[HN Gopher] Rope making in the Aurignacian of Central Europe mor...
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       Rope making in the Aurignacian of Central Europe more than 35,000
       years ago
        
       Author : Archelaos
       Score  : 41 points
       Date   : 2024-02-03 10:02 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.science.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.science.org)
        
       | dash2 wrote:
       | If you're interested in cavepersons, there's a very good podcast
       | called "Our Prehistory". It really expanded my mind. My image of
       | people up to 10,000 years ago was basically like a Gary Larson
       | cartoon - Oog hit thing with rock! I was completely wrong; people
       | had amazingly sophisticated technology even by the mesolithic,
       | they just didn't have metal but they were doing crazy stuff with
       | stone, bone and wood.
        
         | joseluis wrote:
         | And I'm sure they also did crazy useful complex things with
         | rope, strings, fibers, textiles and skins.
        
           | 082349872349872 wrote:
           | And while rope, etc. last far longer after death than (as
           | ethologists lament) behaviours, they last nowhere near as
           | long as metal items.
        
         | AStrangeMorrow wrote:
         | It is a bias that many people with only a passing interest in
         | history sadly have: that the more far back you go the
         | dumber/less sophisticated people were.
         | 
         | The more you look at historical evidence the more you see that,
         | quite logically, people were very much like us. Complaining
         | about the same stuff ("kids these days...") and so on. Sure a
         | 12th century European farmer would probably struggle with a bit
         | with a smartphone (same as many of our grandparents), but had
         | likely a huge understanding of what plant required what
         | environment to thrive, their growth cycles, what was edible and
         | how to safely prepare it, how to do manual labor while keeping
         | your clothes impeccable etc.
        
         | whenc wrote:
         | "We come mentally of age when we discover that the great minds
         | of the past, whom we have patronized, are not less intelligent
         | than we are because they happen to be dead."
         | 
         | -- Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave
        
       | sradman wrote:
       | Here is a CBC article [1] with an embedded 17min Quirks and
       | Quarks radio segment on the finding. You can watch how the tool
       | works in the video embedded near the end of the article. The
       | original .mp4 is available as a zipped attachment on the Science
       | paper. Very cool :-)
       | 
       | [1] https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/homo-sapiens-braved-cold-
       | mad...
        
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       (page generated 2024-02-04 23:02 UTC)