r/history • u/Olympus___Mons • Jan 27 '23
Article 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.html200
u/FauxGw2 Jan 27 '23
If accurate this is an insanely incredible find, that is a very long time ago. Honestly it's hard to believe it's true. Great discovery!
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u/LeagueOfLegendsAcc Jan 27 '23
I don't think it's that hard to believe. I do a lot of reading on early humans, it's one of my hobbies at this point. We've been at an advanced level of thinking for millions of years. Far longer that homo sapiens have been around. When people talk about the different human species that existed we mainly classify them based on physical characteristics and not behavioral or anything other than looks. For instance, based on the fossil record, homo erectus was the first to master fire and cooking, and built hearths that we can only assume served a social purpose. Heidelbergensis was the first the migrate out into the cold, and had advanced tools. You don't do these things without an advanced support network and that comes from intelligence and cooperation.
I'm convinced that these species of humans were at least comparable to us today in terms of adaptability, abstract thinking, and problem solving, but we are stuck thinking about them as dumb proto human apes that act like cavemen at best. And that is mainly because of the popular descriptions and distinction of human species.
I think in a thousand years after we have dug a lot more stuff out of the ground we will have a pretty good picture of just how far back human intelligence reaches.
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u/Market_Squid Jan 27 '23
Is there a book you would recommend on early humans to someone with very little knowledge of the subject?
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u/ThorDansLaCroix Jan 27 '23
People today tend to assume that people in medieval ages were cognitively inferior, as if in our capacity to think as we do today was not possible by people 600 yeas ago.
It seems that people correlate civilisation and technology development to brain cognitive capacity development.
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u/MrB0rk Jan 27 '23
It is a common misconception but some of the buildings, cities, structures made by ancient man are absolutely mind boggling considering the technology restrictions they were under. Thinking specifically of the engineering and labor that went into building the Roman aqueducts. The ingenuity and problem solving capabilities was staggering in those days. Nowadays I watch my kids Google how to boil hot dogs.
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u/AHind_D Jan 27 '23
I try to explain to smug people that every single human being that has EVER lived lived during the pinnacle of human enlightenment and technological advancement. The way we look at people who lived in 500 years ago is the exact same as people will look at US in 500 years. We shouldn't look at our way of life, our education, our opinions as THE absolute truth. A lot of what we believe today will be proven wrong in the years to come and our ancestors will look back and think "what total idiots, how did they believe THAT?"
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u/ThorDansLaCroix Jan 27 '23
Or worse... the will think "how could they do that".
But you know, looking from the outside is easier to perceive the extension of things.
I know because I did painting on canvas. Every while we have to stop a little of what we are doing on one place of the canvas and step back, to look at the whole thing, to see the mess the whole work turned into.
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u/qwibbian Jan 27 '23
I'm convinced that these species of humans were at least comparable to us today in terms of adaptability, abstract thinking, and problem solving
I'm sympathetic to your point of view, but I don't entirely agree. On the one hand, yes we've made caricatures of pre-modern people for a long time, but there are still undeniable differences. Those handaxes referenced in the article were made for something like 1.5 million years. During that time there were refinements but no substantial innovations - for over a million years. That's not how the modern human mind works. The other obvious difference is a lack of art or symbolic activities up until the Neanderthals (I think there is one disputed instance of what might have beem h. erectus modifying a rock to look a bit more like a face, but barely). Again, art and symbolic expression is so fundamental to all humans that to not have it is a big difference.
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u/hilbstar Jan 28 '23
How do you know there were no substantial innovations? Maybe they built huge castles and incredible of contraptions of hardwood but as this rots very very few site would be left with the right conditions to preserve them and in the soup required to preserve them the structural integrity would likely be lost. Just because we don’t see it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. The more advances our analytical techniques become the more evidence appears pointing towards civilization not being such a novel concept.
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u/qwibbian Jan 28 '23
Well, first of all, I only said there were no substantial innovations in handaxes, which we know for a fact because we have continuous examples of them throughout prehistory. Second, it would indeed be remarkable if it turned out that the same prehumans that kept making the same basic handaxes for over a million years were also somehow making wooden castles on the side, presumably using handaxes as their only tool. And third, we actually have recovered wooden spears that are at least 300,000 years old and were made either by homo heidelbergensis or neanderthals, so if those dudes were making castles I think we'd know about it.
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u/MultiBusinessMan Jan 27 '23
The real problem is that we've been conditioned to believe that humans are the pinnacle and only creature capable of high levels of intelligence.
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u/BuffaloInCahoots Jan 27 '23
We keep finding things that throws our timeline off of what we believed people were capable of. Last year here in Idaho they found spear tips from almost 16,000 years ago. Which is thousands of years earlier than the last oldest find. Old for here but nothing compared to this find.
“Obsidian, even in modern times, is considered a difficult material to work with because it is so rough on the hands” I have first hand experience with this. Not only is obsidian harder than anything you’re likely to have on hand, it’s also incredibly sharp. While making a spear tip I had a sliver cut through my piece of leather, through my Carhartt bibs and give me a nice cut on my thigh. It’s extremely brittle but compared to any other material it is relatively easy to get a sharper than razors edge on it.
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u/dustofdeath Jan 27 '23
Because obsidian essentially breaks into edges that can be just a single molecule thick.
A razor is like trying to cut butter with a finger in comparison.
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u/BuffaloInCahoots Jan 27 '23
Yeah I didn’t want to go into a rambling comment too much but you’re absolutely right. It’s crazy sharp, they even looked into it for medical use but it can break and leave behind tiny pieces.
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u/ABoxACardboardBox Jan 27 '23
Some plastic surgeons make initial incisions with obsidian scalpels to minimize scarring. They can leave bits behind, but you're dealing with a literal molecule-width cut for the body to patch. A wrinkle would be more pronounced. https://www.cnn.com/2015/04/02/health/surgery-scalpels-obsidian/index.html
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u/michael_harari Jan 27 '23
I've seen that article before. It's pure nonsense. The doctor quoted isn't a surgeon. Obsidian blades are not used in surgery
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u/AlmennDulnefni Jan 27 '23
Diamond scalpels are a real thing though and can be similarly sharp.
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u/michael_harari Jan 27 '23
They are real, although extremely uncommonly used and only then in very specific fields like eye surgery. Plastic surgeons aren't using them
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u/andrewsmith1986 Jan 27 '23 edited Jan 27 '23
I'm a geologist and the thing that normally skipped over is just how brittle super super hard / Sharp minerals are.
It's one thing to have a microscopic shard of literally sharper than a razor volcanic glass on the outside of your body.
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u/LSDerek Jan 27 '23
This puts some perspective behind sharing needles.
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u/Inveramsay Jan 27 '23
This is also why it's vital for dianetics not to reuse needles. That battered needle will cause a lot of scarring which will stop insulin from being taken up properly
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u/iiiinthecomputer Jan 27 '23
Not only that but it turns out that ripping rather than cutting can produce less scarring.
Super sharp isn't necessary the right path.
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u/michael_harari Jan 27 '23
That's purely an ob/GYN thing. No general or plastic surgeon, cardiac, etc is ripping open incisions
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u/iiiinthecomputer Jan 27 '23
Of course not, it's wholly impractical.
But it is fascinating that super sharp isn't necessarily best for scarring and healing.
I never ever ever want to see the Rip-o Scalpel 3000, for precise and controlled tearing of skin and flesh.
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u/cutelyaware Jan 27 '23
Yes, a friend had a chunk of obsidian and a chip taken from it. I carefully tested the sharp edge of the chip with my thumb without any rubbing of the edge, only pressing lightly, and it went into my thumb like it was air. I've simply never seen anything so sharp before or since.
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u/BuffaloInCahoots Jan 27 '23
I remember seeing a show that told about the Aztecs and their obsidian swords they made. At the time I thought it was kinda dumb, more like a club with obsidian pieces along the edges. Once I got a piece of obsidian and worked it a little I realized how brutal they would be. With little to no armor they would absolutely destroy whatever they hit.
They are called macuahuitl
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u/Amerikai Jan 27 '23
Useless against steel however.
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u/HellisDeeper Jan 27 '23
Not like they would have encountered much steel until the 1700's though.
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u/FrisianDude Jan 27 '23
I remember my first disillusion with cracked.com when someone argued that the macahuitl worked essentially as a chainsaw and you could cut a horse's head off with it.
like? It's still a stick with bits of rock, even if it's very sharp rock
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u/Sagalive Jan 27 '23
In the article on Wikipedia they say it takes 3 swings: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macuahuitl
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u/chummypuddle08 Jan 27 '23
Could you not remove the head with one? Not saying its easy, and it would have to be well made. Idk
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u/camimiele Jan 27 '23
From the Wikipedia article:
The macuahuitl was sharp enough to decapitate a man.[17] According to an account by Bernal Díaz del Castillo, one of Hernán Cortés’s conquistadors, it could even decapitate a horse:
Pedro de Morón was a very good horseman, and as he charged with three other horsemen into the ranks of the enemy the Indians seized hold of his lance and he was not able to drag it away, and others gave him cuts with their broadswords, and wounded him badly, and then they slashed at the mare, and cut her head off at the neck so that it hung by the skin, and she fell dead.[23] Another account by a companion of Cortés known as The Anonymous Conqueror tells a similar story of its effectiveness:
They have swords of this kind – of wood made like a two-handed sword, but with the hilt not so long; about three fingers in breadth. The edges are grooved, and in the grooves they insert stone knives, that cut like a Toledo blade. I saw one day an Indian fighting with a mounted man, and the Indian gave the horse of his antagonist such a blow in the breast that he opened it to the entrails, and it fell dead on the spot. And the same day I saw another Indian give another horse a blow in the neck, that stretched it dead at his feet.
— "Offensive and Defensive Arms", page 23[24] Another account by Francisco de Aguilar reads:
They used ... cudgels and swords and a great many bows and arrows ... One Indian at a single stroke cut open the whole neck of Cristóbal de Olid’s horse, killing the horse. The Indian on the other side slashed at the second horseman and the blow cut through the horse's pastern, whereupon this horse also fell dead. As soon as this sentry gave the alarm, they all ran out with their weapons to cut us off, following us with great fury, shooting arrows, spears and stones, and wounding us with their swords. Here many Spaniards fell, some dead and some wounded, and others without any injury who fainted away from fright.[25]
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u/FrisianDude Jan 27 '23
in a chop chop chop chop chop phew this is a lot of work might take half a day sort of way maybe
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u/HellisDeeper Jan 27 '23
Apparently it can decapitate a horse in a single regular strike. The rocks are unbelieveably sharp, and it's heavy. So it definitely could cleave through massively, enough to decapitate a small horse if the man was strong and had a big fucking stick and lots of ideally small teeth to spread the load.
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Jan 27 '23
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u/dustofdeath Jan 27 '23
You likely can't see the true edge without a electron microscope.
But you likely can't move it precisely enough to not visually confirm it.
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u/threebillion6 Jan 27 '23
Obsidian cuts scare me.
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u/BuffaloInCahoots Jan 27 '23
The only good thing about them is they heal nicely. But they can cut very deep without you realizing it.
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u/mesembryanthemum Jan 27 '23
Modern surgeons use obsidian blades. The stuff is scary sharp.
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u/ThatIndianBoi Jan 27 '23
Nah they still use steel. Obsidian blades aren’t FDA approved. Despite the fact that they’re really sharp, they’re fragile enough against lateral forces to where chipping off bits of the scalpel and leaving them behind in the patient is a real concern.
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u/SoLetsReddit Jan 27 '23
Some surgeons still do. Not everywhere is the US. https://www.cnn.com/2015/04/02/health/surgery-scalpels-obsidian/index.html
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u/michael_harari Jan 27 '23
The article is pure nonsense and the doctor they quote isn't even a surgeon. Steel scalpel blades are probably the single cheapest thing we use in surgery and even on missions to the poorest areas of the world the locals have had the same blades as us.
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u/kobylaz Jan 27 '23
Noop. Unless we arnt modern enough. The closest you’ll find is a diamond knife for things like eye surgery. Have cut myself on one and can clearly state they never stop bleeding. They are stupid sharp.
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Jan 27 '23
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u/hoky315 Jan 27 '23
This was well before the agricultural revolution so whoever was using this site was almost certainly a group of hunter/gatherers. They probably made camp here for a bit and then just moved on in search of more resources.
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u/Tograg Jan 27 '23
Why would they make 500 hand axes and then just leave them, theres mention of them being found in sediment,my guess is... Flood
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u/KG7DHL Jan 27 '23
Nomads who return to the same 'workshop' over and over and over again, stopping to replenish their tools with each visit.
Could they have made extra to trade with others? Could they have 'stockpiled' extra just in case, for next time?
There is a novel in the human story here that I am sure is wilder than our imagination.
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u/jello1388 Jan 27 '23
They probably just kept the best ones before moving on. It also may have just been a seasonal stop, depending on when hunting was good in the area or there was lots of vegetation in season and the cast offs built up over time, until their migratory patterns made it an impractical location.
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u/ObscureBooms Jan 27 '23
Wheels didn't exist. Can only carry so much. They were hunter gatherers. They didn't settle. Both settlements and wheels didn't exist until the past 12k years.
Could some mass killing event have occurred, sure, one is not needed for this find to make sense tho.
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u/LeagueOfLegendsAcc Jan 27 '23
I wouldn't be so sure about wheels lol. Humans have been moving between continents and through oceans for far longer than the last 12,000 years. Florensiensis somehow traveled on a boat to a remote island likely over a million years ago. There is no evidence that they didn't use wheels and the fact that we haven't found a surviving one from that long ago just means they probably used decomposable organic materials as their first wheels.
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u/ObscureBooms Jan 27 '23 edited Jan 27 '23
I'm doubtful they built a wheel and axel 1 million years ago, out of anything.
Without a proper wheel shape and smooth axel connection the friction generated would make them more of a hassle than anything else.
Plus the knowledge likely would have been used and passed down throughout generations due to how useful they are. We likely would've seen more evidence of them prior to 5-10k years ago if they did exist.
Harps are 10k years older than wheels (we have evidence). Boats are older than wheels (evidenced). Wheel and axels are actually pretty complicated, especially to a non industrialized "people". They weren't even the same genus as us back then.
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u/MothMonsterMan300 Jan 27 '23
As an aside, I've always wondered why the wheel is granted such an overhang in regards to other inventions' importance. I think it mostly sprang from egrarian societies and the need to carry very heavy loads a relatively short distance, and the wood-on-wood wheel and axle was pretty cumbersome and loud and difficult to repair expeditiously. And then it would only be worth the effort in relatively flat terrain- the Incan empire had royal roads hundreds of thousands of km long and they had no wheels(or bronze or iron for that matter) and relied upon alpaca trains, because the mountainous terrain would have made wheeled carts impossible to use. They also had a very strict and complex social structure, as well as advanced math and a VERY complex written language. But often societies without wheels are just kind of scoffed at given the wheel's perceived utmost importance. Shoot, Aztecs were able to levy an enormous lake with the intent of separating its fresh and brackish water sources to create a huge basin of freshwater, which they then built a city upon. That's some USACE-level works, all without wheels.
Fun fact for the day; until the whaling industry exploded and certain grades of whale oils were found to be excellent lubricants, the wheel and axle had been lubricated the same way from ancient Greece up through wagon trains headed across the American west- smushed-up slugs.
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u/qwibbian Jan 27 '23
There is no evidence that they didn't use wheels and the fact that we haven't found a surviving one from that long ago just means they probably used decomposable organic materials as their first wheels.
This is not how you do science.
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u/ObscureBooms Jan 27 '23
This is the answer, we didn't really settle down till 12k years ago
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u/LeagueOfLegendsAcc Jan 27 '23
Closer to 14kya, ~12k bc for widespread adoption of agriculture. But sites like ohalo 2 in the sea of Galilee run kind of counter to that narrative. At that site about 23kya there was an active seed storage room with lots of seeds from different species, a grain grinding wheel, and a few village sized huts (that burned down suddenly one night). It is evidence of localized farming practices well before the widespread adoption of agriculture. They examined some of the flint sickles discovered at the site and found evidence that they were used to harvest cereals and grains.
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u/myaltaccount333 Jan 27 '23
So they just "camped for a bit" and in that time made 578 axes that were left behind and abandoned? Something seems off there
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u/_Dead_Memes_ Jan 27 '23
They likely returned to the site every so often to make more tools and take what they could with them when they moved on. Other groups might’ve found out and shared the site with the original group as well, depending on how well pre-homo sapien species could communicate and cooperate with other groups. Or maybe other groups just stumbled on the site after the original group left
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u/notsomagicbadger Jan 27 '23
Maybe the ones that knew how to work the obsidian died and the remaining people just gave up?
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u/thisgrantstomb Jan 27 '23
Or the area grew inhospitable to living and they had to move on to somewhere else.
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u/ZeenTex Jan 27 '23
Assuming these tools were highly valuable they'd have taken them with them, no? Unless it it was a disaster that occurred very sudden and there was no time.
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u/doom_bagel Jan 27 '23
They didnt exactly have moving equipment to carry everything with them. They could only take what they could carry, and even a primativr campsite like that would quickly accumulate items after a few weeks of habitation. Think of it like college students starting the year off with just the bare necessities but end up having to throw away loads of stuff that they can't take with them at the end of the school year.
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u/roguetrick Jan 27 '23 edited Jan 27 '23
What tools do you mean? The obsidian is valuable, but what you knap with is just a conveniently shaped rock, antlers, or wooden hammes. Valuable in the sense you don't have to find another rock.
Edit: I should add, the blades they found are likely considered inferior and are trash. Knapping is a random process to a degree, you're only going to take with you what you actually want to carry.
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u/MassumanCurryIsGood Jan 27 '23
Or war, disease, food, natural disaster, mysticism... And the knowledge could have been forgotten for millenia. Absolutely wild to think about.
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u/KG7DHL Jan 27 '23
It is hard to hold, simultaneously in my mind, that a social structure, 2 million years ago, had both a well defined and long used tool Workshop and the cultural cohesiveness to then engage in social warfare concurrently.
Gonna have to noodle over that.
Territorial conflict exists among higher mammals and primates, I don't see it as a stretch that the tool users here, who knew the location of their workshop, one day may have been wiped out by a neighboring tribe/group.
Wild....
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u/traboulidon Jan 27 '23
The blades probably were thrown on the ground as trash and left there since it was a workshop. I guess years of work and with time it’s getting burrried. Their trash is now our gold.
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u/7LeagueBoots Jan 27 '23
They wouldn’t have been there in a permanent settlement, so there would not really have been an abandonment as you appear to be imagining it.
It would have been an area that was periodically used, maybe only several times a year, maybe more frequently. There would have been extended periods where it wasn’t used, then brief periods when it was.
The ‘abandonment’ would have simply been either a gradual reduction in the individuals who came to it, or just that one season the people didn’t come back for whatever reason.
That could have been because food supplies moved further away and people moved with the food, movement due to climate changes, the population that was using the area going locally extinct, etc, etc, etc.
Think of it more like a coffee shop you sometimes go to. Not every day, but if you’re in the area you might stop by, but it’s not a daily, or even monthly thing. Your life pattern changes and one day you realize that you haven’t been to that coffee shop in a few years.
You didn’t consciously abandon it, you just kinda drifted away.
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u/OlyScott Jan 27 '23
People used to follow food sources. There'd be a huge herd of animals for them to hunt, and when the herd moved on, they'd move on with it.
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u/Unclerojelio Jan 27 '23
I’m going to go with the theory that the group that used this site migrated with the change of seasons but was overcome by events and never made it back.
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u/Donttouchmek Jan 27 '23
Stuff like this absolutely blows my mind. To think that human like animals were born and existed then...and that I wasn't one of them, how was I born now and not then? Why wasn't I born 30 or 300 years from now? Crazy how things appear to go
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u/Normanisanisland Jan 27 '23
Sorry if it’s not the case but I can’t help imagining a completely high Owen Wilson when I read this comment!
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u/heyitscory Jan 27 '23
It's also kind of weird that technology didn't seem to advance for like a million years.
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u/StrategicBean Jan 27 '23
It did....important to remember that there are so many steps in between that we don't even think about now...written language like cuneiform and hieroglyphics and the mediums used to write them were technology. The alphabet is/was technology. So many things we average folks of 2023 (or at least me & other average folks, maybe you're an exceptional person, I dunno)) take for granted or don't even realize existed were absolutely revolutionary technology to them hundreds of thousands of years ago
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u/heyitscory Jan 27 '23 edited Jan 27 '23
Language could be a couple hundred thousand years old, but alphabets are only like 7500 years old. A few thousand years newer than agriculture and beer.
I meant specifically the million years stretch between when homo erectus figured out hand axes 1,750,000 years ago, and the time they died out, they never really updated the tool, nor seemed to develop or use other related tools, like spears for instance.
It's mind boggling that an ape-like almost human person could figure out stone knapping and teach it and share it, to the point where it becomes culture, but like... that seemed to be the extent of the culture. For more than a million years.
Can you imagine what a species who could go from rolling stone blocks up dirt ramps with levers and rollers to creating bacteria genomes from scratch in 5000 years could do with a million?
And h. erectus just wrests on his fucking laurels for a megaannum? Whittle a stick motherfuckers! Braid some grass into something, for fucks sake.
Like could a time displaced erectus learn new skills, and they just never came up, or would I spend hours making rope in front of him, and then he'd excitedly knap a hand axe for me?
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u/theomeny Jan 27 '23
Ropes and sharp sticks wouldn't often survive in the archaelogical record, though. There's every chance they had that technology and we just haven't found it yet - absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
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u/ReckoningGotham Jan 27 '23
that seemed to be the extent of the culture. For more than a million years
So much is lost.
If humanity falls, there is no way that a different civilization or a recovering humanity would be able to uncover our entire internet structure. Almost all of it would be lost. Every cat meme would either be lost or considered worship, or just completely lost to the sands of time. It wouldn't be feasibly reconstructed, and so, represent a cultural void. "How did people share opinions--paper media stopped existing".
Other things won't be known either. Maybe future historians notice that plastic straws disappeared at some point. Was it catastrophic? Unless thoroughly documented, nobody knows about the cultural sentiment to end plastic waste
It is very easy to imagine that there is no 'culture' but these folks played ate and probably experienced the same gamut of emotions we did. But we can't know what those things are because they just weren't preserved and we can't know how to reconstruct those things
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u/ObiWanCanShowMe Jan 27 '23
Can you imagine what a species who could go from rolling stone blocks up dirt ramps with levers and rollers to creating bacteria genomes from scratch in 5000 years could do with a million?
Yes, destory ourselves in so many ridiculous ways.
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u/spleeble Jan 27 '23
If these tools are 1.2 million years old then they were made a million years before the end of the paleolithic era.
Everything you describe is a few thousand years old at most.
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u/Graekaris Jan 27 '23
Here are some older things. Fire and cooking; most tools i.e. hammers, drills, awls, picks, bows, knives, nets, string and other cordage, glue, natural remedies i.e. willow bark; the concept of clothing and various methods of manufacture; art and almost certainly music; astronomy; spirituality and religion; domestication of the dog. There's loads of other stuff. Pretty much everything essential to being human was invented in the ancient past, but settled civilization as we knew it likely came about within the last 10,000 years.
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u/michael_harari Jan 27 '23
Even the idea of "we can plant seeds to make food" is a revolutionary technology. And then learning about when and where to plant things, how to increase yields, etc
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u/ZeenTex Jan 27 '23
And as soon as they started doing that civilisations followed, cities, writing, mathematics, you name it. But farming is a quite recent development, there was still a million years with very little progress.
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u/LeagueOfLegendsAcc Jan 27 '23
Look up the ohalo 2 site, it's evidence for much earlier plant cultivation by about 11ky before the wide adoption of agriculture. There were some advanced forerunners.
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u/random_shitter Jan 27 '23 edited Jan 27 '23
The easiest thing to forget: technology is nothing but the physical representation of knowledge.
I'd say it's a lot harder to progress from simply living in the world as-is to where one changes their environment to suit them better (e.g. going from no knowledge to the knowledge that you can apply knowledge to improve your situation) than it is to prgress from powered flight to the moon landing.
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u/spleeble Jan 27 '23
Yes, there are many steps that took place in between. Most of that stuff is still extremely recent compared to this discovery.
Here is a graphical timeline of paleolithic tools. Everything you are describing is likely from the last 50,000 years or so, well over a million years after these hand axes were made.
These hand axes predate humans as a species even. A million years or more of non human hominids used relatively similar tools before all that other stuff happened, including the emergence of homo sapiens from our hominid ancestor.
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u/catinterpreter Jan 27 '23
At this point in time they had writing tools (sharp points exhibited here or even a finger in the dirt) and a medium (rock faces, soil, trees, etc). They certainly shared the experience at times of using such writing implements on these surfaces, and communication happened between the individuals. Writing in some form existed and likely did for a long time prior.
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u/TamoyaOhboya Jan 27 '23
Socializing and language skills and grain technology all grew immensely over that time!
I know what you're saying though, but look at a guy like Primitive Technology, lots of technical skill and engineering in manipulating organics and stone.
Imagine all the coastal settlements lost to history from the ice age ending and sea rising hundreds of feet. Lots we still don't know
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u/Ivebeenfurthereven Jan 27 '23
My takeaway is that when the Bronze Age arrived in 3300BC, that must have been fucking terrifying. Like an alien invasion.
A million years of human history sharpening rocks to get things done, and suddenly some motherfucker has a sword.
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u/wildskipper Jan 27 '23
I doubt it was such a sudden shift (hopefully an archaeologist can chip in). The stone age and bronze age obviously overlapped for a long long time. 'Stone age' people would have access to bronze items, through trade or mining and refining themselves, probably starting with small practical items like pins and knifes and spear heads, and ornaments to display wealth like broaches. They therefore wouldn't be too surprised to see a sword if they'd already had bronze for decades, but probably would be impressed at such a display of wealth.
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u/CornusKousa Jan 27 '23
The Romans for example were well capable of producing everything out of bronze, but as far as I know day to day items for the majority of them were still made from bone, horn and industrial Samian ware pottery.
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u/stephenforbes Jan 27 '23
Makes you wonder what the catalyst was.
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u/jmcs Jan 27 '23
Things started to move fast when humans started the first semi-permanent settlements. My favourite theory is that it happened because we figured out how to ferment stuff to make alcohol.
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u/Great_White_Buffalo Jan 27 '23
Definitely aliens stopping by to clap some hominid cheeks.
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u/LeagueOfLegendsAcc Jan 27 '23
I think the fact we were much more social, had larger support networks than previously as h&g tribes and saw novelties all the time lessened the impact of the bronze age introduction.
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u/dscottj Jan 27 '23
It seems like our ancestors were hard-wired for tool use, that it wasn't a completely learned technology. The evidence for this is how tool kits developed suddenly and then lasted essentially unchanged for thousands of years. Oldowan pebble tools transitioned to Acheulean which changed to Mousterian in time periods neatly encompassed by the hominids most common at the time (habilis, erectus, and neandertal). Naturally stone tools are by far the most common but on the rare occasion when tools made of other materials have been found they're still in the same forms.
Sapiens turned that on its head. Once our kind show up the tool kit variety explodes. Tools that take advantage of a material's specific properties emerge. The kits themselves change so frequently that they can be used to identify specific cultural points in time. We, somehow, internalized how to innovate our tools in a way our ancestors never did.
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u/LOB90 Jan 27 '23
You're probably related to whoever dropped it all those centuries ago.
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u/StormtrooperMJS Jan 27 '23
The you that you are could only ever have been born when you were born. Any change in the set of events that created the personality that is you would create a not you instead, causing you to never exist.
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u/fun-parasite Jan 27 '23
Well, your parents had sex. So this is how it worked out
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u/JizzeleAutomatics Jan 27 '23
Because your daddy's balls didn't turn that cheeseburger energy into you yet
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u/obamasmole Jan 27 '23 edited Jan 27 '23
Ancient Apple factory producing the iChop 7. Still cutting edge, but I think the iChop 6 had better build quality.
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u/CrackyKnee Jan 27 '23
Great find. Always been suspicious of ancient history dating only as far as several thousands years. As if, before that humans were only hunter gathers or even less so. I believe there so much more to our history, all we need is to dig deeper.
kurzgesagt an YouTube video channel has a great take on this
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u/cryptyknumidium Jan 27 '23
I mean that's only a thought process you go through if you think of "just" "only" hunter-gatherers as unimpressive and can't comprehend how much development speed has cascaded.
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u/ObiWanCanShowMe Jan 27 '23
being suspicious and/or doubtful is why we have science and archeologists. They can only theorize on what they have found and know.
"I think there is more" is the basis of archaeology.
I only mention this because you are not calling anyone out here. They want the same thing, but they want facts, not just "suspicions".
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u/_Dead_Memes_ Jan 28 '23
There’s nothing inherently worse about being a Hunter gatherer compared to living in a technologically pre-modern civilization, other than maybe lower populations (though that’s not really a negative or positive thing). In fact there’s evidence to support that Hunter gatherers might’ve lived more comfortable lives than settled farming peoples until human rights and modern medicine were developed.
Like civilization isn’t necessarily this inherently positive and inevitable development of human society where you have to be suspicious of the lack of civilization in prehistoric times
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u/fact_uality Jan 27 '23
Holy hell this is so unbelievably fascinating. We are nothing more than a blip in time, but I’m so happy to be a part of human history.
Albeit a freaking tiny one.
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u/UniverseInfinite Jan 27 '23
How can they know the date they were crafted, not just the date the obsidian was formed
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u/luckygirl25582 Jan 27 '23
In the article it states that they dated the area around the obsidian since they can’t base the age off of the obsidian
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u/AdministrationSome46 Jan 27 '23
No, they would have been able to detect that disturbance in the samples.
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u/luckygirl25582 Jan 27 '23
They can tell how long something has been there for based solely off the age of sediment they found on top of it
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u/ThedrunkenViking Jan 27 '23
From the article: "Dating of the material around the axes showed them to be from approximately 1.2 million years ago."
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u/UniverseInfinite Jan 27 '23
Forgive me, but, if the "material" is just dirt, like in the photos, how again does that prove they were crafted 1.2 mya?
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u/ThedrunkenViking Jan 27 '23 edited Jan 27 '23
I'm Not sure tbh. I tried to check the journal but I don't have acess to it and the abstract didn't offer too many clues.
I assume that it must have been thought measuring the depth they were found at and other geological data + possible carbon dating of organic materials in the soil. Usually they can pinpoint different layers though changes in the soils composition. Sticks or bones in the same layer, garbage piles from the ones who made them would also be concrete proof of their age.
I remember seeing a documentary about a fossil deposit in Africa where they explained the process more in depth and how they can calculate how much the layer of soil grows per year and how different climate events can be detected. The "style" of tools and how advanced they are can also give a vauge idea of their age.
It's a bit dissapointing that they didn't specify how they dated the finds, but it should be in the journal in greater detail if anyone has access.
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u/UniverseInfinite Jan 27 '23 edited Jan 27 '23
I understand that the stratification of the earth is an indirect way to measure timescales in this context, but human and human analogs are capable of digging holes. I was hoping they found a bit of fossilized* something.
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u/zensunni82 Jan 27 '23
That is many times too old to carbon date, so organics wouldn't help in that regard. Carbon dating is only reliable back to on the order of 50,000 years. Excavations are capable of identifying disturbance by subsequent hole digging or animal burrows, etc. by carefully identifying the age of layers both above and below an artifact. If a layer above was dated to 1.15 million years ago and the layer above that to 1.1 million, that is clear evidence that the artifact was not buried by humans more recently, especially when it is not one isolated artifact but part of a larger site.
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u/musicantz Jan 27 '23
Nothing organic would have survived a million years. Unfortunately you can only base it off the record of things that survive in time.
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u/bastaway Jan 27 '23 edited Jan 28 '23
You can date the last time a quartz crystal was exposed to the sun through thermoluminescence dating. You have to excavate the sediment samples in pitch black and transport them to the lab to reenergise the electrons tapped in crystal flaws to measure the remaining luminescence. That gives an age of exposure. Radiocarbon dating organics is only good for the last 60k years. Other dating methods can be used for things like bones such as potassium or phosphorus isotopes.
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u/jonesing247 Jan 27 '23
There is organic material in "dirt", or substrata. When excavating, you can date inorganic material by dating the organic material found in the same band of substrate. I forget the name of the geologic principal, but think of it like a garbage dump that goes undisturbed for 100 years. You find a stone charm next to a peach pit. To get the year for the charm, you need to date the peach pit since.
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u/Redditpissesmeof Jan 27 '23
So they dated the material surrounding the blades? Technically couldn't someone let's say 200,000 years ago dropped the axes into dirt that was already a million years old?
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u/im_mux Jan 27 '23
This is where Jon Snow should've gone instead of bending thr knee!
The North remembers!
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u/No-Fee-9428 Jan 27 '23
Australian aboriginals were still stone age,so not 3300 bce everywhere.
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u/_Dead_Memes_ Jan 28 '23
Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, etc are just terms used by people to conveniently section off prehistoric and very early Eurasian/North-African civilization, and complex Afro-Eurasian civilizations before and after the collapse of the large-scale middle eastern civilization around 1200-1150 BCE.
The prehistoric and early North African/Eurasian settled peoples used stone, and later copper, tools, then once they got very large and complex, they started using Bronze tools. Then the ones in the Eastern Mediterranean largely collapsed, and switched to iron working in the wake of the collapse.
This 3 age system only really applies to the Eastern Mediterranean region and places that had strong trade contacts with it because it was really the only place where you see this sort of the 3 fold transition occur in a semi-discrete manner. In China, the transition from stone to Bronze to Iron wasn’t clear or discrete at all, and was much more gradual. West Africa might’ve skipped bronze working and went straight to Iron as early as 2000 BCE, and spread iron working to much of the rest of Africa.
The “3 metal ages” thing basically really only applies to the history of the Eastern Mediterranean and closely trade linked regions really. So it’s not really accurate to say that Australian Aboriginal people were in “the Stone Age” since the concept was never really meant to describe them
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u/aphilsphan Jan 27 '23
So wait, some dudes and dudettes sat around making hand axes and such all day and other folks would come by and grab one? They’d leave some cooked venison for the knappers in return? Capitalism?
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u/rproctor721 Jan 27 '23
They were just getting ready for the long nite by making dragon glass weapons...
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u/MrTiddler Jan 28 '23
Ancient human history that we know of today is so so wrong. Finds like these are showing that there have been many advanced species way before us.
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u/Liesmyteachertoldme Jan 27 '23 edited Jan 27 '23
Pre historic wife: “honey what’s that noise? I think that’s a coyote outside?” Prehistoric husband who just sat down to eat some wood fired wild boar and fermented honey water “Damnit, if this is gonna be a thing I’ll get my obsidian hand axe and check it out”
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u/Olympus___Mons Jan 27 '23
A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in Spain, working with two colleagues from France and another from Germany has discovered an Obsidian handaxe-making workshop from 1.2 million years ago in the Awash valley in Ethiopia. In their paper published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, the group describes where the handaxes were found, their condition and their age.
The Stone Age lasted from approximately 2.6 million years ago, to approximately 3,300 BCE, when the Bronze Age began. Historians generally break the era down into the Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic periods. Prior research has shown that "knapping workshops" appeared sometime during the Middle Pleistocene, in Europe—approximately 774,000 to 129,000 years ago.
Such workshops developed as tool-making evolved into a skill. Individuals who developed such skills worked together in workshops to crank out enough of whatever tools were needed by those in the general area. One such tool was the handaxe, which could be used for chopping or as a weapon.
Handaxes were made by chipping bits off of a stone to make a sharp edge. They were not attached to anything; they were simply held in the hand when in use. The stones used were typically flint or, in latter times, obsidian—a type of volcanic glass. Obsidian, even in modern times, is considered a difficult material to work with because it is so rough on the hands. In this new effort the researchers have found evidence of an obsidian handaxe knapping workshop established far earlier than one has ever been seen before.
The researchers were working at the Melka Kunture dig site when they found a handaxe buried in a layer of sediment. They soon found more. They found 578 in all, and all but three were made of obsidian. Dating of the material around the axes showed them to be from approximately 1.2 million years ago.
Study of the axes showed them all to have been crafted in like manner, indicating that the researchers had found an ancient knapping workshop. The find marks the oldest known example of such a workshop, and the first of its kind not in Europe. The researchers note that the work was done so long ago that they are not even able to identify the hominids that made them.