As usual after the weekend, I'm grinding slowly through catchup... On Sun, 01 Jun 2003, Keith Hudson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> In particular, the fourfold description distinguishes us from Homo >Neanderthalensis who lived very happily and stably for about 500,000 >years with one innovation -- a slightly sharpened piece of stone that he >could use as a weapon or a hammer (and which was just one step up from >the chimp's use of any handy piece of stone). The point is that Homo >Sapiens not only produced a far better stone tool than Homo N -- the >so-called 'axehead' -- but he kept on producing innovations from then >onwards! This is a pretty muddled account: the species with one tool was Homo erectus, which seems to have managed for almost two million years with only the "Acheulian hand axe", a tool shaped rather like a flattened tear drop. The only older tools are called "Oldowan choppers", and are basically stones with six or eight flakes broken off one side to make a ragged edge. The Acheulian tools show a slight improvement in quality of manufacture over the period of their existence, but with the advent of the Neandertal "Mousterian" tool culture in europe, and other lineages elsewhere, over the last half million years, tool variety and quality greatly increased. The Neandertals had a rich variety of stone and bone implements, and no doubt had much more in wood, of which only some "javelins" of uncertain ownership have been found. They certainly hafted points on spears, and used awls to bore into wood and bone. Which is not to say that the subsequent Aurignacian toolkit of the european Hs was not substantially more elaborate yet, but you slander the poor Neandertals, who never seem to be able to get good press. -Pete Vincent _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework