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Humans started to develop tools at same time, didn’t just learn from others?

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From ScienceDaily:

The study, published today in the journal Science, examines thousands of stone artifacts retrieved from Nor Geghi 1, a unique site preserved between two lava flows dated to 200,000-400,000 years ago. Layers of floodplain sediments and an ancient soil found between these lava flows contain the archaeological material. The dating of volcanic ash found within the sediments and detailed study of the sediments themselves allowed researchers to correlate the stone tools with a period between 325,000 and 335,000 years ago when Earth’s climate was similar to today’s.

The stone tools provide early evidence for the simultaneous use of two distinct technologies: biface technology, commonly associated with hand axe production during the Lower Paleolithic, and Levallois technology, a stone tool production method typically attributed to the Middle Stone Age in Africa and the Middle Paleolithic in Eurasia. Traditionally, Archaeologists use the development of Levallois technology and the disappearance of biface technology to mark the transition from the Lower to the Middle Paleolithic roughly 300,000 years ago.

Archaeologists have argued that Levallois technology was invented in Africa and spread to Eurasia with expanding human populations, replacing local biface technologies in the process. This theory draws a link between populations and technologies and thus equates technological change with demographic change. The co-existence of the two technologies at Nor Geghi 1 provides the first clear evidence that local populations developed Levallois technology out of existing biface technology.

“The combination of these different technologies in one place suggests to us that, about 325,000 years ago, people at the site were innovative,” says Daniel Adler, associate professor of Anthropology at the University of Connecticut, and the study’s lead author.

Humans are like that. Innovative. It is why animal rights and other save-the-planet orgs are so focused on getting rid of them.

Also: Sounds like intelligence, not just an illusion of intelligence (because it made a difference).

See also: Early human religion: A 747 built in the basement with an X-Acto knife

and

Neuroscience tried wholly embracing naturalism, but then the brain got away

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Comments
Human made tools for detecting intelligent design have been around for millennia. Tools for detecting unguided Darwinian processes, not so much.Mung
September 29, 2014
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