Human Prehistory (3.3 million years BC – 3500 BC)

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Human Prehistory (3.3 million years BC – 3500 BC)

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General news, articles and discussions regarding early humans, the Pleistocene Epoch, the first technologies, the birth of civilisation, and the emergence of the Holocene.


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Re: Human Prehistory (3.3 million years BC – 3500 BC)

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Ancestors may have created 'iconic' sounds as bridge to first languages
The 'missing link' that helped our ancestors to begin communicating with each other through language may have been iconic sounds, rather than charades-like gestures -- giving rise to the unique human power to coin new words describing the world around us, a new study reveals.

It was widely believed that, in order to get the first languages off the ground, our ancestors first needed a way to create novel signals that could be understood by others, relying on visual signs whose form directly resembled the intended meaning.

However, an international research team, led by experts from the University of Birmingham and the Leibniz-Centre General Linguistics (ZAS), Berlin, have discovered that iconic vocalisations can convey a much wider range of meanings more accurately than previously supposed.

The researchers tested whether people from different linguistic backgrounds could understand novel vocalizations for 30 different meanings common across languages and which might have been relevant in early language evolution.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 083414.htm
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Re: Human Prehistory (3.3 million years BC – 3500 BC)

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A child’s 78,000-year-old grave marks Africa’s oldest known human burial
The oldest known grave in Africa is that of a three-year-old child who died about 78,000 years ago. The find explores how people in the area treated their dead at the time.

Archaeologists discovered the top of a bundle of bones in Kenya’s Panga ya Saidi cave in 2017.
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Pictured, an artist’s impression of Mtoto’s burial. Experts believe the child was around three years old when they died and was likely wrapped in a shroud and had their head on a pillow
And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
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Re: Human Prehistory (3.3 million years BC – 3500 BC)

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And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
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Re: Human Prehistory (3.3 million years BC – 3500 BC)

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The oldest known tattoo tools were found at an ancient Tennessee site
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/old ... e-american
May 25, 2021 at 6:00 am
Ancient tattooing tools are tough to find or even recognize as implements for creating skin designs. But new microscopic studies of two turkey leg bones with sharpened ends indicate that Native Americans used these items to make tattoos between around 5,520 and 3,620 years ago.

These pigment-stained bones are the world’s oldest known tattooing tools, say archaeologist Aaron Deter-Wolf of the Tennessee Division of Archaeology in Nashville and his colleagues. The find suggests that Native American tattoo traditions in eastern North America extend back more than a millennium earlier than previously thought (SN: 3/4/19). Ötzi the Iceman, who lived around 5,250 years ago in Europe, displays the oldest known tattoos (SN: 1/13/16), but researchers haven’t found any of the tools used to make the Iceman’s tattoos.
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Re: Human Prehistory (3.3 million years BC – 3500 BC)

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Tiny tools point to specialist skills of ancient Indonesians
https://phys.org/news/2021-05-tiny-tool ... cient.html
by Griffith University
New research has questioned theories that a mysterious group of hunter-gatherers from Indonesia interacted with Aboriginal Australians thousands of years ago and provides a basis for future understanding of the people who made tiny, but precise implements out of stone.

The study, published in PLOS ONE, was led by Griffith University researchers at the Australian Research Center for Human Evolution and Indonesian counterparts from Pusat Penelitian Arkeologi Nasional (Puslit Arkenas), who examined a collection of stone and bone 'point' tools made by the Toalean people on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.

According to the study's lead author, Ph.D. student Yinika Perston, the Toaleans were a group of 'hunter-gatherer' people who lived in southernmost Sulawesi around 1500-8000 years ago. During this time, they produced several distinctive small tools that have not been found elsewhere on the island, including the so-called "Maros points," which were possibly used as arrowheads and have fine tooth-like serrations.
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Re: Human Prehistory (3.3 million years BC – 3500 BC)

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Hunter-gatherers first launched violent raids at least 13,400 years ago
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/hun ... bel-sahaba
May 27, 2021 at 11:00 am

More than 8,000 years before the rise of Egyptian civilization, hunter-gatherers went on the attack in the Nile Valley.

Skeletons of adults, teens and children excavated in the 1960s at an ancient cemetery in Sudan known as Jebel Sahaba display injuries incurred in repeated skirmishes, raids or ambushes, say paleoanthropologist Isabelle Crevecoeur and her colleagues. The site, which dates to between 13,400 and 18,600 years ago, provides the oldest known evidence of regular, small-scale conflicts among human groups, says Crevecoeur, of the University of Bordeaux in France.
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Re: Human Prehistory (3.3 million years BC – 3500 BC)

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Prehistoric carvings of red deer found in Scottish neolithic tomb
Mon 31 May 2021

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Delicate prehistoric carvings of adult red deer, thought to be the oldest of their type in the UK, have been found in a tomb in one of Scotland’s most famous neolithic sites.

The carvings, which depict two male red deer with full-grown antlers and several thought to be young deer, were discovered by chance in Kilmartin Glen in Argyll, home to one of the UK’s richest accumulations of neolithic and bronze age sites.

Archaeologists estimate the carvings are between 4,000 and 5,000 years old, a period which spans the neolithic and early bronze age, and are the first in the UK located alongside prehistoric cup and ring markings found throughout Kilmartin Glen.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... ithic-tomb
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Re: Human Prehistory (3.3 million years BC – 3500 BC)

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Shock Discovery Suggests Humans Were in The Americas 20,000 Years Earlier Than Thought
MIKE MCRAE
4 JUNE 2021
Coxcatlan Cave in Mexico's Tehuacan Valley is a time capsule like no other. Its dusty floor is a history book, its pages detailing thousands of years of food and technology of the land's inhabitants.

Archaeologists from the US and Mexico have finally dug into its earliest chapter, using advanced dating techniques to determine the age of animal bones buried among the rock shelter's oldest layers.

The results were astonishing, hinting at a human presence in the area as far back as 33,000 years ago – thousands of years before ice sheets stretched to their peak, and around 20,000 years earlier than currently accepted evidence suggests.
https://www.sciencealert.com/shocking-n ... 1622790827
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Re: Human Prehistory (3.3 million years BC – 3500 BC)

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Amazon-dwellers lived sustainably for 5,000 years

5 hours ago

A study that dug into the history of the Amazon Rainforest has found that indigenous people lived there for millennia with "causing no detectable species losses or disturbances".

Scientists working in Peru searched layers of soil for microscopic fossil evidence of human impact.

They found that forests were not "cleared, farmed, or otherwise significantly altered in prehistory".

The research is published in the journal PNAS.

Dr Dolores Piperno, from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Balboa, Panama, who led the study, said the evidence could help shape modern conservation - revealing how people can live in the Amazon while preserving its incredibly rich biodiversity.

Read more: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-57388939


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Credit: Alvaro del Campo
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