{"id":3175,"date":"2020-04-18T08:38:55","date_gmt":"2020-04-18T13:38:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/?p=3175"},"modified":"2020-04-18T08:38:57","modified_gmt":"2020-04-18T13:38:57","slug":"some-new-discoveries-that-demonstrate-that-our-stone-age-ancestors-werent-the-dumb-brutes-we-like-to-picture-them-as","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/2020\/04\/18\/some-new-discoveries-that-demonstrate-that-our-stone-age-ancestors-werent-the-dumb-brutes-we-like-to-picture-them-as\/","title":{"rendered":"Some new discoveries that demonstrate that our Stone Age ancestors weren’t the dumb brutes we like to picture them as."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Our Stone Age ancestors, often dismissively referred to as ‘Cave Men’ are usually portrayed in movies and TV as being hardly more intelligent than the animals they hunted, or were hunted by. Little by little however archaeologists are uncovering evidence that Stone Age peoples were capable of flashes of genius in solving the problems they faced despite their lack of resources or tools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Our Stone Age ancestors certainly had it rough but they still possessed technology way beyond that of any animal they completed with! (Credit: Wikipedia)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Finding food is of course the biggest problem any animal faces and a large part of the success of our species, Homo sapiens is the wide variety of different kinds of food we eat, and that includes seafood. Think about it, what are we, an ape scarcely out of the jungle trees doing eating not only fish but clams and mussels, squid and even whale meat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We humans enjoy a wide variety of food from the oceans, lakes and rivers. No other primate consumes such an abundance of seafood which begs the question, when did we start? (Credit: Miss Vicki Pressure Cooker)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Over the last several decades anthropologists have even developed the hypothesis that it was learning how to make use of the food resources they found along the coast of West Africa that spurred a small population of Homo erectus to become H sapiens. There has even been speculation that the brain boosting fatty acids in the seafood those H erectus ate might have contributed to the growth of the larger brains of their descendants, that’s us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Homo erectus is generally considered to be our direct ancestor. Was it learned to live off of seafood that turned them into us? (Credit: Ancient News)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Nice\nidea, but there’s new evidence coming from the field that is starting to show\nthat other species of humans were also learning how to feast off of the bounty\nof the sea. I’m talking about our cousins the Neanderthals in Europe as much as\n106,000 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new evidence comes from a cave site along the southern coast of Portugal at Figueira Brava near the town of Setubal. The interior of the cave has been excavated by a team of archaeologists led by Doctor Jo\u0103o Zilh\u0103o from the University of Barcelona in Spain. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The cave complex at Figueira Brava in Portugal. It’s easy to see that any inhabitants would be likely to start eating some of the food right on their doorstep. (Credit: CNN.com) <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Those excavations have unearthed the bones and other indigestible remains of the animals that the Neanderthals were eating. Those remains clearly show that the Neanderthals were not only hunting the local land fauna of deer, goats, ancient cattle and even horses but were also catching and consuming large amounts mussels, crabs and such fish as eels and sharks! Even the bones of sea mammals like seals and dolphins were discovered in the garbage piles left by the Neanderthals. In fact Doctor Zilh\u0103o and his team estimate that just about half of the diet of the inhabitants of Figueira Brava was in fact seafood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Patella vulgata shells, a kind of edible snail from the cave at Figueira Brava. (Credit: CNN)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Cracked crab claws from the cave. (Credit: CNN)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So it seems as if our direct ancestors were not the only humans smart enough to realize the enormous benefits to be gained from dinning off of seafood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another recent discovery that also demonstrates the intelligence of Neanderthals is the unearthing of the earliest known piece of string from a site in Abri du Maras in southern France. According to the study co-authored by Marie-H\u0115l\u0115ne Moncel, Director of Research of the French Nation Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) the string fragment is dated to between 41,000 and 52,000 years ago. Composed of fibers from the inner bark of a conifer tree the section measures 6.2mm in length by 0.5mm in maximum width.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fragment of string that’s over 40,000 years old. (Credit: Phys.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The string fragment is more than just a few fibers twisted together however. In fact the fragment consists of three separate twisted cords that have been interwoven together, indicating a considerable level of experience in textile production. But more than that the fragment also indicates a considerable knowledge of available natural resources since the fibers come from the inner part of the bark of a tree that, according to botanists, is best obtained during the spring or early summer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The discovery of this single strand of cord opens up the possibility that Neanderthals may have made extensive use of textiles, perhaps to manufacture bags, nets, ropes, mats or perhaps even cloth? In any case this, oldest piece of string provides further evidence that Neanderthals were anything but brutish animals.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moving a bit forward in time, to about 25,000 years ago we begin to see the first evidence for actual construction projects by human beings. Some of the most interesting sites come the fertile steppes of Russia south east of Moscow. Here Stone Age hunter-gatherers lived off of one of the largest and most dangerous animals ever pursued by humans, woolly mammoths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There is plenty of evidence that our Stone Age ancestors did in fact hunt the massive and dangerous Wholly Mammoth. (Credit: The Vintage News)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We know that our ancestors hunted those ice age relatives of elephants because they had the curious habit of building circular walls out of the bones of the mammoths they killed. In a paper published in the journal Antiquity a team led by Alexander Dudin of the Kostenki Museum-Preserve describes the latest, and largest of these mammoth bone structures. Unearthed about 500 kilometers south of Moscow at a site known as Kostenki 11, the ring measures more than 12 meters across and was made from the bones of at least 60 of the huge beasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The ring of Mammoth bones at Kostenki 11. (Credit: New York Times)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Because\nthe other mammoth bone structures found across Eastern Europe are smaller than\nthe new one at Kostenki scientists had speculated that the circular walls had\nonce possessed roofs and were used as shelters by the people who made them. At\n12 meters across however the mammoth bone circle at Kostenki is too large to be\neasily roofed in, leaving the researchers to think of some other possible usage\nfor the structure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whatever\npurpose the hunter-gatherers may have had when they built the structures like\nKostenki the fact that they did so clearly shows that like modern humans they\nfelt the need to adapt their environment to suit their needs by building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While\nit’s true that the earliest structures we humans built were probably used as\ndwelling places there is evidence that by 7000 years ago people were already\nlearning how to build other types of structures as well. Archaeologists in the\nCzech Republic have recently discovered a well that they assert is the oldest\nknown wooden structure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a study co-authored by Jaroslav Pe\u0161ka head of the Archaeological Centre in Olomouc the well is described as being built in a square shape some 80 cm to a side and 140 cm in height. Each corner of the square consisted of a vertical oaken tree trunk that had been grooved on its sides to allow flat wooden planks, also oak, to be inserted between them to make the square’s sides. This degree of woodworking ability particularly impressed the researchers. “The shape of the individual structural elements and tool marks preserved on their surfaces confirm sophisticated carpentry skills,” they wrote. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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7,000 year old well unearthed in the Czech Republic. The woodworking skills of the makers are still evident after all these years. (Credit: New Scientist)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The technique that was used by the archaeologists to date their discovery is known as dendrochronology and is based on an analysis of the tree rings in the well’s wood. Over the past 50 years or so the tree rings in the wood found at many different archaeological sites across Eastern Europe, and from many different time periods, have been matched up, one to another in order to create a exact timeline that can now be used to very precisely date the wood unearthed at any ancient site in Eastern Europe. This same technique has also been developed in other areas of Europe and the different areas of North America and has been used to precisely date many archaeological sites. Using dendrochronology Doctor Pe\u0161ka and his colleagues have succeeded in dating the year that the trees were felled to either 5255 or 5256 BCE.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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By comparing the tree rings in wood from different sites archaeologists have developed an extremely accurate dating technique called dendrochronology. (Credit: Museum of Ontario Archaeology) <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As\ndifferent as these three archaeological discoveries are, each in its own way\ndemonstrates that, for all of their primitive tools and crude materials our\nancestors nevertheless were able to think up clever solutions to the problems\nthey faced in their daily lives. In fact think about it, if they hadn’t been so\nbright, we’d still be living in caves ourselves wouldn’t we!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our Stone Age ancestors, often dismissively referred to as ‘Cave Men’ are usually portrayed in movies and TV as being hardly more intelligent than the animals they hunted, or were hunted by. Little by little however archaeologists are uncovering evidence that Stone Age peoples were capable of flashes of genius in solving the problems they … Continue reading “Some new discoveries that demonstrate that our Stone Age ancestors weren’t the dumb brutes we like to picture them as.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[1079,1022,1078,1076,1077],"class_list":["post-3175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","tag-ancient-well","tag-archaeology-news","tag-mammoth-ring","tag-neanderthal-seafood","tag-neanderthal-string"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3175"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3188,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3175\/revisions\/3188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}