This technological tradition lasted longer than <em>Homo sapiens</em> have even been a species.
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10,000 generations of hominins used the same stone tools to weather a changing world
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Anyone have a location for Nomorotukunan, this article is the only hit Google has for that spelling.
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Was not expecting that!
I'm also glad the author brought up extant species like chimpanzees using tools. When will we/scientists get over the fact that humans & hominins are not that different from other species?
No, there are no novels or scientific studies performed by other species, but that doesn't mean they aren't smart or skilled in other ways.
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Humans are different. But it is a difference of degree, not of type. Also diifferent...but not in a good way. Humans are like the angry toddler that when told he has to share the sandbox whips out his dick and pees all over everything. If you are a wild creature or plant you definitely do not want humans in your neighborhood.
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Well...in the immortal words of Red Green "If it ain't broke, you ain't trying"...
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Does the word "stools" have a meaning here that's different from the one in common usage in English?
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In a sense.
Here is an example of an ancient stone stool.
https://www.wisdomlib.org/gallery/maritime-museum-galle/7795
I would personally call it a bench but the dictionary tells me a stool is "a seat without a back or arms, typically resting on three or four legs or on a single pedestal." So it qualifies.
Any other definitions are a load of feces.
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That's some serious conservatism, using the same technology for hundreds of thousands of years. The archeological record shows steps in innovation, usually associated with a new hominid species. They figure out a more efficient way to strike of flakes to make a wider variety of more useful tools. Then that is what they do until a newer species arrives on the scene. Until modern homo sapiens showed up. We got the neolithic with microlith technology, and the rate of innovation kept increasing and here we are today. At some point it may plateau when our ability to innovate is maxed out. Our species has been around for only a short while. An eyeblink in geologic time.
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Technically, when a pointed or edged stone tool is broken, you fix it by breaking it again.
That means that whether it works or not depends on how many times it's been broken...so in a way, it's sort of like whether the light is on or not depends on how many times you've flipped the switch, except it's a 1:n ratio instead of 1:1.
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Og call this piece "warm cave of feet," look like pump, feel like sneaker!
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ReadandShare
Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
Imagine time travel and explaining "planned obsolescence" to these fellows where nothing changes, ever!
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“As vegetation shifted, the toolmaking remained steady,” said National University of Kenya archaeologist Rahab N. Kinyanjui in a recent press release. “This is resilience.”
I call it stagnation.
I call it stagnation.
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ReadandShare
Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
Ok, so good enough was good enough for hundreds of thousands of years. But if 'necessity' (the mother of all inventions) was met, what about 'laziness', the father of inventions? Nobody took any shortcuts inside or outside of the box in all that time?
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I'm gonna guess Turkey and some diacritics are missing. * I wish I could make this post disappear, I'm just wildly speculating which embarrasses me because I don't like it when other people do it. Apologies all around * * it's in Kenya. I just want to go downvote myself but I don't think I can. *
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In a similar vein, I wonder how many generations of chimpanzees have been fishing ants out of their nests with long straws for a tasty snack?
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They probably did. We just haven't found the rocks that show it.
My understanding is that the fossil record shows evidence that technologies emerged and then sometimes disappeared again from specific places. Hominid tribes didn't necessarily have contact with each other or, if they had contact, they weren't necessarily trading technology.
It is entirely possible that the Acheulean tradition that replaced Oldowan was independently invented in multiple places as hominids kept experimenting with better ways of building stone flakes. We have only a tiny fraction of the fossil record, so we can only speak to how invention at occurred at the very largest scale.
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Chimpanzees will chuck their own shit at you just to be funny.
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Probably not anytime soon because if they admit that other animals are a lot smarter than we give them credit for, then our "uniqueness" makes us less unique. Right? And then they won't be able to say, "But we're human so we're the only ones that [fill in the blank]".
For seemingly forever scientists tried to tell us that animals don't play or they don't have empathy or they don't ... well a lot of things, like using tools, which some other animals because the most destructive and vindictive animals (humans) do.
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Another great article that was well written. It's why I keep coming back to arstechnica.
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I'm sorry (not really) but chimpanzees do that EXACT same thing. It's not only us humans (including the president of the U.S..
Sorry, got that wrong. Apparently he likes to be peed ON.
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Usually advances on based on an accident, as in I accidentally did X and Y realized they could use it for Z and if it is good enough and easy enough, other people try to do X and if they can, it catches on.
What we don't know about is all the other "accidents" that happened that were really great but nobody realized how much it could improve their lives by making something easier, or they couldn't figure out how to replicate what they made so it was a one off or maybe it lasted for ten years until that person died and then it died with them.
We rarely know about those kinds of things.
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"Check out my Sharp Rock 17,000."
"Oh yeah? Check out my Sharp Rock 17,000 Pro Max!"
"Oh yeah? Check out my Sharp Rock 17,000 Pro Max!"
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"Stagnation" is usually the result of not having another resource like another kind of rock (flint) that would work better.
So ... they never found another type of "rock" that they could break and use it for cutting because there were no volcanos in that area or ... the article doesn't say if other kinds of possible better resources were available and they just didn't realize it. But I'm pretty sure that after 10s of thousands of generations that someone would have accidentally broken a piece of flint and realized it was sharper than what they had if it was there to break open.
Maybe the place where they were was the best place to be at the time and any other kind of resources were just too far away for them to stumble upon it/them.
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You are 100% correct about "laziness" being the father (and mother) of invention. We never make things to make things harder to do. Well I'm sure some stupid people do or because they wanted more of a challenge if they were getting bored.
But primarily, laziness is whole reason that we invent. You are 100% correct on that.
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Unfortunately I don't expect us to ever find (though maybe we will) a site which preserves a chimpanzee in the act of pulling ants or termites out of their nests using a stick. Wouldn't THAT be amazing!
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"10,000 generations of hominins used the same stone tools to weather a changing world"
Wait...what? So ancient hominins had a weather machine? I know tech has been invented and lost many times but this is ridiculous!
Yes...I am joking.
Wait...what? So ancient hominins had a weather machine? I know tech has been invented and lost many times but this is ridiculous!
Yes...I am joking.
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