The oldest spearhead to date

[NeolithicMan]

http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/stone-tipped-spears-were-around-homo-sapiens

Check out this extremely old spear head and the craziness of its very exsistance... a little dramatic maybe but its still really interesting.

[PrimitiveTim]

I'm interested to see what the scientists conclude about this one

[JackCrafty]

yawn.     I wish they would report on the items that were found in context that lead them to believe this was a spear point and not a butchering tool, for example.

[cowboy]

Hmm, that's almost too deep for me to comprehend if its true. Oh well, think ill go back to welding and chipping .

[Newbow]

Patrick,
Here's a quote from the abstract of the PLoS ONE article:
"Data from velocity-dependent microfracture features, diagnostic damage patterns, and artifact shape reported here indicate that pointed stone artifacts from Ethiopia were used as projectile weapons (in the form of hafted javelin tips) as early as >279,000 years ago."
Link to that article: 
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0078092

[burchett.donald]

 Where do they come up with these dates and number of years? Give ma a break...At any time anyone could have chipped that rock. Maybe it fell from a spaceship. I usually never pay attention to this type of speculation, but who pays these people to come up with these ideas. It's a freekin rock!
                     No pun intended to NeolithicMan's post...

               


 

[JackCrafty]

Newbow, that's a very nerdy link.  I'm impressed!!  Was it linked to the article?  I didn't check.

The link mentions experimental techniques but places most the emphasis in theoretical and mathematical models.  That is not wise, in my view, but it does give insight into how the archaeologists are thinking.  Just my 2 cents.

[papoints]

Are they sure it was knapped?  I bet if you have a 5 gallon bucket of chunks of obsidian and threw it off a mountainside several would look like that when they got to the bottom.  Just a thought.

[Newbow]

The link was in the original article.

[Prarie Bowyer]

Where do they come up with these dates and number of years? Give ma a break...At any time anyone could have chipped that rock. Maybe it fell from a spaceship. I usually never pay attention to this type of speculation, but who pays these people to come up with these ideas. It's a freekin rock!
                     No pun intended to NeolithicMan's post...

               


 

The dry boring stuff is usually filtered out for us laypersons in these articles.  However where appropriate carbon dating is used.  While it has it's pitfalls in terms of what can be carbon dated it is fairly accurate with in a margin of error.  The actual working paper will state the margin of error.  Geology is also used.  So it becomes a measure of how deep and in what layer of sediment the materials were found in. 

There are few human fossils from this period because there weren't many of us.  Not all bones get fossilized.  Most are scattered, crushed and dissolved beyond recognition.  Fossilization requires specific circumstances.  I think the reason we have so many dino fossils is because there was a LARGE number of them so naturally many would find their way into the circumstances that allow fossilization to occur.   

This isn't the first claim that pre neanderthal hominids used some sort of stone tools.  The earliest that were actually fashioned tended to represent a flake of some sort that was touched up or dressed into the point. 

So it is conceivable.  We learn new stuff about this all the time.  AND Ethiopia is so far thought to be the origin of modern humans.  ALL of us walking and talking today came from a man and woman that originate in that area.  That isn't to say that there weren't other lines of humans .... they just didn't make it to present day. 

The study uses the rate of change in mitochondrial DNA, and it stops there a LONG time ago.  So .... really,  we are all black.  The theory is something like "Genetic Adam".
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=finding+genetic+eve&sm=3

The above should get you started if you wanted learn more.


Last I looked in on the topic of human evolution we are still looking for a "Link" or a transitional stage creature or two that explains the leap from some of the known forms to modern humans.  I'm sure somebody will find a femur and a 3"x3" section of skull cap and claim this is it.  But eventually we will find these "links" and and complete the picture of human evolution.

[Newbow]

Although many don't think so, and it seems to be trendy to dismiss archeological speculation, especially if it doesn't fit an individual's current thinking, the folks who write up stuff like this paper in PLoS ONE don't make up their ideas/conclusions out of thin air.  The paper is only "nerdy" because it was written by and for other scientists rather than for the public at large.  The paper explains what they found and the what and why of how they reached the conclusions they arrived at.  When peer reviewed and published, as this one was, it is offered to other members of the profession who can then test the conclusions reached and offer either support or refutation in another paper which will explain how they reached their conclusions.  The paper under discussion here is hardly the last word.  Scientists can make mistakes, certainly.  They do it all the time.  But they are mistakes, generally, due to insufficient evidence available at the time they drew their conclusions and the conclusions reached are always subject to revision; holdouts who cling desperately to older paradigms (Clovis First, for instance) not withstanding.  How do they come up with all this stuff?  Nothing that archeologists, or any other scientific branch, do is a secret.   It is esoteric only if a person is unfamiliar with the specific methodology and a working understanding of that methodology is readily available to anyone who might be interested.

[burchett.donald]

  I understand that you can carbon date a piece of obsidian but how do you date when it was knapped/chipped and can we even prove this wasn't a natural occurrence. I'm open minded to science and believe Genesis where I came from Adam but also believe and realize there was a world here before them. Take the dinosaurs and different fossils of extinct animals. I also believe there could have been a form of humanoid before man was created in the image of God. It just seems to be speculation on the spear points age. I know the rules are not to discuss religion and if this offends anyone I will erase this post and back out.

[Newbow]

Carbon dating is probably the best known method for determining the age of objects that contain carbon but it is only one of a fair number.  Where possible it is preferred to use more than one method as one way will reinforce (or not) the accuracy of the other and generally narrow the possible error; the plus or minus number usually given with an age.  Newer procedures have made carbon dating more accurate than it was a few decades ago but it still has limitations (see: http://archserve.id.ucsb.edu/courses/anth/fagan/anth3/Courseware/Chronology/08_Radiocarbon_Dating.html , for a detailed description), the most serious, in this context, being the requirement for carbon to be present; something notably missing from stone points.  Obsidian can be measured directly to the time flakes were taken by Obsidian Hydration Dating (http://archserve.id.ucsb.edu/courses/anth/fagan/anth3/Courseware/Chronology/10_Obsidian_Hydration.html).  The age of other types of stone can sometimes be determined by luminescence dating: http://crustal.usgs.gov/laboratories/luminescence_dating/technique.html.  There are several other methods of radioactive decay aging that come into their own as radio carbon dating begins to reach its limits but they aren't usually used for the relatively recent dates that we look at in the Americas.  Where none of these direct (called Absolute) dating methods is possible there remain indirect (Relative) methods such as stratigraphic relationship, where an object's position relative to a known age layer (above, below, within) is used to give an approximate age.  The point is that there is no hocus pocus where ages are just pulled out of a hat to fit the whimsy of the individual.  There is a measured way such ages are determined and then they are offered up to the greater archeological (in our case) community for scrutiny to be either accepted or rejected.

[burchett.donald]

Newbow,
             I read about Obsidian Hydration Dating and it was very interesting. Thank you for posting that link.

[JackCrafty]

Newbow, what did you think of the article?  Do you buy such things as, "velocity-dependent microfracture features"?

I've seen lab results from tests involving controlled fracturing (dropping a percussor from various heights onto an objective piece).  They are interesting but there are so many variables to consider.  "Velocity-dependent microfracture features", for example, seems hokey to me.

Hokey - Noticeably contrived; artificial.

I know that I can be VERY annoying, but please bear with me.    (I only do this because I've admired your level-headed posts and I want to tap into your experience).

First of all, it doesn't take much force to cause a flake detachment on obsidian (the material in question).  Second, the more massive or immoveable the object being struck, the greater the force of impact for a given velocity.  Third, tremendous velocities can be generated with hand held objects.  Then there are obvious questions:  How do we account for moving targets?  Or, as part of an overall strategy, were the targets usually running away from or charging toward the hunters, for example?  Were the projectiles thrown horizontally or dropped from an elevated perch (e.g. high up in a tree)?  Or could the stone points have been placed on the tips of stakes at the bottom of a pit?  What about a deadfall trap with a heavy rock above and sharp stones below?  The heavy rock might make contact with the tips of the pointed stones, for example.  We must also keep in mind that hunting methods that are unethical or illegal today were probably common if not preferred back in the day.

I just don't see any clear way for "velocity-dependent microfracture features" for a given artifact to tell us anything about how the artifact was used.  Maybe the artifact was traveling with a high velocity when it got damaged?  Maybe not?  The writers believe they can determine the hunting strategy from the projectile.  IMO, that would be like trying to see what was written by looking at the pen.