Re: Did the Neanderthals have nets?


Jois wrote:
"A." <atalanta.brilliante@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1164128235.409582.14000@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


Unfortunately it isn't easy to find "good" arguments about the subjects you
or I might find interesting.

I know what you mean. I am interested, as well, in open speculation -
especially here on usenet. I think there's room for combining
scientific concerns with broader interests about humans.

Dr. C.L. Brace answered a question about reductions in robusticity occurred
in Africa (I think he ties reductions in robusticity with changes in our
tools and foods.)a few years ago in another (no defunct) group:

Brace: "We really have no evidence that this happened. Just last year I had
a
doctoral dissertation done for me which showed that skeletal robustness
was maintained in Africa for just as long as it was maintained anywhere
else. All those claims for the "modern" form of Qafza and Skhul and
their African counterparts just do not hold up to simple quantitative
analysis.

"It is true that the evidence for the first use of string technology goes
back to 50,000 years ago in Africa which is older than anywhere else in
the world and should be followed by the beginnings of gracilization,

This is what I'm questioning. I've got access to abstracts in
anthropology, anthrosource, JSTOR, and others - and can't find any
actual archaeological evidence of string in Africa at 50,000 years ago.
I'd love to see the citation, though, if anyone here knows what it is.
I have asked all the professional, teaching archaeologists I know -
and they don't know either, but that's only four or five people - so
maybe someone here might know of it.

but it appears outside of Africa by at least 40,000 years ago, and, in an
instance such as that, a 10,000 year difference in the beginning of
that presumption of selective force relaxation just is not enough time to
have produced any discernible results short of the analysis of a great deal
of evidence which we simply do not have. 10,000 years of pottery use has
resulted in a 10% reduction in tooth size, but that is the equivalent
of measurement error and is statistically significant only because of the
fact that the sign of the change is always in the same direction. And
we have teeth by the thousands in that time range. The handful of
skeletons we have between 50 and 40,000 years ago is way too small to say
anything about possible trends of change."


So Brace says string technology should be followed by the beginnings of
gracilization.

Why? Anyway, I've been reading about the gracility thing - and well,
first of all, the alleles themselves must be present, no? You can
invent string all you want, but you'd need the coevoluton of genes for
further gracility. Do we know where those alleles are, btw? Or are
they a posited set of about-to-be-located allees?

Isn't there current variation in gracility? And wouldn't all the early
moderns fall within the general curve of variation for moderns today?

I"d think many different innovations would assist in preserving
gracility, at any rate. There were a bunch of studies in the 40's
through 60's about the advent of the bow and arrow - and how it led to
gracility.

However, those studies didn't find a correlation either. And, while
reading the studies, I was pretty surprised to learn they didn't find
much evidence of the bow until well after the supposed "increase in
gracility" that people seem to want to associate with moderns. It
seems to me that the genus homo is more gracile than the genus
australopithecus (which is itself more gracile than many pongids - and
so forth). There's a general trend toward gracility, in other words,
among hominids. New technology alone could of course pump up the
presence of that/those allele(s) but one need not suppose that
technology is the only factor in sexual selection and reproductive
success - no matter what technology it is.


Ambrose goes by artifacts. (Science 20 November 1998: Vol. 282. no. 5393, p.
1451 DOI: 10.1126/science.282.5393.1451)


"And, gratifyingly for Klein, Africa is where some of the earliest
indisputable body ornaments are turning up. In last April's Journal of
Archaeological Science, Stanley Ambrose of the University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), describes his excavations at a rock-shelter in the
Rift Valley of Kenya, at a site called Enkapune Ya Muto. There he found a
cache of beads made of ostrich eggshell, blanks, and shell fragments. Some
of the beads, says Ambrose, "are shiny, obviously worn, as if someone was
wearing them as part of some ornament." They must have served as symbolic
markings, he says, "expressing an awareness of the self and how to enhance
it."

This seems to be true - although I don't see dates. I know that the
two oldest beads are being touted as 100,000 years old - one from
Algeria, and one from Tabun.

It's the same phenomenon seen in Europe 38,000 years ago--but it may be
several thousand years earlier at Enkapune Ya Muto, says Ambrose, who has
carbon-dated the shells and come up with an age of at least 40,000 years.
"These early ostrich eggshell beads are perhaps the earliest indicator" of
symbolic behavior anywhere, says Klein. "And it's very important that they
first appeared in Africa," just as expected if the crucial biological
innovation had occurred there."

But now the dates are much older - for beads. And there's a red ochre
piece with intentional human markings (I don't know how anyone will
ever conclude for us when "art" began) - at 150,000BP in Swaziland,
IIRC.

This article says: " . . . new Europeans decorated their bodies with beads
and pierced animal teeth . . ." beads and pierced animal teeth have to be
held together by something.

What seems logical or possible to us (hemp string?) might not have been
available where the people who first made string lived, for example, and
what American Indians did or didn't do is a world and tens of thousands of
years away from the first use of string and first nets. Did Neanderthals
have nets? Check Brace, Ambrose, Klein and the references they used.

Sure - they could have been using string (and btw, it makes perfect
sense to me - especially given that most native groups everywhere has a
way of using local fiber for string, if it's at all possible - although
I don't know how strong these strings are - they would be suitable, I
suppose, for jewelry). But, the traditional view has been that they
could have been using animal product (lacing/thong) for string. I
think this view is counter-intuitive (that's quite a bit of work and
waste of thonging for such a frivolous purpose). In fact, there are
grasses that are so sturdy that one doesn't need to "make" anything out
of them - here where I live, there are some beach grasses that we use
to string already-pierced (by nature) stones and shells - my kids do it
all the time, to make jewelry. The kids make sturdy wooden huts
decorated with grass-strung objects of ornament, all the time. By age
18-20, their houses and decorative arts are quite sophisticated - they
know which grasses last year round, and it's going to take a big swell
to get rid of their art and housing. The grasses last several seasons,
in other words.

I like your way of thinking, btw - and I'm not trying to ding you. I
think the view that fiber could have or would have been in use in
Africa, where there were beads, is the stronger hypothesis - since we
don't know for sure. I think it's common sense.

Also, there were ladders in Swaziland by 150,000 (with flint mining) -
that article is from the 90's, IIRC, and no one has stated clearly,
that I know of, what they were using to lash those ladders together.
Mining of flint in Egypt began (using ladders) at 100,000 (again, IIRC)
- another argument for cord/rope or something being present. Surely
the animal sinew/thong that was available (two different things, sinew
and thong), was put to use for the really important tasks (my guess is
lashing babies to cradleboards was considered pretty damn important by
*some* members of the community - surely you'd want that to be
comfortable, durable and reliable).

A.

Jois

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Did the Neanderthals have nets?
    ... a clear idea what plants were used in early string production, ... in Africa (I think he ties reductions in robusticity with changes in our ... Archaeological Science, Stanley Ambrose of the University of Illinois, ... cache of beads made of ostrich eggshell, blanks, and shell fragments. ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Re: Friendly Question about Evolution
    ... No, cells don't write novels, send text messages or write "Dear Penthouse" letters, but they do communicate in a variety of ways. ... Give that string to someone and tell them to reproduce the string, replacing any beads of one colour they don't like with a bead identical to the adjacent one. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Another stringing question!!
    ... Soft Flex is more like Tiger Tail, it's stiffer, and you just string ... beads without a needle, use crimps to attach clasps. ... I like the Soft Touch ...
    (rec.crafts.beads)
  • Re: Trapper / Gatherer culture?
    ... "The 75,000-year-old beads were found in the Blombos Cave on the southern ... string beads so it would be the size of the holes that mattered. ... guess you would be able to argue which came first - thin but strong string ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Re: Simultaneity
    ...  That, of course, is why you cannot support the ... conclusion with rigorous dynamics. ... otherwise" that the string does not break. ... Africa has to do with the trade imbalance in Africa, ...
    (sci.physics.relativity)