The Sound Of Settled Science

Science Unsettled Science 38 Comments

Everything keeps getting older.

Archaeologists excavating at the Simbiro III archaeological site have found a trove obsidian hand-axes from 1.2 million years ago, indicating that hand axe production on a mass scale occurred 500,000 years earlier than previously thought.

Simple obsidian tool production has been documented from sites as early as 3.3 million years ago, but the complexity for mass tool production of hand axes by an unknown group of hominins at Simbiro III, predates the earliest known example found at Kariandusi in Kenya which dates to 700,000-years-ago.

The results of the study at Simbiro III have been published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, where the researchers document almost 600 obsidian hand-axes being discovered.

Abstract here: A surge in obsidian exploitation more than 1.2 million years ago at Simbiro III

38 Replies to “The Sound Of Settled Science”

  2. The Natives are getting very upset. Because science is showing they were latecomers to America.

  4. Why would they choose “mass-produced” over “pillaged from the bodies of their enemies”?

    1. There is no reason for mass production without reward. So.. Trade. This shows that the hominids were engaged in trading *or were creating currency* for trade purposes.

      1. I meant the archaeologists. If this is a newly-discovered society, what evidence do they have to support the assertion? They expect a workshop to have 600+ units in stock? How big is this society? Why would it not be a warehouse for the spoils of war?

        1. You bring up an interesting point, Marc. if the items were of a variety of weapons you could make your argument, but they were of a specific item, and there was a lot of debris from the chipping process.
          Six hundred sounds like a major production effort.
          If a single artisan could turn out two a day, that’s pretty much a years worth; but if say a dozen artisans worked at it, maybe a month’s work? Trading sounds reasonable…or prepping for war?

  5. L – “A surge in obsidian exploitation more than 1.2 million years ago at Simbiro III”

    NEWS FLASH-
    An new U.N.N.GO. lobby group is demanding reparations for the earliest known exploitation.
    This according to the Aztec High Priest lobby group “The Obsidians”. Volcano sites are to be
    declared U.N. Heritage sites and bi-annual sacrifice of natural born …

  6. “hand axe production”

    A skill we will all need once the currency goes Weimar. Is there a how-to YouTube link someone can share?

    1. I fear there is no one in the upcoming group of youth who will ever be capable of such skillful manufacturing. We have reached the cul de sac of human evolution. The box canyon where it all ends.

  7. How do you know how old a rock is? By the fossils found therein. How do you know how old the fossil is? By the rocks it is found in. Sorry but such dating is pure nonsense based on one’s own preconceptions and mutual agreement that the emperor new clothes are the brightest and best in the history of humanity. Cool find though.

      1. If you don’t know the ratio when you start you can not date based on radioactive decay. Nice try though. Too bad you are so ignorant of science and stuff.

        1. Yes you can date things based on radioactive decay. You can’t use carbon dating to date 1.5 million years back, but yes, radioactive dating generally works.

          1. Actually you can’t. Nice try though. If you don’t know the initial mixture and we don’t know said mixture then we will never know how much the mixture has changed over time.

          2. Joe – most dating techniques are based on ratios so you don’t have to know the initial concentration. For example, in carbon dating, a living thing takes on carbon-14 at the same ratio as exists in the atmosphere. Living things absorb C-14 when they are living but not when they die. If you know what that ratio of C-14 is, you can determine the age of something that lived and contained carbon for several half-lives of the isotope (7-8 half-lives or up to 40,000-45,000 yrs for carbon which is 5,730 yrs).

            There is also potassium-argon dating which can go much further back in time because the half-life of K-40 is 1.25 billion yrs. When volcanic rocks cool, any argon gas is driven out of the rock by extreme heat, leaving only the potassium. If you have enough of a sample you can determine the ratio of K to Ar to estimate the age of the sample. I notice the lack of error bars on virtually all data sets but here assume it’s 10%. So if they say 1.2 My assume +/- 0.12 My. That’s still a long time ago and fine to separate things that are 3 My from 1.2 My.

            Then there is uranium-lead (U-Pb) age dating. You can’t just pick up a piece of uranium and calculate how much lead there is to determine the age of the rock. But a few minerals, most commonly zircon, forms with no lead, only uranium. Find a zircon in a rock sample, find the ratio of Pb to U and you have the age when the rock was formed. It works well for rocks more than 1 My old and its accuracy is claimed to be 0.1-1.0 percent.

            So take a fossil that is sitting in a rock layer that contains a few zircons. The assumption would be that the fossil is the same age of the rock and that the zircons represent the rock age. Might be false, but don’t blame the age dating technique. Blame the assumptions.

            It’s physics. You can make fun of Archaeology, you can make fun of global warming, but you can’t make fun of physics.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium%E2%80%93lead_dating

            For a change Wikipedia is actually quite good on this topic.

          3. Steve. The amount of carbon 14 varies by year and century and millenia. If you don’t know the amount your sample has to begin with you can not calculate how long ago the object took its last breath. We can only make assumptions. Sad to say we honestly don’t know how old things truly are. Not for lack of trying but for lack of understanding.

    2. The abstract doesn’t say how they dated the site. It would not have been carbon dating, as that is only useful to 50,000 years ago, but archeologists have an array of methods for doing it.

  9. So now they want us to believe they have evidence of homo’s in society 1.2 million years ago? Did I speed read that wrong?

    1. Buddy,
      They’ve now found the Obsidian axe production factory….
      I guess the Big Black Obsidian Monolith is somewhere close by, they just need to dig a little deeper.

  12. I read that homo sapiens came around about 200,000 years ago. So, if this claim is true, these earthlings must have been very ugly (by our standards) perhaps resembling Thag the Caveman in the Far Side comic.

  14. Ancient Apocalypse by Graham Hancock is a good watch on Netflx.
    As are the multiple episodes of Hancock and Randal Carlson on JRE talking about Younger Dryas.

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