[HN Gopher] Discovery of 3M-year-old stone tools sparks prehisto...
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Discovery of 3M-year-old stone tools sparks prehistoric whodunnit
Author : pseudolus
Score : 49 points
Date : 2023-02-10 00:46 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote:
| I have it on scientific authority, that the materials of that
| tool are actually 3.8 Billion (with a "B") years old.
| duxup wrote:
| Reminds me of the Silurian Hypothesis that raises the question if
| we would ever find evidence if there was an industrial
| civilization millions of years before us.
|
| I imagine it would be extremely difficult to know or even detect
| any non industrial civilization with much confidence that long
| ago.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silurian_hypothesis
| LarryMullins wrote:
| Glass and pottery fragments both last "forever" if they're left
| someplace relatively dry, or get buried, or otherwise protected
| from physical and chemical weathering. A glass bottle thrown
| away on the beach will be eroded to nothing in mere years to
| decades, but a glass bottle thrown aside and buried by some
| soil can stay there for millions of years easily. Stone
| artifacts are similarly robust. These relatively permanent
| traces get left behind long before a civilization gets
| "industrial". Pottery and glass predate our own industrial
| revolution by thousands of years.
|
| For such a civilization to develop and go unnoticed to
| historians, their influence must have been very small, they
| must have been geographically limited. For instance maybe they
| lived in low-lands and rising sea levels erased all trace, but
| this would still require that their artifacts rarely if ever
| got carried up hills where they might have been untouched by
| the rising oceans. It seems deeply implausible.
|
| Certainly there was nothing even remotely like our civilization
| in the past. There are glass beer bottles laying around on
| virtually every corner of the planet, on mountain tops, in
| caves, in landfills. Just everywhere really. It will take
| longer than a mere few million years to erase all these.
| gibspaulding wrote:
| It sort of makes me happy to think that millions of years
| after civilization is consumed by fire and humanity goes
| extinct, all that will be left is the beer bottles.
| tremon wrote:
| Maybe all those gemstones we find in the mountains are
| what's left of the previous iteration's beer bottles after
| they went through the tectonic conveyor belt.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I think the experience of "invasive species" from the last few
| centuries prove that there were no civilization that made
| regular trips between the continents for a few dozen million
| years.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Or they were better at keeping them separate than us.
| [deleted]
| tqkxzugoaupvwqr wrote:
| Wouldn't they have used up most of the energy dense liquid that
| we currently pump out of the ground? At least in some part of
| their civilization's lifespan? That we still had superficial
| oil fields suggests to me no one extracted oil because no
| industrial civilization existed before us on this planet.
| Kamq wrote:
| Or that society formed long enough ago that oil has had a
| chance to form. The OP did say millions of years ago, which
| would be needed for this.
|
| We could put a bound on this. ~90% of oil deposits come from
| the Mesozoic or later. So the latest we could see a society
| show up, use up the easily accessible oil/other fossil fuels,
| collapse (presumably from energy crisis), and still have the
| fossil fuels we see today would be the late Paleozoic or
| possibly the early Mesozoic before it's fossil fuels have
| formed (~250 million years ago).
| VLM wrote:
| I follow the energy field for mostly financial reasons and
| its a strange but true story that the first time oil was
| ever radio dated was by a Canadian team just a few years
| ago and they were surprised to discover the Alberta oil
| sands are more like a hundred million years old rather than
| the previous estimate of fifty mil or so.
|
| People have known about radio dating using different
| isotopes and it always shocked me that the first time
| someone radiodated crude oil was in the mid 00s just 15 or
| so years ago. I don't remember the technology the Canadians
| used it wasn't C14 as that tops out around 100K or so
| years.
|
| The more you learn the more you find stuff everyone thinks
| they know, but they don't actually know it, or we just
| figured it out shockingly recently. Like we've been pumping
| oil how long, and doing radiodating how long, but nobody
| never put two and two together until just 15 years ago?
| That's just wild. You'd assume every field has a birthdate
| but reality is nobody knows for sure. Except that one field
| in Alberta as of 15 years ago. Maybe more data available
| now, donno.
|
| Its just funny that journalist types will cite each other
| as if they're primary sources for decades until a number
| like "a quarter billion yrs" is culturally engrained into
| our civilization, then someone does some actual real world
| test tube work ONE time in ONE place and get different
| results.
|
| For a multi trillion dollar business, its not as completely
| scientifically researched as people would assume. If it
| doesn't result in more flow at the pump, it doesn't get
| researched, mostly.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| 100 million years ago is in the Jurassic period, that's a
| pretty normal estimate for hydrocarbons?
| edgyquant wrote:
| This assumes they follow the exact same path as us instead of
| achieving renewable energy first.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| Pretty trivial assumption to make, just like it is easy to
| assume that whilst sea based creatures might be intelligent
| you won't have a technological society developing under
| water.
| edgyquant wrote:
| No it isn't trivial to make nor are we discussing
| underwater creatures.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| Ofc it's trivial to make, renewable sources are far more
| complicated than simple chemistry, wood, charcoal, coal
| and eventually petroleum require far fewer technological
| leaps than renewables.
| college_physics wrote:
| Here is the true story how it happened:
|
| the Silourians first depleted fossil fuels in the first
| hundred years of their energy technology journey
|
| they subsequently realized the folly of this after they
| pretty much made the planet uninhabitable for them
|
| they injected back into the ground biologically produced
| synthetic substitutes using organically captured solar energy
|
| this large scale carbon-capture project, being entirely
| organic and sustainable has left no trace
| piloto_ciego wrote:
| I am only joking a little bit here, but we only use the
| idea that "oil is the most reasonable energy source for
| civilization" because it's how we bootstrapped our
| civilization.
|
| Suppose there were some extremely stable and energetic
| combination of elements that was really easy to burn etc.
| we'd use it, but it's extremely rare on earth. What if that
| is the result of the Silurians burning it all up 300m years
| ago or whatever - it's rare because it's been depleted
| already, leaving only the worthless and difficult to
| extract fossil fuels that we were forced to use.
|
| This sort of discussion isn't disimilar to SETI stuff - we
| look for water rich planets in the habitable zone because
| that's what we grew up on - in reality we could be abnormal
| or rare-ish and has giant life or stuff living on Venus
| analogues could be the norm. We're trying to make
| assertions from a point of informed ignorance - which is
| still ignorant.
| college_physics wrote:
| I suspect (but don't quote me on this) that in the very
| big scheme of things our little fossil fuel addiction is
| just a fluke. Stars are such an endless source of high
| quality energy that the vast majority of "advanced"
| organizational forms ("life") surely figure out how to
| tap it rather quickly.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| And then they picked up every last glass bottle they made
| and threw them into a subduction trench.
| VLM wrote:
| I used to invest pretty heavily in the energy sector in
| general and I learned a lot of the science along the way and
| I really have no idea what fraction of the earth's surface
| has been geologically surveyed.
|
| I would imagine if someone wanted to seriously pursue the
| theory (if they'd be permitted to do so, probably not) the
| way I'd do it is find "disappointing fields" and look for
| peculiar correlations between them WRT odd permeability test
| results. So is that field disappointing because its
| permeability is really low (frac it!) or is it disappointing
| because all the geology points to a good salt dome and the
| permeability is great but there's nothing there? The old
| fashioned way to explain fields that look good but don't
| produce is the permeability is so high it all leaked out
| millennia ago (among other explanations boiling down to "we
| don't know").
|
| I would think you'd find weirder evidence of tailings piles
| around solid mines and a lack of open pit mines. That would
| be easier to find than an oil well. Also I expect there would
| be really weird patterns in sediment related to mercury and
| similar waste products. "They" never did leaded gas if
| there's no lead layer in the sediment, etc.
|
| Some of it is sophistry. No civilization beyond monkey tribes
| could possibly exist 3M years ago because there would be
| nuclear reactors and space ships laying around everywhere, as
| though there's no intermediate step between monkey tribes and
| nuclear reactors. Well, what if they never advanced beyond
| (fill in the blank with some group that's not very advanced
| in 2023)? Still centuries beyond a tribe of monkeys, yet
| culturally interesting none the less. We could detect the
| industrial revolution from England if it happened in Italy
| 2000 years previous. But... could we detect the Roman Empire
| if it happened before in Australia in 4000 BC? or 3M BC? I
| don't know about that, kind of an open question. If the Roman
| Empire or similar happened in the USA upper midwest before
| the mile tall ice sheets scrubbed everything, could we tell
| today? My educated guess is "no" we could not. It would still
| be culturally interesting even if no nuclear reactors and
| space ships were built here 50K years ago. I think it quite
| likely that bioidentical humans were up to all kinds of
| nonsense in prehistory that we've never discovered or never
| could discover. They were as smart as us, and healthier than
| us, until agriculture was invented.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| On that last point I have assumed that agriculture was a
| necessary precursor to any major technological develolment
| - ie you cannot build a forge and metal working tools if
| you need to pack them up and follow the herd every few
| months.
| VLM wrote:
| Or fish
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| As in humans lived in permanent settlements by sea shore
| / lake shore and so would have been able to develop
| technology by the seaside?
|
| Or we followed shoals of fish like herds? Avatar like?
| :-)
| Eisenstein wrote:
| People tend to forget that development of industry first
| requires access to a lot of cheap, easy-to-access energy.
| graphe wrote:
| > They argue as early as the Carboniferous era (~350 million
| years ago) "there has been sufficient fossil carbon to fuel
| an industrial civilization comparable with our own".
| adastra22 wrote:
| Yes, but the point is those fossil fuels remained in the
| ground. They weren't used up by the hypothetical
| technological civilization.
| college_physics wrote:
| I thought 3M was founded circa 1902 but maybe there was a
| Silourian version of that company making stone tools
| thunky wrote:
| You misread the title. The tools 3M made are year-old.
| college_physics wrote:
| I assumed that "year-old" meant in terms of tool age (usage),
| otherwise the sentence did not make sense.
| wankle wrote:
| If human ancestors created those 3 million years ago, it doesn't
| look like they made much progress in tool making in 3 million
| years minus 10,000 years: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-
| news/science/10000-year...
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| During my time in college I managed to sit in on a group of
| archaeology students making Oldowan stone tools in the
| university quadrangle. I had no idea how much knowledge and
| skill it takes to make these seemingly simple tools. It is not
| just banging rocks together, it requires finesse.
|
| I felt a sense of awe when I realized just how much trial and
| error must have went into learning how to make such tools. With
| how many cuts and bruises we inflicted on ourselves, I came to
| view the technology as something invaluable and precious. We
| had the benefit of washing our hands, who knows just how many
| of our pioneering ancestors had gotten an infection and died
| while trying to make a better cutting tool - or lost an eye
| from a rock chip? And these folks may well have been "the crazy
| ones" or the more intelligent members of the tribe.
|
| I could easily see how countless generations would wind up
| making the same tools with the same process. If you asked me
| how to make more 'advanced' hand axes I'd struggle to come up
| with something better.
| graphe wrote:
| Ever seen a wheel, ball, bowl or spoon? Why haven't we
| reinvented those instead of using those ancient useless tools?
| yorwba wrote:
| All of those have been reinvented in the past century or so,
| mostly in terms of materials and manufacturing processes.
| Humanity went from bronze spoons to stainless steel spoons in
| a shorter time than from those stone tools to these stone
| tools.
| graphe wrote:
| Cast iron skillets haven't changed, wood spoons still
| exist, bronze and steel utensils differences are not
| innovative or better, they're just cheaper to manufacture.
|
| You're right about the wheel though, I saw a facinating
| video on the properties of the new martian rover's wheels.
| TMWNN wrote:
| Yet more evidence that we cannot be so sure that there were no
| civilizations before our own.
| <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lASPp9stEYA>
| dogma1138 wrote:
| You'll need to define civilization first, if you are talking
| about a global industrial civilization then the likelihood of
| that is about zero especially in the time frame of 1-5m years.
| turbokatsu20 wrote:
| Somebody out there has assembled a massive list of all findings
| like this that upset the prevailing paradigm, I hope I get to see
| their work one day.
|
| Until then we'll just have to hear about outlier findings drip by
| drip so as not to upset established lore for the materialist
| West.
| easytiger wrote:
| how have they ascertained the dates?
| vlz wrote:
| "radioisotope analysis and a variety of other techniques" the
| article says.
| tough wrote:
| Why would every mainstream religion we still have some knowledge
| of on earth be based on the same basic stories retold.
|
| What if the gods are just that advanced civilisation, who built
| humanity and then left, millions of years ago. and somehow our
| global consciousness has been able to recall our origins still to
| these days.
|
| Maybe everyone just makes same kinda stuff up to justify
| existance, I dunno. Seems weird cultures can vary so much on
| everything, and yet religion and spirituality have so much
| commonalities on the foundations
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "yet religion and spirituality have so much commonalities on
| the foundations"
|
| My explanation would be, that religion was mostly used as a
| political power tool and power logic is the same and universal.
| If people believe, they are low and the emperor is a god - they
| won't rebell so easily.
|
| But apart from that, they are very different, so of what
| foundations are you talking about, exactly?
| ThalesX wrote:
| It seems to me that religion, or spirituality if I may call
| it that, predates emperors. If you are truly talking about
| organized religion, then perhaps I might be more generous in
| agreeing with you. But when I think religion I think of small
| tribes bringing about paranormal explanations for mundane
| phenomenons and for their own existence.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| This is just ancient aliens with extra steps.
| tough wrote:
| Right.
| glass3 wrote:
| Which religions do you have in mind and what are those same
| stories?
| graphe wrote:
| I can think of the simple structure he's talking about, it's
| best documented in Zoroastrianism aka the struggle between
| good and evil. The conquerors were good and the defeated
| savages were evil, and the conquerors often faced
| unsurmountable odds. Origin stories of civilization and
| religion follow this structure quite often.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| You named one religion and no civilizations and no stories.
| graphe wrote:
| Alexander the great, china, Rome, all abrahamic
| religions.
| Telemakhos wrote:
| > Why would every mainstream religion we still have some
| knowledge of on earth be based on the same basic stories
| retold.
|
| Most of the world was explored by Christian missionaries like
| Jesuits, who also educated the informants who in turn told them
| about foreign cultures. You'd be surprised how many Noah's-ark-
| like myths the informants told the Jesuits only after the
| Jesuits told them about Noah's ark. Or, to use another example,
| a number of books on Greek myth and tragedy retell an Inca
| story about the emperor opening a box and unleashing smallpox
| on the Incas, as an independent parallel to the story of
| Pandora's jar: but the source of the Inca smallpox story was
| himself a Jesuit-educated native informant who had learned the
| story of Pandora from the Jesuits before inventing the story of
| the Inca emperor. The contact between two cultures is a two-way
| street: the informants who report stories may contaminate them
| with the stories learned from those they are informing.
| 9dev wrote:
| Still, Noah's ark being a collective memory of the journey
| from another star to earth sounds like a great science
| fiction story!
| krono wrote:
| They share the same root, and have simply been adapted to allow
| for more effective exploitation in specific events or regions.
|
| Difficult merchant guilds want a special god of their own?
| Invent the concept of saints and name a celebrated dead guild
| member the saint of commerce and prosperity.
|
| Backwards locals won't stop celebrating their fake goddess
| Eostre? Create fake story about "Easter" to push instead.
| officialjunk wrote:
| one possibility is that these religions literally originated
| from the same story. it doesn't necessitate that the story is
| true to have translations of a story in many places.
| graphe wrote:
| If by mainstream you mean abrahamic they all originated in the
| same spot. Not weird that they all find the same sites holy?
| krapp wrote:
| Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-
| European_mythology
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