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k3surfacer t1_j62uip1 wrote

Very interesting. That's long before homo sapiens and around the times of homo erectus. Amazing.

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onFilm t1_j62wbfu wrote

Humans: borrowing since day one.

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Leviathan3333 t1_j631va3 wrote

The Story of Prometheus is basically that

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Trelefor t1_j633o61 wrote

Most old stories are just muddied history

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r0ndy t1_j64qiox wrote

I think that's because history repeats itself. And that's because humans ultimately haven't really progressed or grown intrinsically. Murder, rape, theft, greed, power and corruption.

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420ipblood t1_j65t25y wrote

This is childish ridiculousness. All of humanity has made zero progress because u/r0ndy the gatekeeper noticed that murder still exists.

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Chrome_Pwny t1_j637mfk wrote

This pairs well with the news that we've been cooking fish for 750,000 years, pushing back from the original fire use timeline from 170,000 years ago by neanders

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oneeighthirish t1_j649wf6 wrote

I thought fire use predated Homo Sapiens, and that Homo Sapiens have been around for 300,000+ years. Although, I'm completely ignorant and at most an extremely casual layman when it comes to paleoanthropology

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dra6000 t1_j65vpk6 wrote

Fire use predates fire making. Historically, hominids would feed a fire to keep it going but not know how to make one from scratch. Fire use started in areas with active volcanic activity and lava flows so getting a fire wasn't that hard if you lost one.

It's first primitive use was to scorch bushland. You could forage for roasted fruit, nuts, and rodents after.

Homo Sapiens while being around for 300,000 years were still evolving long after their emergence. The largest set of activity was in the brain. The most you could go back and not be able to tell cognitively between modern humans is probably 100,000 years. That's when advanced cultures started to emerge (not civilization, just cultures).

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amateur_mistake t1_j6546cl wrote

Yeah. Fire use is a million - 1.5 million years old (as far as people can tell). We just didn't have good evidence of any cooking going on in the fires.

Which doesn't mean it wasn't happening. Just that we can't show that it was.

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anonymous_matt t1_j64t76m wrote

Haven't we had evidence that humans have been using fire for around 1 million years a long time? I remember hearing about that like 6 years ago.

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goldfishpaws t1_j62vor7 wrote

Stonehenge and the pyramids, for context, are about 5000 years old.

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butterfingernails t1_j6435az wrote

Modern Egypt is 5000 years old, they just moved into the pyramids then.

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goldfishpaws t1_j64c7bx wrote

Experts suggest a long span around ~3000 years BC (sources, PBS, Wikipedia) but nobody knows for sure. Do you have anything to suggest they're older?

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butterfingernails t1_j64d0d9 wrote

Tons of podcasts and stuff from alternative history guys like Graham Hancock or Ben Van Kerkwyk. Of course nothing they've put out has been accepted as fact, it makes more sense that the Egyptians moved into a previous civilisations society, because the oldest pyramids in Egypt are the best built, and as they get younger, the quality and craftsmanship disappears. The last pyramids built in Egypt are sloppy mud bricks, while the oldest have precision cut blocks of quartz.

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AlphaLo t1_j65x02c wrote

The Graham Hancock who has never published a scientific article in his life? Get out of there with this pseudo-science bullshit.

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goldfishpaws t1_j64fghr wrote

I'm sure there were people in Egypt >5k years ago, just there's no accepted evidence/reason to believe the pyramids themselves are older! Same with Stonehenge.

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boredguy3 t1_j64cov6 wrote

You mean, they utilized the pyramids and surrounding area for prestige, right?

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butterfingernails t1_j64dlym wrote

No, I mean like all the greatest works of construction in Egypt, were there before the people we consider to be the builders moved in. The pyramids are way older than egyptologists claim, but because they don't want to admit they moved into the area instead of building them. They can't explain how they built them, but they know they did it some how.

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Siantlark t1_j65pcs5 wrote

Egyptologists have very good ideas of how the pyramids were built. Dressed stone, mostly ashlar, has been used to build monuments for millennia and we have murals and papyri documenting the transportation of limestone, granite, syenite etc. to construction sites. We have evidence of how they built the pyramids with cutting tools, bevels, drilling, sawing, and sanding, with harder stone being pounded or sawn into shape with abrasives. None of the pyramids are out of reach for ancient Egyptian/Kushite labor and technology, its just labor intensive and time consuming.

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Bubbahard t1_j66mkg6 wrote

Also, most blocks on the pyramids we're built by mixing materials on site, pouring them into forms and stacking them next to each other. Geopolymers.

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boredguy3 t1_j64e3of wrote

Yes, they moved in and claimed the massive works for prestige. To impress and wow everyone.

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Pedalos t1_j6323tr wrote

It's amazing how fast technological advancement has become compared to when we started.

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[deleted] t1_j63cu84 wrote

[deleted]

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ClimbingrocksJT t1_j63fs85 wrote

Just look at an infinite curve.

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[deleted] t1_j64am8l wrote

[deleted]

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OkTea6555 t1_j66ddyo wrote

I think you are missing the vital point. Humans don't need to become smarter as individuals. We create societies, which are complex human systems of knowledge-transfer and development. When we are many, 1/100.000 will create the microchip or the lithium battery. More importantly we grow in knowledge for every generation by being able to speak, while other mammals (who also learn) can't pass knowledge on as effectively. That is our edge. Therefore I think that any question of our intellect and its prospects will likely be answered by technology, as it has indeed always been. The phone today is one thing, but don't tell me in 100 years implants won't be accessible and in widespread usage.

"Collective Learning" is what I heard it named. Since that is how we conquered the Earth.

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boredguy3 t1_j64cjo2 wrote

Try 288,000 years. Homo Sapians have had the same brain size since then, probably earlier.

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TheLuminary t1_j6524su wrote

Could you imagine having the same cognitive abilities, but language hadent been invented yet. That's wild to me.

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One-Turnover9984 t1_j638vqn wrote

Graham Hancock *Orgasms*

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hurtindog t1_j63n3pl wrote

I recommend The Dawn of Everything by Graeber and Wengrow. It’s an excellent accounting of early man and our mis-interpretations of history.

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mumbo-wumbo-jumbo t1_j64fhbt wrote

Can't wait until we uncover a 1.2 million year old OSHA violation.

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255001434 t1_j64sagx wrote

We already did. They weren't wearing eye protection while chipping at the obsidian.

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[deleted] t1_j64zrph wrote

[deleted]

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gumenski t1_j658brs wrote

You're probably right, there's no way to know for sure. Written language surely followed much later so that doesn't help.

Estimates for when speech started vary extremely wildly.

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1ksassa t1_j63dzba wrote

Winter is coming!

Fun fact that winter actually did come. Big time.

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autotldr t1_j62x4zr wrote

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 78%. (I'm a bot)

> 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.

> More information: Margherita Mussi et al, A surge in obsidian exploitation more than 1.2 million years ago at Simbiro III, Nature Ecology & Evolution.

> Citation: Obsidian handaxe-making workshop from 1.2 million years ago discovered in Ethiopia retrieved 26 January 2023 from https://phys.org/news/2023-01-obsidian-handaxe-making-workshop-million-years.

Extended Summary | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: workshop^#1 research^#2 ago^#3 Obsidian^#4 years^#5

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lilrabbitfoofoo t1_j662cb3 wrote

Ancient man took care of those fucking white walkers...

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Intelligent_Dot8328 t1_j65rnvq wrote

Start digging Antarctica, there should be a gate down there

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Soggy_Midnight980 t1_j679eco wrote

Humans spent nearly 1 million years using hand axes before they figured out how to make a spear. To me this suggests that for the longest time, we made hand axes in the same way birds make nests. Semi-instinctively.

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Amazing-Artichoke330 t1_j65dv3r wrote

Fascinating. The ability to make tools was what distinguished humanoids from their ancestors. Some animals will use objects they find as tools, but apparently tool making is unique to us.

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dumb-club t1_j66uvf5 wrote

That's what people do when there is no pornhub

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justtrashtalk t1_j65hdh7 wrote

if you look at Africans from that part of the continent, they look like they have seen shit so this is not surprising

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justhatcarrot t1_j63wq9g wrote

Which minecraft server is this?

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hgaterms t1_j640j4p wrote

> Dating of the material around the axes showed them to be from approximately 1.2 million years ago.

But that just means the dirt is 1.2 million years old. These axes could have been tossed into a hole that had 1.2 million year old dirt in it, and the axes themselves could have been made only 20,000 years ago.

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onFilm t1_j644ioq wrote

Hey guys, let's take these 20,000 year old artifacts and throw them in this 1.2million year old dirt I found!

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tdgros t1_j649t5h wrote

it was only 1.180.000 years old at the time, it looked much younger

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boredguy3 t1_j64ddl3 wrote

That’s not how science works. Dirt isn’t carbon 14 accessible, one needs decaying matter. Such as, wood, plants etc. saying these fragments were “thrown into a 1.2 million year old hole” is on par with saying everyone of those scientists wants their career destroyed by publishing fake data. It doesn’t make sense

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[deleted] t1_j630bb3 wrote

[removed]

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adsjabo t1_j63487x wrote

Sounds like a whole lot of bollocks

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OceanIsVerySalty t1_j63grea wrote

A cutting edge made by banging rocks together is not at all the same as “ancient nukes.”

Ancient peoples did not have nukes. There is absolutely no real evidence of that. It is just a conspiracy theory.

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CompositeBeing t1_j64gt5a wrote

The ignorance is not an excuse for denial of information at hand. Sometimes the additional language skill is needed but there are translators ...

https://www.ancient-hebrew.org/ancientman/1054.html

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OceanIsVerySalty t1_j64jcn2 wrote

Look, ancient people did not have nukes. This is an absurd thing to even suggest, and is a conspiracy theory with no basis in fact or proper scientific research.

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CompositeBeing t1_j64mxtf wrote

I suggest a more thorough research - there are a lot of evidence about that but as it hasn't been in line with the "main stream history line" one needs to dig it out.

Ever wondered why ChatGPT worries so many main stream media and some IT companies? Because it will have an unrestricted access to everything that is hidden in a plain sight.

Try to do some math yourself - someone was manufacturing obsidian axes 1.2 billion years ago, your ancestors were manufacturing similar axes from stone 50k years ago. So nothing ever happened to a previous civilizations in between? 1 billion years passed and all we did in that time was to "manufacture" primitive axes. And suddenly a few thousands years ago we went to iron age. And since then how many years passed? 1 billion? Or just a few thousands?

So once again - it is great that this obsidian axe made into media.

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Sum1udontkno t1_j65g5tx wrote

Using various paleoclimate proxies such as ice cores and sediment samples, paleoclimatologists have been able to pin point events such as the Permian - Triassic extinction event 251.5 Mya, the K-Pg boundary 66 Mya when an asteroid / supervolcano killed the non-avian dinosaurs and ended the Cretacious, Paleocene–Eocene thermal maximum 55 Mya, and many more. They get more and more accurate the closer to modern time they get.

A mass extinction caused by a nuclear event would not go unnoticed- especially as recently as the pleistocene. There would be evidence of decaying or decayed radioactive isotopes.

If you are interested in such things as past human-oid civilizations, I suggest you put your mental energy into learning about our closest relatives such as Neanderthals, Denisovians, and Homoflorensis. Or more distant relatives like the Ardipithecus family from ~ 7mya. Truly fascinating stuff.

Otherwise, if you continue on this conspiracy theory path of "past nuclear civilizations" based only on the fallacy that it's impossible to prove something DIDN'T happen; you will end up another ancient aliens nut case or Lock Ness Monster truther and deprive yourself of a whole world of fascinating REAL knowledge about the world and it's past. Even fueling harmful controversy for real researchers trying to conduct real research about past civilizations. Please don't be one of those people...

Here's a PBS Eons video to get you started in the right direction if you enjoy learning about ancient humans

Edit: also, head over to r/AskAnthropology if you have more questions

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ImminentZero t1_j64n0ap wrote

You keep linking a site that doesn't provide any sources for its claims or information, and even a cursory dive into any of the specific claims reveals that the only sources for them have either been discredited directly or have themselves failed to provide any empirical evidence in support.

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TrenzaloresGraveyard t1_j63bpnj wrote

Please tell me more

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kyckling666 t1_j642eig wrote

You get about a million cave men to grab the ropes of the mega-sling. Then, another million load a ball of onyx about twenty miles in diameter into the sling and the cavemen run in a wide circle until there’s enough force to hurl the thing into the neighboring village. Mass destruction. Mostly crushing, but, those of us in academia refer to it as an ancient nuke.

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