Excavation Sites Show Distinct Living Areas Early in Stone Age

December 21, 2009

Archaeology is not only a search for the possessions, skills and beliefs of ancient cultures. It is also about living spaces.

Recent excavations in Israel appear to show that Stone Age ancestors began at a surprisingly early stage to organize their open-air living spaces into separate clusters for different activities. One area was primarily for preparing and eating food and another, more than 25 feet away, for most of their manufacturing of stone tools.

Archaeologists who reported the findings last week in the journal Science said that having the discrete areas for different activities indicated “a formalized conceptualization of a living space, often considered to reflect sophisticated cognition.”

And the surprise, they said, was to find the evidence for it at an encampment that was occupied as early as 790,000 years ago. Such living and working patterns were previously thought to be associated only with modern Homo sapiens and thus a behavior that emerged in the last 200,000 years.

www.nytimes.com...

Stone Tools
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/fd618e8eded5.jpg[/atsimg]

Why wouldn't there be ancient civilizations who used tools and were organized, we can't assume they were just hunters and gatherers, they still don't know for sure but I imagine they will find more proof has time goes on, what interest me is ancient technology, think that there have been many civilizations much more advanced then ours who have destroyed themselves like we are doing today.

[edit on 23-12-2009 by Aquarius1]

(ex tags- fixed link)

[edit on Thu Dec 24 2009 by Jbird]

Very interesting read, thanks for sharing it.
I personally believe we as a species became advanced in many thing's much farther than the current science supplies as evidence.
If there was any verifiable evidence towards the fact that we had evolved more technologically, and with the area of this particular discovery was located, may help to get to an absolute of how the Egyptians may have built the pyramids, but places like Palanque'[Pa-lank-ae] (SP?), that's a whole other story.
Good thread S&F by me!!

Related:

Tools Give Earlier Date For ‘modern-Thinking’ Humans
ScienceDaily (Nov. 3, 2008) — An international team, including Oxford University archaeologists, has dated two explosions of sophisticated stone tool making in southern Africa much more precisely than has previously been possible.

www.sciencedaily.com...

A Howieson's Poort segment from Ntolana Tsoana, in Lesotho, made in opaline, a fine-grained flint-like rock. Recent work suggests such artefacts would have been fitted into wooden or possibly bone handles. A variety of designs are possible, for example putting several of them in series to form an extended cutting edge, using them to barb spears or possibly to arm arrows.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/f0247e51167e.jpg[/atsimg]

How Modern Were European Neanderthals?
ScienceDaily (Aug. 28, 2006) — Neandertals were much more like modern humans than had been previously thought, according to a re-examination of finds from one of the most famous palaeolithic sites in Europe by Bristol University archaeologist, Professor Joao Zilhao, and his French colleagues.

www.sciencedaily.com...[

Image of personal ornaments (pierced fox canines) from the Chatelperronian culture
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/2d38d1a2c05c.jpg[/atsimg]

There are many artifacts out there, above are just a few.

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[edit on Thu Dec 24 2009 by Jbird]