* Astronomy

Members Login
Username 
 
Password 
    Remember Me  
Home -> Astronomy News -> General news -> Homo Sapiens
Post Info
TOPIC: Homo Sapiens
Blobrana


L

Posts: 131433
Date:
Stone Age Tools
Permalink  
 

Archaeologists have unearthed ancient objects, including daggers and blades belonging to the Stone Age, in Jaleq, southeastern Iran.
The objects provide evidence of human existence in the region back to more than one million years ago.
The Stone Age, also known as the Palaeolithic era, is the name given to the period between 1.5 million and 20,000 years ago, when tools and weapons were made entirely out of stone.
Archaeologists have also found evidence from the Stone Age in Khorasan, northeastern Iran and Azerbaijan, northwestern Iran.
Jaleq is located near Saravan city in Sistan Baluchistan province.

Source

__________________
Blobrana


L

Posts: 131433
Date:
Trapezoid stone tools
Permalink  
 

Humans may have trekked up a mountain 35,000 years ago in what is now Tochigi Prefecture (Japan) to dig up raw obsidian ore to process into stone tools. Trapezoid stone tools unearthed on Mount Takaharayama in the prefecture will shed light on early human history in Japan.
The tools indicate human beings at the start of the Upper Paleolithic Era (roughly 35,000 years ago) were already 'mining' raw stones to produce tools, not just picking them up off the ground. Previous finds had led experts to believe such mining started in the more recent Jomon Period, from 13,000 years to 3,000 years ago.
Archaeologists Takashi Tamura and Sadakatsu Kunitake first found the stone tools in 2005 on the 1,795-metre mountain straddling Yaita and other municipalities. Tamura heads the Department of Historical Sciences at the Natural History Museum and Institute, Chiba, and Kunitake is a lecturer at Josai University in Saitama Prefecture.
A panel formed by the Yaita city board of education conducted a full-scale research dig at the mountain in October 2006. The team collected 441 stone relics from valley cliffs around the ridges at about 1,400 meters. Of the pieces found, eight are judged to be trapezoid stone tools used by early humans to cut, poke or shave other items.
Akira Ono, a professor of archaeology at Tokyo Metropolitan University, headed the panel.

"Judging from their type, the processing and where they were found, these must be trapezoid tools (like ones typically found in loam layers in the Kanto region that date back 35,000 to 40,000 years ago)" - Akira Ono.

The discovery indicates those who made the tools had developed the high intellect needed to check, screen and process the obsidian into tools on the spot, the researchers say. Also, knowing where to find the obsidian in the vast Kanto plain, where there are few sources of ore, also indicates their intelligence.
"To understand and share such information, they had to use language" - Takashi Tamura .

Source: Asahi

__________________
Blobrana


L

Posts: 131433
Date:
RE: Homo Sapiens
Permalink  
 

 For centuries, it has been recognised that, in the absence of a birth certificate, the best way to estimate the chronological age of a growing child is from his/her teeth. Some of the earliest studies of dental development were carried out to document the variability of tooth eruption with respect to chronological age at a time when, for example in England, the Factory Act of 1833 made it legal for children aged 913 years to work a 9-h day in textile mills. Data for dental eruption in 1837 showed that between their eighth and ninth birthdays, 524 of 530 children had both lower incisors erupted (1). Since that time, the trend to grow to greater heights and weights has increased dramatically in line with better nutritional and social conditions. However, over the same period, there has been little change in the timing of tooth eruption (2).   Smith et al. (3) use novel techniques to estimate the chronological age of an ancient modern human from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, dated to 160,000 years before the present (ybp). They show that the age of lower incisor tooth eruption was much the same then as it is today.
The very first modern humans that were anatomically indistinguishable from ourselves appear {approx}200,000 ybp, but Jebel Irhoud 3, described by Smith et al. (3), is one of the earliest known anatomically modern human juveniles. Earlier fossil hominins from the Plio-Pleistocene had shorter periods of growth and development, more similar to living great apes than to modern humans, and for a long time, the hunt has been on to determine exactly when a major shift in life-history strategy occurred. The trend has always been to assume that this shift was earlier rather than later . . .

Read more  (subscription)

__________________
Blobrana


L

Posts: 131433
Date:
Mystery of the fat Venus
Permalink  
 

They're known as Palaeolithic Venuses and they raise a lot of puzzling questions: How come these almost identical figurines were found all the way from France to Siberia? How come this stylised carving tradition was practised and passed down over 20,000 years? What purpose did they serve?
There are as many answers to these questions as there are archaeologists and art critics. Frankly, the Venuses are a mystery. But the mystery has just deepened and widened.
The latest issue of the journal Antiquity tells of dozens of small portable statuettes recently unearthed in Germany, France, Poland, and the Czech Republic.

Read more

__________________
Blobrana


L

Posts: 131433
Date:
Peking Man
Permalink  
 

The ancient remains of an early modern human found in Beijing suggests the "Out of Africa" theory of the dispersal of humans may be more complex than first thought, a study released on Monday said.

Read more


__________________
Blobrana


L

Posts: 131433
Date:
RE: Homo Sapiens
Permalink  
 

Theoretical physicist and 2057 host Michio Kaku speculates on the future of civilization.



__________________
Blobrana


L

Posts: 131433
Date:
Primates
Permalink  
 

A team of anthropologists said their study of South Texas fossil deposits revealed evidence including ancient teeth that shows the area was home to numerous types of primates 42 million years ago.
Lamar University Professor Jim Westgate and two colleagues announced the discovery of three new genera and four new species of primates based on their examination of material removed from Lake Casa Blanca International State Park near Laredo and the Mexican border.
Westgate said the Laredo area was a coastal lagoon during the stage of geologic history known as the Eocene Epoch, which was when primates were becoming extinct on much of the continent.

Read more

__________________
Blobrana


L

Posts: 131433
Date:
RE: Homo Sapiens
Permalink  
 

Modern man's earliest known close ancestor was significantly more apelike than previously believed, a New York University College of Dentistry professor has found.
A computer-generated reconstruction by Dr. Timothy Bromage, a palaeoanthropologist and Adjunct Professor of Biomaterials and of Basic Science and Craniofacial Biology, shows a 1.9 million-year-old skull belonging to Homo rudolfensis, the earliest member of the human genus, with a surprisingly small brain and distinctly protruding jaw, features commonly associated with more apelike members of the hominid family living as much as three million years ago.
Dr. Bromage's findings call into question the extent to which H. rudolfensis differed from earlier, more apelike hominid species. Specifically, he is the first scientist to produce a reconstruction of the skull that questions renowned palaeontologist and archaeologist Richard Leakey's depiction of modern man"s earliest direct ancestor as having a vertical facial profile and a relatively large brain – an interpretation widely accepted until now.

Read more

__________________
Blobrana


L

Posts: 131433
Date:
Permalink  
 

Queens of the Stone Age
Have scholars given the cavewoman a more passive image than she deserves?
The lifestyles of the female and prehistoric are a surprisingly frequent topic of conversation, especially when you consider that Palaeolithic women didn't have corporate careers to abandon in favour of becoming stay-at-home moms or the disposable income to buy Jimmy Choo sandals. As with their educated upper-middle-class sisters of today, people think they understand exactly how prehistoric women lived, even though these notions often turn out to be more cartoon than reality. And I mean that literally, since single-panel cartoons in the New Yorker featuring shaggy cavemen in one-shoulder bearskin outfits dragging their consorts by the hair probably represent the sum of what most of us know about the lives of our (very) distant ancestors.

Read more

__________________
Blobrana


L

Posts: 131433
Date:
Permalink  
 

Fossil from 160,000 years ago shows growth profile similar to modern man
An international team of scientists have found that the oldest member (160,000 years old) of the genus Homo shows a life history profile similar to modern humans. These findings, based on experiments at ESRF, are in contrast to previous studies suggesting that early fossil humans possessed short growth periods, which were more similar to chimpanzees than to living humans.
The origins of modern humans continues to be one of the most hotly debated topics among anthropologists, and there is little consensus about where and when the first members of our species, Homo sapiens, became fully modern. While fossil evidence tells a complex tale of mosaic change during the African Stone Age, almost nothing is known about changes in human 'life history', or the timing of development, reproductive scheduling, and lifespan. Research during the past two decades has shown that early fossil humans (australopithecines and early Homo) possessed short growth periods, which were more similar to chimpanzees than to living humans. However, it is unclear when and in which group of fossil humans the modern condition of a relatively long childhood arose.

Read more

__________________
«First  <  1 … 21 22 23 24 25 … 30  >  Last»  | Page of 30  sorted by
Quick Reply

Please log in to post quick replies.
Home -> Astronomy News -> General news -> Homo Sapiens


Create your own FREE Forum
Report Abuse 		Powered by ActiveBoard