[HN Gopher] Prehistoric timeline in Africa pushed back by more t...
___________________________________________________________________
Prehistoric timeline in Africa pushed back by more than 10M years
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 131 points
Date : 2023-04-14 12:01 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| culi wrote:
| I always like to keep a context for this sort of stuff. Here's my
| growing list: giant impact that formed the moon
| (4.5bya) great oxidation event (2.4-2.0bya)
| multicellular life (1.5bya-600mya) trilobytes appear
| (521mya) landplants (470mya) first land animal
| (428mya) pangea forms (335mya) pangea breaks apart
| (200mya) angiosperms (275mya) trilobytes disappear
| (252mya) ginkgo (200mya) flowering plants become
| abundant (100mya) antartica was a rainforest (90mya)
| dinosaurs died (65mya) primates (55mya) azolla event
| (49-48mya) pantherlike cats (10.8mya) first humans
| (5mya) megalodons go extinct (2.6mya) modern humans
| (300k years ago) yellowstone's last eruption (70k years
| ago) humans reach turtle island (30-20k years ago)
| african humid period, green sahara (14.5-5k years ago)
| beringia land bridge gets inundated (11k years ago) saber
| tooth tigers go extinct (10k years ago) horses go extinct
| in north america (9k years ago) shift to wetter climate
| makes Amazonia transition from grasslands to jungle (2k years
| ago)
| whiskers wrote:
| I feel like you should add the appearance of the first
| dinosaurs to this list (~240mya)!
| chris_va wrote:
| This was shared with me recently, graphical version of similar-
| ish milestones: https://www.livingcarbon.com/deep-time
| gmiller123456 wrote:
| Probably need to add a reference to the creation of ChatGPT as
| the last entry.
| mihaic wrote:
| Good list. I would add the evolution of sexual reproduction,
| 1.2-2 bya. It seems to be a one-time leap and snowballed into
| the modern complexity of life.
| phkahler wrote:
| Also, do flowering plant coincide with insects?
| BeenAGoodUser wrote:
| So modern humans knew a green Sahara? Amazing to think about! I
| thought that was much older.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| I was surprised to learn that as well. Apparently it's a
| 20,000 year cycle.
|
| https://news.mit.edu/2019/study-regulating-north-african-
| cli...
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| I believe people have speculated that desertification is
| where the idea of the Garden of Eden (that humans were
| expelled from) may have come from.
| thangalin wrote:
| I wrote a coffee table photobook that includes some of those.
|
| https://impacts.to/downloads/lowres/impacts.pdf
|
| You may find that the bibliography cites slightly different
| dates:
|
| https://impacts.to/bibliography.pdf
|
| For example, dinosaurs died out around 66.04 +- 0.05 Ma.
| beambot wrote:
| The timeline becomes wildly condensed in more-modern years.
| Would love to see a "zoomed in" timeline from 250Ma-0Ma to
| capture that detail on more pages. :)
| jjulius wrote:
| This is super cool!
| narag wrote:
| I had not read "coffee table photobook" before, nice concept.
| (and yours is great, btw)
|
| That reminds me of those big table screens that Microsoft (?)
| was selling years ago. Only seen in Hawai 5-0 again. Are they
| still for sale? What was the name?
| InvaderFizz wrote:
| In standard Microsoft fashion, they were also called
| Surface.
|
| See: https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-surface-
| pixelsense-...
| Bjartr wrote:
| "Surface", it's no longer available and they repurposed the
| name to use for their tablets.
| avar wrote:
| > dinosaurs died out around 66.04 +- 0.05 Ma.
|
| The dinosaurs didn't die out, and are alive in abundance
| today.
|
| I know what you mean, but it's interesting how many otherwise
| scientifically accurate publications use the taxonomic term
| as if though our understanding of the origin of birds hadn't
| evolved since the 1950s.
| tshaddox wrote:
| The term "dinosaur" is used almost exclusively to refer to
| non-avian dinosaurs. In scientific literature the
| qualification is usually made explicit, but I belief even
| there it is sometimes clear enough from context to avoid
| the explicit qualification.
| kuhewa wrote:
| Thats technically correct, the worst kind of correct. The
| same way dinosaurs, and hominids are both lobed-fin fishes
| (Sarcopterygii) as are all tetrapods.
| maxxxxxx wrote:
| Wow, this is beautiful.
| limbicsystem wrote:
| Recommend two nice books on this: the ancestor's tale by
| Richard Dawkins and Otherlands by Thomas Halliday. Both
| absolute page turners!
| lkbm wrote:
| > shift to wetter climate makes Amazonia transition from
| grasslands to jungle (2k years ago)
|
| Wait, so all those forest species living there...did they
| migrate from further north?
| jamiek88 wrote:
| There is a lot of evidence that the rainforest is largely man
| made.
|
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/pristine-
| untou...
| samth wrote:
| A quick investigation on Wikipedia suggests that there are
| two competing schools of thought:
|
| - the rainforest was somewhat smaller but still intact
| (contra the OP)
|
| - the rainforest was reduced to small refuges separated by
| grassland
| darkteflon wrote:
| That's excellent, thank you. My kid will love this, he's just
| at that point where he's starting to understand the short scale
| of human existence relative to what's come before. Always
| looking for stuff that blows little minds.
| jimmytucson wrote:
| > first humans (5mya)
|
| This might be a little early - Wikipedia says the genus Homo
| emerged from Australopithecus around 3.3 Ma
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo).
| micah94 wrote:
| you should throw this 'README' up on github
| gsatic wrote:
| Man have we observed and worked out a lot of stuff about our
| past. Not bad for a 3 inch chimp brained creature.
| codetiger wrote:
| Can't miss the ice age timelines. Please add those.
| brnt wrote:
| Also interesting, a timeline going the other way:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future
| singularity2001 wrote:
| Continuation of that list with a little overlap:
|
| https://github.com/pannous/hieros/wiki/inventions
| 14 ka Shubayqa Jordan baked bread 13 ka: beer in
| Haifa, Natufian 13 ka: dentistry in italy (bitumen
| fillings) - 7000 BC in Baluchistan drill 12 ka:
| chert arrows heads, with lateral notches, Khiamian? usage as
| awls and drills 12-11 ka: Agriculture in the
| Fertile Crescent, Hureyra Karaca 12-11 ka:
| Domestication of sheep in Southwest Asia (followed shortly by
| pigs, goats and cattle) 11.5 ka houses were built
| on the ground level (before: half below ground)
| 11.5-10.5 ka small female statuettes, symbolic burying of
| aurochs skulls (Khiamian) 11.5 ka Totems (Shigir
| Idol), later in Americas 11-8 ka: Domestication of
| rice in China 11 ka: Constructed stone monument,
| megaliths - Gobekli Tepe, in Turkey 11 ka: vat-
| fulls of porridge and stew, made from grain coarsely ground and
| processed on an almost industrial scale - gobekli
| 11 ka: gobekli 10,000 grinding stones and nearly 650 carved
| stone platters and vessels, up to 200 litres of liquid
| 9000 BC: Polished basalt axe & Jerf al Ahmar plaques proto
| writing? 9000 BC: White ware burned lime
| containers 9000 BC: small clay tokens for counting
| Mureybet 9000 BC: Square Houses, explosive rapid
| growth of the use of cereals in near East 9000 BC:
| Mudbricks, and clay mortar in Jericho. 9000 BC:
| rammed earth walls in Fertile Crescent, later stabilized with
| lime or blood! 8500 BC: millet cultivation Nan
| Zhuang Tou Nanzhuangtou (& pottery) 8000 BC:
| polished granite and alabaster jars (in Near East before
| pottery) 8000 BC: Gesher basalt axes and various
| other tools, exported 8000 BC Byblos arrowheads
| replaced the Mureybetian types, and other technological
| improvements 8000-7500 BC: Proto-city - large
| permanent settlements, such as Tell es-Sultan (Jericho) and
| Catalhoyuk, Turkey. 8000 BC: Patriarchic society
| Asikli Hoyuk?? 8000 BC: Oversea settlement of
| Mediteranian islands 8th millennium bark cloth
| Catalhoyuk bast fibers from oak => barkcloth Guangxi [?]5900 BC
| => Austronesia 3000 BC 7900 BC: deep sea fishing
| (tuna), Franchthi Greece... see Whaling 7500 BC:
| planned hunt & work camp : trading outpost(Umm Dabaghiya)
| 7500 BC: Nabta Playa ceramics, megaliths, herding
| 7500 BC: Neoliths reached Europe in Sesklo 7000
| BC: Tanned leather in the Indus Valley site of Mehrgarh,
| Pakistan. 7000 BC: Dental drill in Mehrgarh,
| Pakistan. 7000 BC: Alcohol fermentation -
| specifically mead, in China 7000 BC: Sled dog and
| Dog sled, in Siberia. 7000-6700 BC pottery
| reaching Hassuna, stone vessels and White Ware were still being
| used 7000 BC two level houses in Cayonu Mureybet
| Beidha 7000 BC kitchen & living rooms separated,
| upper levels used as granaries/workshops 7th
| Millennium: copper hammering in Tell Sotto and Maghzaliyah
| 7000-5000 BC Peiligang culture one of the oldest pottery in
| ancient China 6500 BC Proper windows and doors in
| Basta near Beidha 6500 BC Evidence of lead
| smelting in Catalhoyuk, Turkey 6400 BC tholoi
| burial buildings in Yarim Tepe 6200 BC Community
| vessels 85 liters, Nea Nikomedeia, Greece 6200 BC
| Hip roof, clay mixed with hay over thatch (todo: older!)
| 6200 BC spindle whorls for spinning wool, Nea Nikomedeia,
| Greece & Iran! => 6200 BC woolen threads, ropes,
| lines, leashes! (woolen cloth and laces only 2000 years later!)
| 6000 BC: Whaling in Korea, Mediteranian, Basques and a bit
| later France (= Megaliths!) 6000 BC: Pottery Kiln
| in Mesopotamia Yarim Tepe(Iraq) after oven, metal furnace later
| 6th Millennium: lead smelting and hot copper hammering in
| Anatolia and Yarim Tepe(Iraq) 6000-4800 BC Samarra
| irrigation: Choga Mami 4700 BC channels, flax?
| 6,400 to 5,000 BC 'Ain Ghazal & Sha'ar HaGolan:
| 6th millennium BC Yarmukian : 700 km trade network obsidian,
| pottery 6th polished stone vessels made of
| alabaster (or marble) in Yarmukian 6th Pebble
| streets in Yarmukian 6th courtyard houses, ranging
| between 250 and 700 m2 in Yarmukian 6th Yarmukian
| : 4.15 m well 6th Hassuna: jar burials with Venus
| & food => belief in the afterlife 6th millennium
| BC: Irrigation in Khuzistan, Iran 6000-3200 BC:
| Proto-writing found in present day Serbia and China; later in
| Iraq, Iran, Egypt and Pakistan. 5500 BC: Barbie
| doll , Hamangia? 5300 BC: War massacres genocide
| (again?) 5300 BC: Hacilar heavy fortifications and
| small temple... newcomers! 5000 BC: stamp seal
| with tally marks Tel Tsaf, Halaf culture 5000 BC:
| silos with 200sq.m for 30 tons (20 families 1 year storage)
| 5000 BC: Copper smelting in Serbia, after millennia of cold
| metal working 5000 BC: Cotton thread, in Mehrgarh,
| Pakistan, connecting the copper beads of a bracelet.
| 5000 BC: Seawall in Israel 5th millennium BC:
| Lacquer in China 5000-4500 BC: first preservation
| of old rowing oars in China! 5000-4000 BC: two
| tier settlement hierarchy in Ubaid culture
| 5000-4000 BC: centralized large sites of more than 10 hectares
| surrounded by smaller village sites of less than 1 hectare
| 4800 BC: Sailing! Kuwait, Ubaid 3 4800-4400 BC:
| City Walls to protect valuable oyster shell production in
| Dimini & Sesklo (founded 7500 BC!) 4700 BC
| Irrigation at Choga Mami vs Samarra channels quickly spreading
| to Halaf 4500-3500 BC: Lost-wax casting in Israel
| or the Indus Valley 4400 BC: Fired bricks in
| China. 4th millennium specialized regional
| production centers: 4000 BC?: silver Carpatho-
| Balkan zone, 3600BC Tepe Sialk 4000 BC artificial
| harbor, Limantepe Izmir, Anatolia 4000 BC:
| Probable time period of the first diamond-mines in the world,
| in Southern India. 4000 BC: Paved roads, in and
| around the Mesopotamian city of Ur, Iraq (pebble roads see
| above) 4000 BC: Plumbing. The earliest pipes were
| made of clay, and are found at the Temple of Bel at Nippur in
| Babylonia. Earthen pipes were later used in the Indus Valley c.
| 2700 BC for a city-scale urban drainage system, and more
| durable copper drainage pipes appeared in Egypt, by the time of
| the construction of the Pyramid of Sahure at Abusir, c.2400
| BCE. 4000-3500 BC: Wheel: potter's wheels in
| Mesopotamia and wheeled vehicles in Mesopotamia (Sumerian
| civilization), the Northern Caucasus (Maykop culture) and
| Central Europe (Cucuteni-Trypillia culture), reaching Harappa
| 3500 BC and China. Slow wheel tournette replaced by fast wheels
| after 3100 BC) 4000-3500 BC: specialized ropes
| from fibers of reed, palms, flax, grass, papyrus, leather, or
| hair (China 2800BC) 3500-2500 BC: Wheeled carts
| replacing drawn sledges 3800-3500 BCE ox-plough
| Bubenec, Czech Republic (replacing hoe and hand-ard rods) !
| 3630 BC: Silk garments (sericulture) in China 3500
| BC: Domestication of the horse (maybe 1000 years earlier) as
| pack & drough animal, riding maybe later. 3500 BC:
| Wine as general anesthesia in Sumer, after millennia of usage
| as durable juice 3500 BC: Very early Indus script
| signs in Pakistan
| http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/334517.stm = King Scorpion
| 3500 BC: Cylinder Seal emblem in Uruk and Susa after stamp
| seals in the Halaf culture 3400-3100 BC: tattoos
| in southern Europe, after Ubaid and likely Upper Paleolithic
| 3300 BC: Rise of Cycladic culture and Minoan civilization
| (Featuring 5500 BC Barbie doll , Hamangia) 3000
| BC: Internationally Standardized weights! 2800 BC:
| copper mirror or earlier 2600 BC: Cotton was woven
| and dyed for clothing in Harappa (see 5000BC Cotton threads)
| 2600 BC: "fowl for fighting" Harappa
| 64bittechie wrote:
| [dead]
| jimmytucson wrote:
| I'd add when any life began: single-celled
| life (3.8-4.3bya)
|
| ...which is notably close to when the Solar System formed
| (4.6bya)
| actionfromafar wrote:
| ... 4.6bya - a good chunk of how long the universe even
| existed.
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| One might assume then that life is inevitable. Seems like
| too much if a coincidence (although I appreciate the
| tautology of that thought).
| muyuu wrote:
| Or that "intelligent" life is very unlikely if you
| consider that our planet will no longer be inhabitable in
| roughly the next 10% of its total existence and 7% since
| it's estimated microbial life appeared.
|
| If human equivalent creatures had taken just 10% longer
| to appear the sun would have dried up all the water on
| the earth and wiped its atmosphere before it happened.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| The satellites of Saturn and Jupiter will still be
| chugging along.
|
| Our star is unusual, as well over 90% of stars are
| smaller (and thus longer lived). Though if you go small
| enough you start dealing with planets in the habitable
| zone being tidally locked.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| But if a species capable of rocketry had not developed,
| there is no way complex life would be able to get to
| those satellites.
|
| The increased likelihood of being tidally locked is not
| the only problem with smaller stars. As a rule, larger
| stars are more stable and smaller stars are more active.
| This is made worse by the fact that the habitable zone is
| closer to the star for smaller stars. Most stars in the
| universe probably can't support life as we know it
| because any planet close enough to be warm would get it's
| atmosphere stripped off by flares.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > But if a species capable of rocketry had not developed,
| there is no way complex life would be able to get to
| those satellites.
|
| I'm talking about continuing evolution of the life that
| may already be there.
|
| Informative points about stars.
| narag wrote:
| The alternative explanation is that seeds from a previous
| evolution started colonizing the planet as soon as the
| medium became viable. But that's like cheating.
| lisper wrote:
| Not really. It's 300-800 million years. That's not nothing.
| It just looks small by comparison to the time elapsed since
| then.
| laxd wrote:
| ... and overlapping the the Late Heavy Bombardement.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Heavy_Bombardment
| saalweachter wrote:
| Similarly, I have a number from the back of the envelope in my
| back pocket that roughly 2.2 trillion person-years have been
| lived (by modern humans), roughly one third before agriculture
| and one third after the industrial revolution.
|
| World War 2 was roughly one percent of history, weighted by
| person-years.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| My favorite framing of that is that in homo sapiens, life has
| only been proven to have a mortality rate of 93%.
| pavlov wrote:
| My personal mortality rate is 0% so far. Not sure what the
| fuss is about.
| andrewmutz wrote:
| > World War 2 was roughly one percent of history, weighted by
| person-years.
|
| Do you mean history since WW2 has been about one percent of
| history?
| saalweachter wrote:
| The population during the ~decade WWII covered was 2.3
| billion, so about 23 billion person-years were lived, about
| 1% of the total.
|
| You can argue that total down considerably -- other stuff
| happened during that decade, and while something like 10%
| of the population fought in the war, it wasn't _truly_
| global -- but it 's still impressive on the scale of
| history. The US Revolutionary War was probably only
| 1/1000th of that.
| jbaber wrote:
| What interval is the remaining third?
| Infernal wrote:
| Unless I'm misunderstanding, the remaining third would be
| between the advent of agriculture and the industrial
| revolution.
| 988747 wrote:
| So the first third took millions of years, second third
| took roughly 6-7k years, and the last third took 200
| years?
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Like everything on the prehistoric timeline, the dawn of
| agriculture keeps getting pushed back. I think that's
| believed to be older than 10k years ago now.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| With the caveat that the intensity of the increasingly
| older agriculture is increasingly low.
|
| There are clearly agricultural societies, where >90% of
| calories come from cultured plants, and there are clearly
| hunter-gatherer societies that predate them, where ~0%
| do. We used to believe in a relatively sharp cutoff
| between these, where once people learned to grow food,
| they quickly moved to mostly grow their food. This is no
| longer thought to be the truth, and there was likely a
| "transitional period" of many thousands of years as
| people very slowly hunted and gathered less and planted
| more.
|
| (Why believe in a sharp transition? Because there is a
| lot of archeological evidence for it, so it clearly
| happened in lots of places. It's just that this doesn't
| represent people inventing agriculture, but it spreading
| to a new area and displacing older lifestyles, either by
| migrations of people or of ideas.)
| saalweachter wrote:
| The first is only hundreds of thousands, starting with
| anatomically modern humans and not all of our precursors
| who lived for millions of years before that.
|
| Though that may not change much -- depending on your
| estimates, Neanderthals probably spanned 3-30 billion
| person-years, as little as 0.1% of modern humans. All
| human precursors (5-10My worth) might be margin of error
| on the modern humans' totals.
|
| On the other end of things, if we plateau at around 10
| billion humans, it will only take about 75 years to
| accumulate the next third (well, quarter) of human
| existence.
| baxtr wrote:
| Very cool!
|
| There was an article a while arguing that we humans are very
| early in this universe and that's why we don't see any other
| alien species.
|
| There was a list of 7 steps that needed to happen for humans to
| exists.
|
| I don't remember them, but I think would be to cross check if
| all of them are on your list.
|
| Edit: found the theory. It's called Grabby Aliens and they use
| a concept called "hard steps" of evolution.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >There was an article a while arguing that we humans are very
| early in this universe and that's why we don't see any other
| alien species.
|
| I recall that discussion and added to it with a link to a PBS
| SpaceTime Episode[0] which discusses this in some detail.
|
| Since you find it interesting (I certainly do), check it out.
| Actually PBS SpaceTime has lots of other really awesome stuff
| too![1]
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTrFAY3LUNw
|
| [1] I am unaffiliated with PBS SpaceTime, rather I'm just
| glad it exists!
| chr-s wrote:
| I never knew horses went extinct in North America. Apparently
| we don't really understand why either. Fascinating.
| oblio wrote:
| Horses are from North America, originally.
|
| Crazy timeline.
|
| They're from North America.
|
| They seem to go extinct before local civilizations are able
| to leverage them, missing out on a huge force multiplier.
|
| Europeans reintroduce them much later and use them
| successfully to conquer large swaths of land.
|
| The "inferior" Native Americans realize the utility of horses
| and very quickly they become so skilled at using them that
| today their archetypal image is that of a horseman.
| gadders wrote:
| You could add Woolly Mammoths going extinct 4k years ago.
| Notable it its own right, and also because they overlapped with
| the pyramids being built.
| finnh wrote:
| Agree! Also Gobekli Tepe overlaps with saber tooth tigers
| extinction (10kya).
| gadders wrote:
| I didn't know that. Good idea!
| n_morningstar26 wrote:
| Some one was trying to revive mammoth ! what happened to
| that project.
| vkou wrote:
| For most intents and purposes, Wooly Mammoths became
| irrelevant to the ecosystem, and to all but a few human
| populations ~10,000 years ago. The last surviving mammoths
| were isolated on a few scattered islands.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Yes. But the general perception is Wooly Mammoths were in
| another era long before the more "modern" pyramids and
| such.
|
| TBH I wasn't aware the two overlapped. Now I know :)
| NationalPark wrote:
| Here's a good one you can add:
| https://www.wired.com/2010/01/ancient-seafarers/
|
| _Somebody_ got on a boat and ended up in Crete 100k years ago!
|
| (Also you forgot the ice age, heh)
| carabiner wrote:
| [flagged]
| DeusExMachina wrote:
| If so, of what is this a simulation, exactly?
| replwoacause wrote:
| It's a constructed reality. It doesn't have to be a
| simulation of anything in particular.
| chronofar wrote:
| Whether that's true or false changes virtually nothing about
| this article or our understanding of anything in the universe.
| tomrod wrote:
| Personally, I find Solipsism and its cousins unsatisfying.
| consumer451 wrote:
| > Simulation theory is deism for techies.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33580896
| carabiner wrote:
| I believe in a God outside of this simulation.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-04-14 23:01 UTC)