Skrivet språk för 40.000 år sedan!?

[Mats Hansson]

Ja, man ska heller inte överdriva nyttan med ett avancerat språk för alla djurarter. Dvs. mer avancerat än djuret behöver i sin anpassning. Människans avancerade språk och hjärna innebär samtidigt en energikostnad. De evolutionära fördelarna framträder bara under vissa förhållanden. Vore det inte så skulle minsta fluga idag vara en väldigt intellektuella typ...

/Mats

[Boreas]

Civilisation för 40.000 år sen?

Oldest Poison Pushes Back Ancient Civilization 20,000 Years

A new analysis of artifacts from a cave in South Africa reveals that the residents were carving bone tools, using pigments, making beads and even using poison 44,000 years ago. These sorts of artifacts had previously been linked to the San culture, which was thought to have emerged around 20,000 years ago.

"Our research proves that the Later Stone Age emerged in South Africa far earlier than has been believed and occurred at about the same time as the arrival of modern humans in Europe," study researcher Paola Villa, a curator at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, said in a statement.

http://www.livescience.com/21961-oldest-poison-tools-stone-age-humans.html

Most archaeologists think that San hunter–gatherer cultural adaptation emerged 20,000 yrs ago. However, reanalysis of organic artifacts from Border Cave, South Africa, shows that the Early Later Stone Age inhabitants of this cave used notched bones for notational purposes, wooden digging sticks, bone awls, and bone points similar to those used by San as arrowheads.

A point is decorated with a spiral groove filled with red ochre, which closely parallels similar marks that San make to identify their arrowheads when hunting. A mixture of beeswax, Euphorbia resin, and possibly egg, wrapped in vegetal fibers, dated to ∼40,000 BP, may have been used for hafting. Ornaments include marine shell beads and ostrich eggshell beads, directly dated to ∼42,000 BP. A digging stick, dated to ∼39,000 BP, is made of Flueggea virosa.

A wooden poison applicator, dated to ∼24,000 BP, retains residues with ricinoleic acid, derived from poisonous castor beans. Reappraisal of radiocarbon age estimates through Bayesian modeling, and the identification of key elements of San material culture at Border Cave, places the emergence of modern hunter–gatherer adaptation, as we know it, to ∼44,000 y ago.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/07/23/1204213109