Re: Flaked Stones and Old Bones: Biological and Cultural Evolution at the Dawn of Technology

On Dec 9, 5:55 pm, Lee Olsen <paleoc...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Dec 9, 5:35 pm, Marc Verhaegen <m_verhae...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Once stone tools turn up in the record, they are found wherever early
Homo sites are found, be it South Africa, Dmanisi, Iberia, or China.

yes, always near seas rivers lakes:

Says the liar who doesn't know the difference between a mountain
beaver and a capybara. Here is what real scientists say:

Plummer:
"Is it possible to situate Oldowan hominin activities
within the spectrum of savanna habitats mentioned
above? Paleoenvironmental inferences for
hominin activities are frequently limited, as paleontological
and archaeological sites are only preserved
where sedimentation occurs.

Yeah, so? This doesn't mean we have to assume they did not reside in
the vicinity of water.

There are no primary
context Oldowan sites in South Africa, and East
African sites are found in fluvio-lacustrine settings,
biasing our perspective to activities carried out in
near-water contexts (Table 1). Faunal and pollen
data, where they exist, invariably provide evidence
of a range of savanna habitats, varying from woodland
to patches of open grassland,

A range of savanna habitat? They've dumbed down the meaning of
savanna such that it can mean just about anything.

which hominins
may have freely ranged through, or within which
they may have shown specific habitat preferences.
Moreover, the depositional context of isolated hominin
fossils may not provide a clear indication of
habitat preference during life (White, 1988). As reviewed
by Sikes (1994), there is little consensus
regarding Plio-Pleistocene hominin habitat preferences
in East Africa."

Who cares.

Why not just go with what paeloclimatologists tell us to discern the
general habitat. And why not use reason and logic to determine what
specific locations within this general habitat would have been most
suitable for early hominids. Just because these reviewers decided to
put their head in the sand doesn't mean the rest of us have to also.

YEARBOOK OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 47:118–164 (2004)

"A variety of data, including the presence of rootlet holes and reed
casts in Tuff IB has led to the interpretation that FLKNN was
situated
in the lake margin zone ca. 1 km from the paleo-lake (Leakey, 1971).

Lee, you should have read it before you posted it. Your evidence
supports your opponents. "Lake margin" is inconsistent with the
treeless habitat that you champion.


"At Olduvai the Acheulean sites tend to lie along the former stream
channels away from the playa lakes (Hay 1967a, 1976).

"former stream channel"


http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/aop/olorg2004/dispatch/star...
We know that they lived a lot in the highlands, since that's
 where all the source rocks were. If the high ground was home,
 it helps explain why early human fossils are so rare at Olorgesailie.
 In any case, they apparently knew that hanging out near water in the
 lowlands at night was not a very good life option. Frequent travel
up
and down the volcanic ridges connecting the highlands to the lake
 basin seems to explain why so many handaxes were left in these
transition zones.

I think there may be an even better explanation. These locations
provided them a vantage point from which they could see their
opponents coming (both social predators and herds of large, mammalian,
highly aggressive food competitors) and conduct strategic raids to
drive them off and/or avoid them altogether.

There are almost no primary sites and no home
basis.

Maybe these were not the transition zones. Maybe these were the
primary sites. (It's not like you'd expect to find a lot of handaxes
in transition zones anyway.)
.

Relevant Pages

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