who oversee the digs in the area - I was hard to get hold of anybody in the Archaeology Department as they are all on site or on summer vacation, but I did speak to a staff member who said that more info will be available early next year - ill keep at it

Click here for more information.

reply to post by Evisscerator

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Carbon dating would not be used. Please read the entire thread before you go calling other people idiots.

Lol...... you are killing me...haha... I've been sick all day (sinusinfection) but at least now I'm sick and smiling

Well I'll try to get back on topic (stops rolling on floor and wipes smile of face) I think the find is great, but I wish some more info would be available (and am hoping discovery channel plans a series on this)

Joe,

Since you're new here, you probably haven't had much chance to look around.

I suggest you use the search function here on any of these "bits of evidence" that you believe indicate any advanced knowledge in ancient times.

I believe you'll find that in fact, they indicate no such thing.

For example, the foundation at Baalbek was installed by the Romans.



Actually, no. Any ancient precursor to Homo Sapiens that has the designation "Homo" is rightly referred to as human.

H. Sapiens did not occupy this cave.


Not likely, since this find fits quite well into the current timeline.


You must be talking about the timeline for civilization here.

What has that got to do with a cave and the artifacts left in it by a subspecies of Homo Erectus?



I'm puzzled about why this intrigues you. The information about what dating methods could be used has already been posted twice in this thread.


Saidar,

Please list some of these other dating methods that "can't and never will be accurate..."

My bet is that you're not even aware of a single other method.

If you were, you'd know that several methods don't even rely on any radioactive material at all.



Do you, by chance, possess a stone hammer?

Why don't you put it in your backyard, sit and stare at it, and get back to us when it deteriorates away into nothing.

Harte

[edit on 19-12-2008 by Byrd]

Howdy Harte




I do, I do!

Well I do and it looks pretty much like other rocks - rather nicely made thou, made out of felsic and 16 centimeters in lenght. Pick it up as a surface find in the discarded debris of an early work done on a Bronze age site near the Ebla site at Tell Mardikh.

And it doesn't look a day over 50,000

Please stay on topic...

Some of you may have noticed I've been busy with the skittles. As I keep posting, we have wonderful threads on all the other topic drift here.

Let's keep this one to "what they found in a cave in South Africa" and things about the cave and the geology, please.

reply to post by survival

Hopefully they make a good decision upon releasing some, if not all of it.

Well they better release all information, who cares if they offend organized religion?

reply to post by star in a jar

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I suspect that organized religion will be able to withstand the finding of more stone tools. It'll be tough for them but I'm sure they'll carry on.

Well, they always seem to carry on regardless of how preposterous they look, anyhow. It will just be a little bit more evidence on top of the mountain of evidence that already exists.
The suprise for me was the use of tools, that early in hominid development. I'm sure these people weren't the first to use them, either. But as someone already said, it is a huge leap in evolution to start abstracting concepts, like making instruments to use to do jobs better.
Evolution is an incredible thing, and it's an incredible world we live in: look at us now with space travel and computers and medicines and time and genetics. We just need how to work out how to manufacture love, and it will be great.

[edit on 19-12-2008 by cruzion]

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With so few human artifacts going back this far, if the dating is accurate, this is an important piece of the very big puzzle of when humans started doing things differently from animals.

The accuracy of the attributed age may be of some concern, no dating given the context is wholly reliable. To put this in context for the anti-science types, police proecdural dating for human remains even only a few days old can also be open to question.

A question that comes out of all this for me, is how intelligent by our standards these early humans might have been. My own inclination would be they were as intelligent as we (some of us) are today, capapble of self-awareness, reflection, etc.

But moving forward in organizing, co-operating, and modifying their own environment had to wait for breakthroughs like the use of tools, agriculture, construction of shelter, etc.

We have seen this in out time when biologically modern men are still functioning on technologically primitive planes in remote parts of the world.
But anthropologists show they have developed amazingly complex systems of inter-relationships and communication.

Unfortunately, looking at the past, we can only exmine pieces of bone, stone, metal, that have been shaped with intention, to give us evidence.



Mike F