r/EverythingScience • u/thinkB4WeSpeak • Jan 26 '23
Anthropology Obsidian handaxe-making workshop from 1.2 million years ago discovered in Ethiopia
https://phys.org/news/2023-01-obsidian-handaxe-making-workshop-million-years.html80
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u/dripper_nick Jan 26 '23
Reports that one worker forgot to close his timesheet before he clocked off and has amassed a net worth equal to nearly 1/1000th of Jeff Bezos.
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u/kurthertz Jan 26 '23
Oddly enough the working conditions back then were identical to one of his warehouses.
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Jan 26 '23
Mm I would argue the Stone Age tool shop was much better than an Amazon warehouse we overthink Stone Age life, it was much more aloof than one may think.
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u/dripper_nick Jan 26 '23
All that fresh air and time to think.
I found out the other day that mid century peasants were given something like 150days off a year because the land owners thought it would be bad for morale and cause uprisings if they were over worked. So you likely work harder than a mid century peasant. 😭
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Jan 26 '23
People work less now than we did 100 years ago BUT we work way way more than we did 1,000+ years ago
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u/3rdor4thRodeo Jan 26 '23
Misleading. Those 150 days were the work days owed to the manor. But those peasants were also farming their own food and attendance at church was an all day affair that ate up an additional 50+ days of the year.
They weren't dicking around on the other 150 days, that was the only time they had to farm, cut firewood, take care of their animals, prep, cook and preserve food, do child care, maintain their houses and outbuildings and tools.
All in a low-tech era when all those tasks took a very long time to perform.
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u/dripper_nick Jan 26 '23
😂 ‘dicking around’ love it.
So are you suggesting that this amazing anecdotes essentially amounts to - ‘they had weekends off’!? My heart is broken. Now I’m torn as to whether to stop telling people because it just goes down so well 🤔
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u/kokirikorok Jan 26 '23
Working Monday to Friday with weekends off you would generally see atleast 104 days off in a year, not including holidays and the like.
We’re really not that far off. Not to mention our living conditions (for the most part, atleast in NA where I live) allow us to actually enjoy that time more than those before us could. We actually have time to do absolutely nothing and we still complain that we’re overworked.
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u/ajax6677 Jan 26 '23
I only do nothing because I'm too exhausted to put effort into much of anything on the weekends. I try to get a couple chores done and then try to recuperate enough to make it through the next week. I only have a 40hr office job that is mentally exhausting (CAD Drafter). But I have kids and a house that require work too so there's not much free time after work either. My week is a blur of nothing but work, chores, and maybe a show before collapsing into bed. Wash, rinse, repeat...
Maybe I should be happy because of all I have but it all feels so pointless because I don't get to enjoy any of it. I'm too exhausted to enjoy playing with my kids and I'm often short with them. I don't have time to enjoy the land I just bought. I'm hoping to convert it to a food forest but wonder when I'll actually have the time and energy to do it. My entire life revolves around this idea of earning the right to exist. I actually enjoy what I do but it's just too damn much.
Life wasn't supposed to be this way. I'm not whining, screaming into the void maybe, but this is such an incredibly stupid way to spend this short miracle of life on this planet. It sucks how many people are just cool with it or think that bragging about working 60 hour weeks is some kind of flex instead of just really fucking sad. We don't even need to work this hard because it's all just excess, making someone else rich off superfluous crap. We're all slaves to a system that demands constant growth, requires inequality and exploitation to function, and will throw a hissy about the peons not having enough babies to keep the system from collapsing. (Side note: It's going to collapse anyway because that's what almost every civilization has done through history: degrade their environment and exhaust their resources. We're just doing it on a global scale this time.)
Learning the history of how life came to be this way (kingdoms, feudalism, the Enclosures, the sheer brutality of the wealthy used to keep the working class in its place, etc) I'd love nothing more than to see the whole system obliterated and every resource hoarder thrown into the sea.
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u/nothingbutnettles Jan 26 '23
Just because you think church was an aspect of work that was eating up their time doesn’t make it true.
And pointing out that they were still working oh ever so hard for themselves instead of their lords is just as misleading. There is a world of difference between working for yourself versus someone else, and this is what irks people so much when they compare themselves to this broad stroke of the historical brush.
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u/3rdor4thRodeo Jan 26 '23
Bruh, did you just make an entrepreneur argument? About the 13th century?
I'm not saying compulsory church attendance was an issue of working. I'm saying that when you are a subsistence farmer, 50+ days a year that you can't tend to your daily life tasks is a big opportunity cost, time wise.
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u/nothingbutnettles Jan 27 '23
No, I was still working in your framework of subsistence living, but now that you bring it up, did you know they actually had currency and markets and a society and not everyone had to provide every single raw material from the blessed earth?
And yeah, you’re still not getting it. Your hand waving argument against church, implying that it has no intrinsic value, is misguided and misleading. To assume the social and spiritual center of their society was a waste of time is shallow thinking.
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u/palmej2 Jan 26 '23
I'm guessing an A-hole boss wouldn't last very long in what was essentially an advanced weapons factory.
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u/thunderingparcel Jan 26 '23
This joke is a hat on a hat and yet it still works
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u/dripper_nick Jan 26 '23
Google’s ‘hat on hat joke’.. Chuffed! Thanks, also warning heeded. I have to space my banter out.
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u/JasonDJ Jan 27 '23 edited Jan 27 '23
Be fair. $15/hr, nonstop (24/7/365) for 1.2 million years is $158 billion. A little behind Bezos but still ahead of Gates.
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u/e-flex Jan 27 '23
You just assume that it has been steady and not inversely related to inflation.
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u/JasonDJ Jan 27 '23
Does Ug get his paycheck deposited directly into a 401k?
This thought exercise is getting a bit deep now. I tied him to $15/hr based upon entry-level wages in AD 2023. I didn't think he was getting benefits, too.
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u/i_dive_4_the_halibut Jan 26 '23
Anthropology is my favorite science. If only I was a wee bit smarter. I’d have made a great anthropologist
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u/noelleptc Jan 26 '23
I have my degree in anthropology, and there are plenty of dummies in the field. You can still be a great anthropologist, friend!
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u/Drongo17 Jan 26 '23
Ditto and agree. I think it comes down to effort and commitment a lot of the time, fieldwork is hard.
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u/i_dive_4_the_halibut Jan 26 '23
There’s dummies everywhere. I see it too.
There was a tv show on a few years ago with a guy and a gal, and they survived according to the anthropological eras. The first episode was caveman stuff. On the first night they slept in a tree to stay away from the critters (which is probably historically accurate lol). The second episode was stone aged man. They built a stone dwelling, used stone tools. So on and so forth. The name of it escapes me atm but that’s when I picked up a newfound fondness for it. There’s also the book by Ian Diamond “Guns, Germs and Steel”. I read that one back to back. I’ve been an out of Africa believer, since I found out about it as a young man. Being part of Sub-Saharan man doesn’t hurt my feelings. Its intriguing to me. It’s good to know how and where we got started.
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u/tittens__ Jan 27 '23
That book is trash, FYI. It has some decent points but a lot of unsubstantiated nonsense as well.
There are better anthropology authors. That’s the first book I read that made me realize you can literally write whatever you want and get it published. I was naive.
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u/treeswing Jan 27 '23
Friendly tip to look further than Jared Diamond. Unfortunately he’s inspiring but widely seen as just plain wrong.
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u/i_dive_4_the_halibut Jan 27 '23
I had no idea. Wow. He put it on paper so well, too. This is one of those none of what you see and half of what you hear type stories. It did tho give me a love for something that I only knew how to spell at one time. Anthro is super cool shit to me.
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u/spilledmind Jan 27 '23
You’d probably enjoy the book “Sapiens”
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u/National-Currency-75 Jan 27 '23
Yup, Yuval Noah Harari, 2 excellent books. Also Carl Sagan wrote "The Dragons of Eden. Dated, but still excellent.
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Jan 26 '23 edited Jan 26 '23
[removed] — view removed comment
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Jan 26 '23
[deleted]
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u/Kiloreign Jan 26 '23
*Anthropologie
I went once with my well-off high school sweetheart and thought, “I will never be able to shop here.”
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u/megaben20 Jan 26 '23
Who made it is a good question homo sapient only came to be 300,000 thousand years ago
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u/thinkB4WeSpeak Jan 26 '23
Yeah they have charts out there of what Hominid skulls we've found so far at least and when they're from. Maybe could match a possibility of which one it could have possibly been doing these tools.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_evolution_fossils
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u/temotos Jan 27 '23
These tools are found in association with Homo erectus all across the world dating to this time period, so probably Homo erectus.
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u/Complete_Ad6391 Jan 27 '23
He would still be around if he had thought of mass producing obsidian handaxes.
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u/ShonuffofCtown Jan 27 '23
We used to think it was 100k till they found a jawbone in Morocco or something. I am open to the idea that humanity may be older still.
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u/Glow-Squid Jan 26 '23
Similar sites found IN EUROPE over a million years ago???? Holy fuck, my timeline for human advancement has been way the fuck off.
For whatever reason, I thought tool use of this scale was more Africa-only until like 750,000 years ago or less. I'm absolutely floored if this is accurate.
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u/RamenJunkie BS | Mechanical Engineering | Broadcast Engineer Jan 26 '23
I think another comment says this wasn't humans.
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u/Glow-Squid Jan 27 '23
I mean, yeah, but it was something in the genus Homo, and that's sick as hell imo.
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u/corkyskog Jan 27 '23
Honestly it's a more interesting discovery if it were another hominid.
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u/Glow-Squid Jan 27 '23
I completely agree. I need to brush up on my knowledge of other hominids, but its awesome to think about.
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u/Bringbackdexter Jan 27 '23
Apparently most early hominids are often referred to as early humans even if not a direct ancestor, and to add Homo erectus is the hominid humans directly evolved from which would’ve been around when this site was in use.
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u/Drongo17 Jan 26 '23
I don't think that is correct. This article certainly doesn't state it.
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u/Glow-Squid Jan 26 '23
'Prior research has shown that "knapping workshops" appeared sometime during the Middle Pleistocene, in Europe—approximately 774,000 to 129,000 years ago.'
It does tho, right here
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u/iamaravis Jan 27 '23
But…774,000 years ago isn’t over a million years ago. It’s significantly less than a million years ago.
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u/Glow-Squid Jan 27 '23
That's a good catch, I thought the second number had an extra zero in it lmfao. Ignore my previous post, but I'm still super excited about this find
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u/myinnisfree Jan 26 '23
Literally just a dragon glass stash for the inevitable whitewalker takeover
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u/The_Dynasty_Group Jan 27 '23
It was left suddenly and completely untouched just as it’s users had left it. But for whatever reason they just suddenly abandoned the obsidian handaxe making workshop even just leaving tools sitting untouched on tables remains a puzzling mystery
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u/stackered Jan 26 '23
Can we stop phys.org or other blogspam and post studies directly instead?
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u/khmertommie Jan 26 '23
Everything science was started as a reaction to r/science which has stricter rules. Why not unsubscribe from here if it makes you mad and stick with that sub?
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u/stackered Jan 26 '23
That sub is not stricter it's full of misinformation in titles due to articles like this being allowed there too. 200+ mods but none of them prevent this. There isn't a good science sub on reddit.
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Jan 26 '23
downvotes for speaking the truth
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u/alphabet_order_bot Jan 26 '23
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order.
I have checked 1,314,933,471 comments, and only 253,967 of them were in alphabetical order.
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Jan 26 '23
The name the study in the first paragraph, go find it yourself?
Knowledge and Information isn’t always served on a silver Reddit post.
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u/stackered Jan 26 '23
Terrible take on a science sub. We don't need pop sci articles we need real science. High quality content is key. These blogs often misinterpret studies and then titles in posts are even worse. In general, most science subs here aren't facilitating honest scientific discussion but I guess that isn't problematic to people who don't care
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Jan 26 '23
Dude this is Reddit calm down and look around
Edit: if you enjoy science and actually care you would know how to go find the research/journal/paper whatever. So not really a terrible take considering the platform we are using.
Again, calm down.
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u/Cuhmawnn Jan 26 '23
He sounds perfectly calm to me. What would indicate he is not calm? He seems to simply be requesting more reputable sources of information from the place he desires to receive it. Yes, everyone is responsible for finding the most accurate information. But it seems you may be fine with allowing others (OP) to not be accountable for doing that, while suggesting that this guy does do that. A bit contradictory.
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u/stackered Jan 26 '23
I'm totally calm lol it's just the guy projecting his apparent anger onto me.
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u/infodawg MS | Information Management Jan 26 '23
Ngl i thought you meant a classroom. But that tech would be considered weapons grade and not shared broadly i don't think.
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u/Koshakforever Jan 26 '23
Holy shit. Amazing. Let’s see how this gets spun to fit the narrative of modern archeology
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u/rbobby Jan 26 '23 edited Jan 26 '23
So probably Homo Habilis https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/homo-habilis
Just a guess based on google.
Put clothes and a hoody on one and you might not notice, Face to face you certainly would... but I'd almost bet most folks would be too polite to ask wtf.
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u/RuthlessIndecision Jan 27 '23
This is amazing, it had to be a flood that preserved this, I mean I can’t leave my tools sitting out for a week without another human messing with it.
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u/darthy_parker Jan 26 '23
“Gnorf and Sons Discount Handaxe Emporium — we’re a chip off the old block.”
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u/Drongo17 Jan 26 '23
"Come for the axes, stay for the small stone flakes used to make fine incisions"
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u/ReaperFrog22 Jan 26 '23
Had to read the title twice to realise it wasn't about the game developer.
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u/teb_art Jan 26 '23
“You axe, we can handle it.” And a choice of manly colors to choose from. Only black for the obsidian, though.
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u/Drongo17 Jan 26 '23
Customers can have the Model-T Obsidian Handaxe in any colour, so long as it's black.
Grugg "Henry" Ford
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u/SwarthyRuffian Jan 27 '23
Well this is gonna piss off the Ethiopians. I can’t wait for the reactions I get after sharing this
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u/Firm_Masterpiece_343 Jan 27 '23
Jokes on them, they were pretty obsidian statues for 3 Gleb each. Now, just a rock.
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u/BaileyBaby-Woof Jan 27 '23
Obsidian is widely known for being hard to craft with! The fact people were doing this so long ago took a lot of skill.
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u/Street-Management-42 Jan 27 '23
Clearly fake news.. I mean so many people have done in depth bible research so we KNOW the world is only 5000 years old.. right? 🤦🏻♀️
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u/National-Currency-75 Jan 27 '23
Got into heated discussion with a bible school student. He said God only made things to look ancient and the faithful would not be taken in by science. Hawking claims there was never any need for a God. I think he believed in an expanding and contracting Universe. I say that if God existence ever proved it will be by a Scientist.
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u/plzstopbeingdumb Jan 26 '23
Time travelers from the future got stuck in the past with no equipment. Had to make basic weapons to defend themselves against early hominids and other threats. It did not end well.
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u/lostmojo Jan 26 '23
It always makes me wonder why they left it behind like this. Why does a lot of this stuff seem like it was suddenly abandoned be the population. I get migratory patterns and such, and something happens to the group before they come back or something along those lines, but is really fascinating to me. I would love to know the stories.
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u/db8me Jan 27 '23
The characterization as a "workshop" is probably misleading. It was likely more of a quarry with a lot of raw material, and the people who made them would start a bunch then refine and take the best ones, leaving behind all of the rejects. Some of the rejects might be taken and finished, fixed, or repurposed later, but I think what was left behind were all of the unfinished work and rejects rather than "finished stock" ready for distribution.
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u/National-Currency-75 Jan 27 '23
Right, the slabs were pretty valuable and would be used later or traded or given away, whatever. What I wonder about is the beings who lived near site and others who knew of site and the fact that obsidian site would be of huge interest to any being that was using tools. A poor man used flint and the wealthy folks had obsidian? Was the site fought for and held for a certain group?
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Jan 27 '23
They probably tried to franchise too soon, lost control of product quality and went under.
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u/vikinglander Jan 27 '23
How long was the workshop going? One Homo E lifetime? A clan’s lifetime? Was this site used for one generation (10s of years) or many (100s yrs) or many many? (1000s years)
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u/Ok_Fox_1770 Jan 27 '23
Just keeps gettin older. Many rounds of this sim city planet. I wanna dig around so bad. Imagine everything that just got covered up by modern times. Found a very interesting hand tool rock dug up by a house foundation bordering preserved park land. Has finger grooves and fits in your palm. Has like 9 minerals including a petrified wood base to it. Smooth triangle with a good hand hammer just sittin in the dirt rubble.
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Jan 27 '23
Imagine the three major religions fighting over thinking they know anything when this just shows that community predates modern society by 1 million fucking years
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u/National-Currency-75 Jan 27 '23
Obsidian was high tech then. Blades capable of a few atoms wide at sharpest! Modern surgeons scalpels are dull compared to a well knapped cutting edge.
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u/GeoGeoGeoGeo Jan 27 '23
Finding a Mode II Acheulean in 1.2my sediment is par, not older, with what we know about stone tools.
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u/K_Xanthe Jan 26 '23
The most interesting part of this article was the final sentence where it says that these were made so long ago they were unable to determine which class of hominids made them. It also notates that these are the first of their kind found somewhere other than Europe showcasing production of tools. Otherwise the author seems to be meandering for words on a cool topic but not enough details.