[HN Gopher] Someone in the Kalahari Collected Crystals 105,000 Y...
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Someone in the Kalahari Collected Crystals 105,000 Years Ago
Author : wombatmobile
Score : 93 points
Date : 2021-04-01 04:26 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sciencealert.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencealert.com)
| a2tech wrote:
| Actual source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03419-0
| [deleted]
| seneca wrote:
| They found a buried crystal cache. The sediment they were in
| dates to 105k years ago. I don't have access to the journal the
| actual paper is published in. Does anyone know how they establish
| that they were gathered at that time and not just more recently
| buried?
|
| This article is light on details.
| jph wrote:
| Article: We found 22 white and well-formed calcite crystals
| brought to the site 105,000 years ago. We determined this using
| a method called "optically stimulated luminescence", which
| dates sediments the crystals were excavated from. Our analysis
| indicates the crystals were not introduced into the deposits
| via natural processes, but rather represent a small cache of
| deliberately collected objects.
|
| See
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optically_stimulated_luminesce...
| seneca wrote:
| Yes, I read the article. It specifically says the sediment
| was dated. I'm just curious how they're certain the placement
| of the crystals dates to the same time.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| This dating method basically dates the last time the
| sediments were directly exposed to ionizing radiation (i.e.
| sunlight). The key here is that it sets a minimum age.
| Things can be older and have their "clocks reset", but the
| decay constant is fixed, so we can always determine the
| last time the object or sediment was exposed. There are a
| couple minor issues with it, but it's better (and sometimes
| cheaper!) than radioisotope dating. You can be pretty
| confident in OSL/TL dates more than a couple thousand years
| old.
| adolph wrote:
| _We excavated three areas of the shelter (4.75 m2 in total) and
| reached a maximum depth of 1.7 m, which revealed a sequence of
| stratified Middle Stone Age and Later Stone Age deposits_
|
| _Single-grain optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating
| of quartz from each of the three stratigraphic aggregates
| provided in-sequence dates with 1s errors of 14.8 +- 0.8 ka
| (dark brown gravelly silt), 30.9 +- 1.8 ka (orange ashy silt)
| and 105.3 +- 3.7 ka (DBSR) (weighted mean, n = 3)._
|
| _Several lines of evidence provide support for an
| anthropogenic origin of the OES. First, the fragments occur
| within a well-preserved rockshelter context and are in direct
| association with many other traces of human activity (Extended
| Data Fig. 5). Second, the OES fragments show evidence of having
| been burned. Over 80% (n = 34) of the OES fragments display red
| colouration (Fig. 2, Supplementary Data), which reflects
| exposure to temperatures of 300-350 degC. Third, humans were
| the primary agents of accumulation for the faunal assemblage at
| GHN and there is no evidence for the presence of hyenas or
| other animals that consume ostrich eggs. The identifiable
| fraction of zooarchaeological material from the DBSR (n = 467)
| is dominated by remains of ungulates and tortoises (Table 1,
| Supplementary Data). Taphonomic analysis demonstrates a high
| frequency of anthropogenic percussion marks and cut marks
| (Table 1), and most of the faunal specimens show evidence of
| moderate burning._
| seneca wrote:
| Thanks for the further info.
| Igelau wrote:
| Not an archaeologist, but if you're digging in a 105k year old
| sediment layer and none of the layers above it were disturbed,
| I'd say it's a pretty safe bet the stuff in it is also 105k
| years old.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Archaeologists are very good at dating finds based on a range
| of different testing methods. In this case they used strata
| and an examination of the crystal's surface...at the very
| least.
| seneca wrote:
| I suppose you must be right. I'm just wondering if there's
| some method they use to tell the difference between "this was
| left here 105k years ago" and "someone dug a hole here 50k
| years ago and buried them".
|
| Is it just as simple as "it doesn't look like it was ever dug
| up"? I have no clue how this stuff works.
| klyrs wrote:
| If you dig a hole, you puncture layers of sediment. Do it
| carefully, and you'll be able to see those layers of
| sediment on the walls of the hole. But the dirt you extract
| is mixed, and homogenized in the process. Fill in the hole,
| and the fill won't have nicely stratified layers. If
| somebody carefully digs in the same place 1000 years later,
| a cross section will reveal a homogeneous plug amid layers
| of strata. They'll be able to date when you dug the hole by
| looking at the layers above that homogeneous plug
|
| Fun thought: archaeologists 10k years from now unearthing
| today's digs, finding the traces of our careful destruction
| of ancient evidence...
| simias wrote:
| >Crystals found across the planet and from several time periods
| have previously been linked to humans' spiritual belief and
| ritual. This includes in southern Africa.
|
| Couldn't they just have been collected because they looked nice?
| When I was a kid I had a stash of more or less interesting rocks
| I found here and there.
|
| It seems weird to me to go straight for the spiritual and ritual
| explanation.
|
| >Many who visit Ga-Mohana Hill today for ritual practice see it
| as part of a network of places linked to the Great Water Snake
| (Nnoga ya metsi), a capricious and shape-shifting being. Many of
| these spiritual places are also associated with water.
|
| >Places such as Ga-Mohana Hill and their associated stories
| remain some of the most enduring intangible cultural artefacts
| from the past, linking modern indigenous South Africans to
| earlier communities.
|
| Is the article positing that (relatively) modern practices and
| beliefs could have a link to these 100+ millennia old crystals?
|
| If true it would be fascinating, but it seems like a pretty wild
| conjecture to me. The culture, language and customs of people
| 100k years ago was probably very different from ours. It seems to
| me that you'd have to have pretty convincing evidence to be able
| to extrapolate that far into the past.
| thrower123 wrote:
| Spiritual and ritual purposes is the automatic answer any time
| archaeologists find something they can't easily explain in an
| better way.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Isn't that because spiritual and ritual practices are
| culturally pervasive, particularly among non-modern peoples?
| thrower123 wrote:
| No, it's really just that they have no fucking idea what
| they are looking at, so they say it's religion.
|
| My favorite one is how archaeologists identified hundreds
| of structures, all around the Mediterranean, and declared
| that they were religious shrines. Turns out that they were
| actually olive oil presses.
| datavirtue wrote:
| This. Concluding that something was for ritual purposes
| always gets an eye roll from me. Some kids pet rock from
| 11k years ago? Definitely an idol. A snazzy knife? Used
| in religious rites. What the serious fuck is up with the
| obsession of attributing religious significance to
| everything belonging to an ancient?
|
| Growing up I was taken aback that archeologists got to
| write the history on top of specializing in identifying
| and excavating sites. Just dig the shit up, record the
| facts and let everyone think for themselves.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| It's because the words 'ritual' and 'religious' aren't
| necessarily used in the way the public conceives of these
| terms. I've surveyed plenty of burials which I could
| plausibly describe as ritual in nature. That doesn't mean
| people were worshipping the person/people buried there,
| but it does mean I think that they were making
| deliberate, sequenced actions to accomplish a purpose and
| that these steps that were culturally
| sanctioned/regulated.
|
| Secondly, the division you think should exist already
| does. Not all archaeologists are there digging in the
| dirt. Depending on the nature of the site and the area,
| it may even be uncommon.
|
| But here's how a typical dig site functions: the lead
| archaeologist/excavation director is rarely on site to
| dig. They're doing other things. The site supervisor/crew
| chief (another archeologist) manages the site day to day
| and does lots of paperwork, directs everyone, handles
| visitors, and secondarily inspects finds. These two
| people in consultation with others produce almost all the
| interpretations you dislike. Below them there will
| typically be some number of other archaeologists,
| specialists, and grad students, who may dig, but often do
| other things surrounding the actual digging like
| flotation, taking coordinates, or managing finds. At the
| bottom are undergrads and local workers who do most of
| the actual digging and other manual labor. These are
| rarely involved in interpretation beyond recognizing
| artifacts, they purely "record the facts". The laborers
| in particular tend to specialize in excavation. It's a
| point of pride to many of them that they're better
| excavators than most archaeologists.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Anthropologists and archaeologists abuse the word "ritual" and
| it confuses the heck out of journalists and laypeople. In the
| broadest usage, it's just a series of specific actions that are
| a "thing". For instance, this clip from The Grinch shows a
| completely non-religious ritual [1].
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNohsJhgCPU
| ctoth wrote:
| "Beyond doubt, while errors are sometimes made in archeology,
| this is one case in which no chance of error exists. The
| statues are clearly religious in significance. With that sure
| footing on which to rest the careful scientist may deduce with
| assurance the purpose of..."
|
| Here's a fun little short story from Robert Heinlein that makes
| quite a bit of fun of this idea.
|
| http://nemaloknig.net/read-121683/
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Archeologists joke that if modern sport arenas were abandoned
| now a d rediscovered in 5000 years, archeologists and
| historians of the future would have theories that these
| structures were used for religious rituals that involved
| thousands of people, and sports merchandise would be
| interpreted as cult objects.
| sillyquiet wrote:
| I keep saying, popular reporting of archeological and other
| pre-historic finds is _particularly_ bad in a sea of bad
| science reporting, probably because of the rampant speculation
| and romanticism associated with such things.
| billfruit wrote:
| Doesn't journalism school focus on preventing such bad
| tendencies. There is almost a regularity of pattern by which
| journalists seem to represent or rather misrepresent.
| kleer001 wrote:
| Not to insult either discipline, but I bet the crossover of
| trained anthropologists and trained journalists is smaller
| than either one on their own.
| OnlyMortal wrote:
| The use of "religion" is when archaeologists don't know why.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| > The culture, language and customs of people 100k years ago
| was probably very different from ours.
|
| How so?
|
| Our biology is virtually identical.
|
| Our emotional, physical and spiritual needs haven't changed,
| have they?
|
| I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "our culture", but if we
| assume some kind of Californian derivative, the most obvious
| difference is our built environment, which features more
| shopping malls, office towers, airports, highways and hospitals
| than Ga-Mohana. And more obesity. More guns too, but they had
| weapons and laws for the same reasons we do, didn't they?
|
| What do you imagine are the differences between our culture,
| language and customs vis a vis people of 100k years ago?
| lordnacho wrote:
| I'd imagine life was more violent back then, that's I've read
| anyway. To the point where a great number of people were
| murdered.
|
| So my guess is people back then would be less relaxed about
| eg meeting strangers, and they would maybe all practice self
| defense.
|
| Another thing that might be different is their attitudes to
| property. That is after all something that has gotten fairly
| complex since the dawn of civilization.
|
| It's also the case that they probably has access to fewer
| people, so that has an effect on how well they could satisfy
| their emotional needs.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| The unstated (and pretty obviously wrong) premise in your
| comment is that culture is somehow deterministically derived
| from biology.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| "Determines" is too strong a word, since all human cultures
| are different - more different than our biology would
| suggest, but probably no more different than our respective
| micro-climates and natural resource distributions.
|
| What would you say culture is, and what determines it?
| edgyquant wrote:
| Our biology is "virtually" identical but our brains are not.
| There is a reason why we distinguish between modern humans
| (who appear some time between 100,000 and 30,000ya) and
| archaic humans.
| alcover wrote:
| Naive question: How can we compare those brains beyond
| clues from cranial capacity and maybe supposed diet ?
| burnished wrote:
| Are you serious?
| wombatmobile wrote:
| I'm curious!
|
| Did your mother, grandmother, or spouse collect crystals?
|
| Many humans - perhaps most - keep at least one crystal
| attached to a finger. Why is that?
| gus_massa wrote:
| Do marbles count as crystals? A future archeologist can
| get confused with them.
| ArnoVW wrote:
| In terms of wedding rings, that's not a fundamental human
| value, but simply because De Beers launched a campaign
| that still today is a school case for advertising, due to
| it's ROI.
|
| "In 1938, the diamond cartel De Beers began a marketing
| campaign that would have a major impact on engagement
| rings. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the
| price of diamonds collapsed.[25] At the same time, market
| research indicated that engagement rings were going out
| of style with the younger generation. Before World War
| II, only 10% of American engagement rings contained a
| diamond."
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engagement_ring
| lostlogin wrote:
| That refers to diamonds - were there no stones on rings
| before diamonds, or were there other types?
| okareaman wrote:
| The culture, language and customs of contemporary California
| surfers and German football hooligans seems very different
| imilk wrote:
| Once you've seen a bunch of surfers fighting over the
| perfect swell, the cultures can seem pretty similar.
| Especially since both share a fondness for mind-altering
| substances (cannabis vs alcohol)
| okareaman wrote:
| I used to be a California surfer, so point taken, but how
| about wealthy Manhattan hi rise apartment dwellers and
| San Paulo slum dwellers. Not much difference?
| wombatmobile wrote:
| > The culture, language and customs of contemporary
| California surfers and German football hooligans seems very
| different
|
| How so? Apart from the obvious personality stereotypes
| you're drawing upon - chill vs aggressive, which exist in
| every culture, Germans and Californian cultures aren't that
| different. They have stop signs, alcohol laws, churches,
| jewellery stores, maps, family gatherings, weddings,
| funerals, christenings, horoscopes, sporting allegiances,
| dress codes, toilet and expectoration norms, sexual mores
| and food preparation standards.
|
| So too did the ancients. I'm wondering how different you
| imagine these were? I mean, their technologies, foods,
| footballs and built environment were different, as they are
| with Germans and Californians, but to what end,
| _culturally_?
| okareaman wrote:
| Seems like redefining the word "different" to be
| essentially meaningless. Yes there are similarities, but
| that doesn't mean they aren't different.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| Differences are relative, and the concept of difference
| is somewhat meaningless without reference to a scale. Is
| an ant and a pencil roughly the same size? Day to day
| scale, no? But larger scale than that and the importance
| of the difference increases.
|
| Consider an approximation for pi. Even the best
| approximation is an infinite number of digits off, but we
| have many that are so good even if we were dealing with
| resolutions of sub atomic particles at the scale of the
| universe, our those approximations are more than accurate
| enough. But if we were dealing with some math questions
| about the nature of numbers created from pi, even the
| best approximations are still not good enough to provide
| answers.
| nwienert wrote:
| Depends on how much you weigh Julian Jaynes' hypothesis,
| but certainly since reading his work I've at least upped
| the prior that the answer is "incredibly different".
|
| Another datapoint are the many remote and isolated tribes
| with wildly different cultures, for example not having
| the concept of object permanence.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| > I've at least upped the prior that the answer is
| "incredibly different".
|
| How so? Care to elaborate a little?
| nwienert wrote:
| Read the book!
|
| Edit: super short summary, it's possible before ~800 BC
| many people experienced hallucinations due to not having
| a theory of mind, oftentimes in the form of gods speaking
| to them quite literally. Which if you consider how
| embedded our theory of mind is now vs how prevalent and
| seriously belief in gods were previously, combined with
| how common hallucinations in children (Tulpas) and many
| mental "disorders" are, seems plausible. At some tipping
| point, trade, large scale civilization and theory of mind
| coalesced to suddenly remove this as a common mode of
| thought.
|
| I mean try to imagine living in a small tribe with no
| written language, no idea that you have a brain, a strong
| belief in the reality of god(s), no concept of science or
| logic, and many nights spent in the dark sharing ghost
| stories, and yea, it seems not that far fetched that
| you'd have a vastly different experience of reality
| including experiencing many things as not even being from
| "yourself" as opposed to manifestations of your own brain
| talking to itself in the form of your beliefs (gods).
| simonh wrote:
| The emergence of behavioural modernity some 40k to 50k years
| ago seems to have been a cultural watershed.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_modernity
|
| It's possible this might have been a result of the
| developments of prefrontal synthesis some 70k years ago.
|
| https://essentials.news/ai/research/article/acquisition-
| pref...
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| You would enjoy "Motel of the Mysteries" by David Macaulay.
| Basically, a future archeologist discovers a buried motel room
| and begins speculating about it's true purpose.
|
| "judging from the DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging from an archaic
| doorknob, was clearly the entrance to a still-sealed burial
| chamber. Carson's incredible discoveries, including the remains
| of two bodies, one of then on a ceremonial bed facing an altar
| that appeared to be a means of communicating with the Gods and
| the other lying in a porcelain sarcophagus in the Inner
| Chamber, permitted him to piece together the whole fabric of
| that extraordinary civilization."
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| In a similar vein is "Body Ritual among the Nacirema" (https:
| //en.wikisource.org/wiki/Body_Ritual_among_the_Nacirem...)
| prestonbriggs wrote:
| Then again, crows collect shiny things too.
| pmayrgundter wrote:
| And bower birds!
| currymj wrote:
| it's hard to say. there are indigenous Australian stories that
| have been preserved over 10,000 years that apparently have an
| accurate correspondence to the geological changes that took
| place over that time period.
|
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ancient-sea-rise-...
|
| 100,000 years does seem like a really long time though for a
| direct connection to present-day people.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| Gutenberg changed our social structures and mental practices
| enormously. His presses lead to an explosion of
| protestantism, colonialism, slavery, and ultimately
| democracy. More than that, it begat the widespread practice
| of scientific research, which requires the examination and
| cultural transmission of quantitative information in fine
| grained contexts.
|
| We take Gutenberg's disruption for granted now, but it's a
| recent event.
|
| For millennia before Gutenberg, history and culture were
| transmitted orally. Amazingly, we don't have any appreciation
| for how that was done, except when we see something on
| television that we can't explain.
|
| Have you ever seen a memory champion memorise the order of
| two decks of cards in less than two minutes? How about the
| names of two dozen people from the audience in less than a
| minute, recalled perfectly at the end of the show? If so, you
| have glimpsed the technique that homo sapiens relied on for
| millennia.
|
| Did you know it's possible for you to remember lists of
| thousands of detailed facts and stories, even if you don't
| consider that your memory is anything special? The reason you
| don't do this is that (a) you don't need to do it because you
| have a laptop and a phone; and (b) you never learned how.
|
| But the Greeks and the Romans did it, and every culture
| before them. If they hadn't done it, you wouldn't have a
| laptop or a phone because you'd still be living on the
| savanna or in a cave.
|
| The Art of Memory by Frances Yates
|
| https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/The_Art_Of_Memory/bH.
| ..
| whatshisface wrote:
| I really doubt that you could associate the printing press
| with an "explosion in slavery" given the history of the
| classical world.
| eloff wrote:
| What would be the causal link between the printing press
| and slavery? If anything it seems like they're just
| concurrent happenings in history.
|
| Maybe a slippery slope style of argument where printing
| press led to X which led to Y, which opened the new
| world, which led to plantations, which led to slavery.
|
| The problem with that is you can start at anything and
| end up there. The wheel. The loom. I could probably spin
| a convincing yarn starting from beer.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| > What would be the causal link between the printing
| press and slavery
|
| Advertising, accountancy and international shipping, all
| enabled by Gutenbergs presses. Prior to that, slavery,
| which has been practised since ancient times, was a local
| phenomenon.
| tremon wrote:
| The GP's argument is that slavery was a given in many
| societies a long time before the printing press arrived.
| So, they're not even "concurrent happenings in history".
| We have references to slavery as far back as the Old
| Testament and Homer's Iliad.
|
| I'd say the same thing about colonialism, the difference
| between the classical world (and earlier) and Europe
| post-1600 is the scale, not the practice.
| drittich wrote:
| There is a short video showing the site here:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKYo1XiyVWU
| wombatmobile wrote:
| It looks like Australia, or Arizona.
| Igelau wrote:
| As soon as the crystals were removed, a vaguely humanoid cloud
| rose from a nearby mound and vanished, followed by a marked drop
| in temperature. Several witnesses reported hearing the sound of
| laughter and developing a sudden urge to collect rings.
| pokoleo wrote:
| This is so familiar, what's it from? Seafall?
| Igelau wrote:
| Multiple things bouncing in my head. I missed the mark a
| little on the particular flavor of doom being courted -- TFA
| mentions the area is ritually associated with an entity
| called the "Great Water Snake".
| ateesdalejr wrote:
| Sonic the hedgehog I think... Referencing Chaos Emeralds.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| Do we believe that homosapiens from this era were really any
| fundamentally different than us today? Collecting cool crystals
| seems like such a normal thing to do, maybe without the religious
| aspect.
|
| I always thought the "spark" that helped propel us to the future
| was not biological.
| datavirtue wrote:
| We don't know anything of humans from that time period. All the
| settlements are under water. Sea levels rose 400ft over just
| the last 20k years alone.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| It's true that we know comparatively little about middle
| paleolithic human culture, but "anything" and "all the
| settlements" is a stretch. For example, we've found a
| structure, likely from a seasonal settlement, dated to 100
| kYA in what's today southern Egypt.
| https://ancientegyptonline.co.uk/paleolithic/
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