Zinken

Early toolmakers cast off rock-banger image

They may look crude, but even some of the earliest stone tools were produced with skill and technical sophistication. The finding, based on an analysis of tools found at a 2.34-million-year-old site in Kenya, suggests that early toolmakers' abilities differed from place to place.

The earliest stone tools appear in the fossil record around 2.6 million years ago. This so-called Oldowan phase of toolmaking probably began with an early species of Homo and continued for 1.2 million years. Oldowan tools were simple, sharp-edged stone flakes that a fairly unintelligent hominid could have used for cutting meat. The assumption has been that they were made by mindless, random rock-banging ... New Scientist Breaking News

Taste for meat made humans early weaners

When humans began eating animal carcasses they risked attack from other predators, so children had to become independent more quickly ... New Scientist

Hominid inbreeding left humans vulnerable to disease

A lack of mates for early humans may have left modern humans and chimps more prone to genetic diseases than other species ... New Scientist

Seeing Clacton man in a new light

Stooped, violent, unable to utter more than a grunt and hell-bent on terrifying innocent bystanders with Stanley knife-type weapons.

This is the image that archaeologists have painted of the ape-like man that lived in the Clacton area 400,000 years ago.

But new research has caused historians and archaeologists to re-evaluate the culture that has been dubbed “Clactonian” ... East Anglian Daily Times news

Ind. couple creates prehistoric institute

A husband-and-wife anthropologist team who have spent decades studying early humans' skill in crafting stone tools have parlayed their expertise into an Indiana University institute devoted to prehistoric human culture.

Scientists at Nicholas Toth and Kathy Schick's year-old Stone Age Institute north of Bloomington study the origins of human technology at field sites in Algeria, Ethiopia, South Africa and New Guinea.

Their studies are attempting to answer, among other questions, why or how early hominids began making tools, and what ancient stone tools reveal about their makers ... Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Couple craft research into humanity's roots

Scientists take hands-on approach to deciphering life in the Stone Age.

IU researcher Nicholas Toth (standing in front of a mock archaeological dig at the Stone Age Institute) believes in "getting archaeology out of the armchair." - Rob Goebel / The Star.

Using a needle several inches long, a hand surgeon slid wires into Nicholas Toth's and Kathy Schick's forearms and hands.

Then the two began chipping away, shaping simple stone tools the way that human ancestors did for millions of years. Signals began flowing along the wires in an experiment that helped to reveal which muscles are important in making tools.

Volunteering their bodies to figure that out is only one example of how far the husband-and-wife anthropologist team from Indiana University will go in their quest to understand the roots of humanity.

They are among the most prominent researchers in human evolution and Stone Age tool making ... Indystar.com

The mysterious end of Essex man

Archaeologists now believe two groups of early humans fought for dominance in ancient Britain - and the axe-wielders won.

Divisions in British culture may be deeper than we thought. Scientists have discovered startling evidence that suggests different species of early humans may have fought to settle within our shores almost half a million years ago.

They have found that two different groups - one wielding hand-axes, the other using Stone Age Stanley knives to slash and kill - could have been rivals for control of ancient Britain.

'The evidence is only tantalising, but it is intriguing,' said palaeontologist Chris Stringer, of the Natural History Museum, London. 'Certainly it suggests Britain may well have been multicultural 400,000 years ago.'

This new interpretation of our prehistory is based on the recent discovery of a site - by archaeologists working with engineers building the Channel Tunnel high-speed rail link at Ebbsfleet in Kent - that shows ancient hunters once chased a giant elephant into a bog in Kent, trapped it there and then cut it to pieces, eating its flesh raw ... Observer

Stone Age 'find' goes on display

A Stone Age hand axe which is more than 500,000 years old has gone on display in Warwick.

The tool was found at Smiths Concrete Bubbenhall Quarry at Waverley Wood Farm near Coventry.

The axe, which is in good condition, provides evidence of our early ancestors, hominids, in the UK ... BBC NEWS

Lower Palaeolithic hand axe found at a quarry in Warwickshire

A Stone Age hand axe dating back 500,000 years has been discovered at a quarry in Warwickshire (England). The tool was found at the Smiths Concrete Bubbenhall Quarry at Waverley Wood Farm, near Coventry, which has already produced evidence of some of the earliest known human occupants of the UK. It was uncovered in gravel by quarry manager John Green who took it to be identified by archaeologists at the University of Birmingham ... Stone Pages Archaeo News

Bilzingsleben

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Bilzingsleben is a findspot of early palaeolithic human remains in Thuringia, Germany ... Wikipedia