Bestfootforward
TheJenHOLY SHIT Y'ALL!
Scientists have found an obsidian tool making "workshop" which dates to 1.2 MILLION YEARS AGO in Ethiopia.
This pushes this type of tool making back 500,000 years.
WOOOOOOOOOOOW
If you decided that today was the day to make a completely uninformed and idiotic comment on my post, today is the day you get blocked.
If you don't understand something, ask. If you make an idiotic comment because you're dumb, I will not tolerate you, but rather yeet you into the sun. I won't even respond.
Punted.
Bye.
Jason ON@JenWojcik What qualifies as an idiotic statement?
Oblomov@JenWojcik can we make at least one Tsoukalos ALIENS meme joke?
Jill.E.Bean 
@JenWojcik Woah!!!
Lynn@JenWojcik wow - one of the first ever ‘factories’
@LynnP Yep. Absolutely fascinating.
Peter Relph@JenWojcik
Which proves that there were capitalists 1.2 million years ago, because someone had to own the workshop, pay the workers, provide the napping stones & take all the profit.
Which proves that there were capitalists 1.2 million years ago, because someone had to own the workshop, pay the workers, provide the napping stones & take all the profit.
mathew@peterrelph2 @JenWojcik Nope. This is a scientific discovery, not a political one.
@mathew Mais oui
resipiscent@peterrelph2 @mathew entonces, you're serving up weak irony
@peterrelph2 @resipiscent and that right there is why I infinitely prefer mastodon to birdsite.
PS you might be right
Z̈oé@peterrelph2 @JenWojcik that's not even a logic jump, that's logic teleportation right there
Erik Uden => I hope the person that commented before this is just trolling
Pieter Kuiper 🇸🇪@uint8_t
I think it is safe to conclude that barter was involved, trade.
Probably on a small and immediate scale, where the stone cutter got food in exchange for food etc.
Capitalism has been exploding since about 500 years ago, after banking was invented. But yes, the seeds are old. And it may have been the inevitable consequence of barter and specialisation.
@peterrelph2 @JenWojcik
I apologise, I was being frivolous., yes it had to be barter. I was just drawing undrawable broad conclusions from tiny bits of evidence in the manner favoured by some archeologists.
Seriously though, I doubt that capitalism grew from barter, but from government issued currency backed by taxation in that currency, the powers that be forcing the populace to produce what they wanted rather than subsisting self sufficiently individually.
@pietkuip @uint8_t @peterrelph2 @JenWojcik woeful and tediously boring assumptions that culture = exploitation. Try to keep up, Read Wengrow & Graeber's "Dawn of Everything" has been out quite awhile now.
JohnW@JenWojcik Wow is right! That is so cool.
Incredible.
James RyanOnce again, proof that "first to market" does not guarantee success; there are a few folks who may remember the Xerox Alto who can REALLY sympathize with this band of hominins that did not become our ancestors...
Tonio Loewald@JenWojcik we already know bonobos and crows select and shape sticks for use as tools. So this is amazing but not surprising.
mac2mac@JenWojcik what a shame we did not learn more to use technology peaceful and supportive. Tribal force still reigns…
Phil Thane ✅@JenWojcik finding a cache of 600 tools suggests many workers. It's a shame we'll never know how they were organised, paid, fed. Or how their product was distributed. 600 is a lot for a small band of hunter/gatherers so I assume they were trading them.
Buck@JenWojcik
Technically, they're not even human, as in homo sapiens, considering our species exists since a mere 200K years or so
Amazing
Technically, they're not even human, as in homo sapiens, considering our species exists since a mere 200K years or so
Amazing
Syd@JenWojcik how reputable is this source?
Robert MacAnthony@Sydney @JenWojcik the cited article is in Nature, which is very reputable. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-022-01970-1
A surge in obsidian exploitation more than 1.2 million years ago at Simbiro III (Melka Kunture, Upper Awash, Ethiopia) - Nature Ecology & Evolution
The authors report a specialized obsidian handaxe workshop at the site of Simbiro III in Ethiopia, suggesting that hominins more than 1.2 million years ago took advantage of opportunities provided by changing environmental conditions.
@rmacanthony @JenWojcik Thanks! cool
Iris Richardson Fine Art 🇩🇪🇺🇸📷
Jim - kd9pah@JenWojcik kind of makes you want to rethink what we mean by people, or human, or civilization. That's a big jump right there.
Blort™ 🐀Ⓥ🥋☣️It'll be fun watching the Aryan brothers etc. try to explain this away...
Scot Close@JenWojcik
I didn't see anything in the article that explained how they dated the tools.
I didn't see anything in the article that explained how they dated the tools.
Andrew Hinton@JenWojcik @xian I wonder what this does to estimates of how far back human language goes
Christian Crumlish@Andrewhinton @JenWojcik It Is hard to imagine coordinating a “factory” without language of some sort.
have you also seen the new interpretation of the dots and lines on the animals in the lascaux cave paintings?
@xian @JenWojcik I haven’t seen that yet … I’ll check it out
Yes it’s something I can imagine, but the reading I did for the book a while back led me to some compelling reasons why it could be otherwise
@Andrewhinton @JenWojcik they appear to be calendrical tools tracking when each species tends to give birth in the year, etc.: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/cave-painting-calendar-earliest-writing/
@Andrewhinton @JenWojcik oh now I'm down a rabbithole: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/ancient-computer/
@xian that is dang cool
number137that's probably also where my institution's legacy code base is coming from
Ariel Richtman@JenWojcik this has absolutely nothing to do with me but iam HERE FOR IT. you go!
MostlyTato@JenWojcik
Archaeological evidence frequently pushes the dates of stuff further back into prehistory.
That, however, is one quite staggering push backwards. I'd be interested to see the final site report.
Archaeological evidence frequently pushes the dates of stuff further back into prehistory.
That, however, is one quite staggering push backwards. I'd be interested to see the final site report.
hammancheez@JenWojcik this is an appropriate use of all caps holy shit wowee
Allyson Williams ✅
Rupert Reynolds@JenWojcik I wish Prof. Jacob Bronowski could be alive to read this.
In The Ascent Of Man he suggested, in effect, that the cradle of mankind was in Ethiopia, perhaps near the river Omo. He would have been thrilled to see new evidence.
Pilot Pirx@JenWojcik That's really wow! Science its so often inspiring and eye opening, I love it.
Louis Evans@JenWojcik this fuckin rules
GQB@JenWojcik What’s odd is that means there were no advances in toolmaking in 500k years?
No. It means they haven't found it yet.
SpaceLifeFormDefinite Wow!
Jason Murphy@JenWojcik I watched a couple of episodes of a series on Netflix recently about the ancient world. It was full of mad conspiracies. But, looking past that, it was a cool introduction for the layperson to a range of prehistoric sites.
The conclusion I drew from watching it is that organised societies rose and fell more frequently than we think; Also that archaeology has a sort of conservative reasoning where they believe only in what they can see, despite not having done much looking. It's a misuse of standards of evdience. The likely length of human history is not equal only to the oldest found item, it's going to be way longer. As your link shows!
The conclusion I drew from watching it is that organised societies rose and fell more frequently than we think; Also that archaeology has a sort of conservative reasoning where they believe only in what they can see, despite not having done much looking. It's a misuse of standards of evdience. The likely length of human history is not equal only to the oldest found item, it's going to be way longer. As your link shows!
For sure. We don't know what we don't know.
Jimbo@JenWojcik Holy shit is understating it. Wow.
Elias Mårtenson@JenWojcik Do you happen to know if its known whether the people who did this are direct ancestors of modern humans, or could there have been more branches (like the Neanderthals much later).
@loke There is no information on this aspect of the find.
Not My Job@JenWojcik Ban archaeology. It’s probably a type of science.
ራስ ባሪያው Rass Bariaw@JenWojcik thank you for sharing this
@JenWojcik thank you for sharing this