MODERN LIVING, 8 LAKH YEARS OLD
and/or www.mantra.com/jai
Modern living, 8 lakh years old
Sunday, December 27, 2009 2:00 PM
Science 18 December 2009:
Vol. 326. no. 5960, pp. 1677 - 1680
DOI: 10.1126/science.1180695
REPORTS
Spatial Organization of Hominin Activities at Gesher Benot Ya'aqov,
Israel
Nira Alperson-Afil,1,* Gonen Sharon,1 Mordechai Kislev,2 Yoel
Melamed,2 Irit Zohar,3,4,5 Shosh Ashkenazi,5Rivka Rabinovich,1,5
Rebecca Biton,5 Ella Werker,6 Gideon Hartman,7 Craig Feibel,8 Naama
Goren-Inbar1,*
The spatial designation of discrete areas for different activities
reflects formalized conceptualization of a living space. The results
of spatial analyses of a Middle Pleistocene Acheulian archaeological
horizon (about 750,000 years ago) at Gesher Benot Ya'aqov, Israel,
indicate that hominins differentiated their activities (stone
knapping, tool use, floral and faunalprocessing and consumption)
across space. These were organized in two main areas, including
multiple activities around a hearth. The diversity of human
activities and the distinctive patterning with which they are
organized implies advanced organizational skills of the Gesher Benot
Ya'aqov hominins.
1 Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount
Scopus, Jerusalem 91905, Israel.
2 Faculty of Life Sciences, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900,
Israel.
3 Leon Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies, University of Haifa,
Mount Carmel, Haifa 31905, Israel.
4 Department of Zoology, George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel
Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel.
5 National Natural History Collections, Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, Givat Ram, Jerusalem 91904, Israel.
6 Department of Botany, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Givat Ram,
Jerusalem 91904, Israel.
7 Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for
Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.
8 Department of Geological Sciences, Rutgers University, New
Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail:
alpe...@mscc.huji.ac.il (N.A.-A.); go...@cc.huji.ac.il(N.G.-I.)
Read the Full Text
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/326/5960/1677
Proof of modern living, 8 lakh years old
Our Special Correspondent
The Telegraph
Sunday, December 27, 2009
New Delhi, Dec. 27: Archaeological excavations in Israel have thrown
up evidence hinting at sophisticated thinking capabilities in stone-
age ancestors of modern humans, similar to observations from
Karnataka's Hunsgi valley eight years ago.
The excavations at a site named Gesher Benot Ya'aqov on the shores of
an ancient lake suggest that its inhabitants had divided their living
space into a dining zone and a work zone about 790,000 years ago.
Until now, scientists had believed that the capacity for organising
living and work space -- a key element of human intelligence --
emerged only about 100,000 years ago.
Researchers from Israel, Germany and the US have said the open-air
encampment at Gesher Benot Ya'aqov shows that early humans had used
the site to make stone tools, butcher animals and control fire.
Scientists can't be sure about the identity of the stone-age people
but one possibility is Homo erectus, a species that reigned from
about 1.8 million years ago to about 160,000 years ago when Homo
sapiens appeared.
The clustering of the tools and remains of fish, crab and edible
plants around two distinct zones in the encampment suggests that they
carried out distinct activities at different locations -- with the
processing of food around a hearth. They fashioned their tools of
limestone and basalt a short distance away. The findings have
appeared in the US journal Science.
"It's no big deal for you or me to organise our space, nor was it a
problem for people living about 100,000 years ago. But our knowledge
of life and ways of people from 790,000 years ago is fragmentary,"
said Gonen Sharon, an archaeologist team member at the Hebrew
University, Jerusalem.
"We do not know if these people had a language and what else they
were capable of doing. But the new evidence from Gesher Benot Ya'aqov
shows they inhabited a single space for some time, executing
different types of activities restricted to a specific zone," Sharon
told The Telegraph. "This is modern behaviour."
Scientists trying to probe the lives of the Homo erectus -- the
earliest human ancestor that learnt to use fire about 1.4 million
years ago -- are impressed by the findings.
"This is an extraordinary archaeological site," said Michael
Petraglia, at the School of Archaeology in the University of Oxford,
who was not associated with these findings, but has explored Homo
erectus tool-making sites in Karnataka.
The concentration of food remains such as crab or fish bones around a
hearth clearly shows what these early humans were consuming,
Petraglia said. "The assertion that this is evidence for advanced
cognitive abilities in early humans is reasonable."
The evidence from Israel is somewhat similar to what Petraglia and
his colleagues from India had discovered at Isampur in the Hunsgi
valley of Karnataka which is almost of the same age.
The site contained discrete stone tool clusters that archaeologists
believe represented the activities of individuals working on stone in
different parts of the site. Petraglia's team had suggested in 2002
that early humans in Isampur had advanced thinking abilities similar
to what Sharon and his colleagues have now observed at Gesher Benot
Ya'aqov.
The high density of fish remains at Gesher Benot Ya'aqov also
provides one of the earliest evidence for the consumption of fish by
prehistoric people anywhere in the world, according to Sharon and his
colleagues. "We were surprised to see the intensive consumption of
fish when the use of marine resources has generally been assigned
only to modern humans -- about 40,000 years ago," he said.
The Gesher Benot Ya'aqov gives the earliest evidence of fire outside
Africa.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1091228/jsp/nation/story_11915513.jsp#
http://sites.google.com/site/kalyan97
Sarasvati
End of forwarded message from S. Kalyanaraman
Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
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P. Rajah
> Forwarded message from S. Kalyanaraman
>
> Modern living, 8 lakh years old
"Indian Civilization has unceasingly existed for 1,972 million years ago
as the fully developed Ganges civilization"
"Hindu religion was first revealed 111.52 trillion years ago"
"Bhagwan Ram ruled Ayodhya during the prevous tretayug, 18.144 million
years ago"
http://web.archive.org/web/20030803191007/http://thevedicfoundation.org/communities/do_you_know.htm
M. Ranjit Mathews
> Jay Stevens Maharaj aka the jackass jyotishithead wrote:
> > Forwarded message from S. Kalyanaraman
> > Modern living, 8 lakh years old
>
> "Indian Civilization has unceasingly existed for 1,972 million years ago
Hurrah, eukaryotes had Indian civilization!
http://rainbow.ldeo.columbia.edu/courses/v1001/7.html
UNTIL ABOUT 1.9 BILLION YEARS AGO WE HAVE EVIDENCE ONLY OF THE
SIMPLEST KINDS OF LIFE - THE PROKARYOTES - BACTERIA AND BLUE GREEN
ALGAE
But at about 1.9 billion years we start to see fossils of much larger
cells. These cells belong to the Eukaryotes - of which we are members.
> as the fully developed Ganges civilization"
Where did this civilization get its water from?
http://www.ecotao.com/holism/bp.htm
2.3 billion years ago most of the planet's seven continents, then
concentrated around the equator, were glaciated.
> "Hindu religion was first revealed 111.52 trillion years ago"
Before the Big Bang, eh? To whom was it revealed?
> "Bhagwan Ram ruled Ayodhya during the prevous tretayug, 18.144 million
> years ago
That must have been Bhagwan Ramapithecus.
http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Ramapithecus.aspx
Ramapithecus , an extinct group of primates that lived from about 12
to 14 million years ago ...
"http://web.archive.org/web/20030803191007/http://
thevedicfoundation.o...
hari....@indero.com
residence divided cooking and working areas is far from anything
"modern".
These people were hunters and gatherers, just like some tribals to this
day are. If the term "modern" can be applied to the article, it can
certainly be applied to all tribals in s. asia today.
Untill about 10000 years ago all people were hunters and gatheres moving
here and there following the food supply. Domestication of animals and
plants started slowly about that time to be increasling used and more
permanent residents used. people have for the vast time of human
history been so.
M. Ranjit Mathews
> Not "modern" by any measure. Having within one's place of tempory
> residence divided cooking and working areas is far from anything
> "modern".
If it's modern for Jai, he might be a caveman. But even cavemen might
have had division of labor (and concomitant division of residential
space) between the sexes, so he might be even more primitive than
cavemen.