How old is humanity, really?

[redrumloa]

2008 news, but not discussed here afaik.

Discovery of 12,000-year-old Temple Complex Could Alter Theory of Human Development

http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/i ... 708a.shtml

Dated at around 9,500 BC, these stones are 5,500 years older than the first cities of Mesopotamia, and 7,000 years older than Stonehenge.

That blows a lot of accepted facts out of the water but what of much, much older human activity?

Subterranean Mining and Religion in Ancient Man

http://home.entouch.net/dmd/mining.htm

Nazlet Khater 4 is a site in Upper Egypt between Asyut and Sohag, which dates from between 35,100 to 30,360 years BP. A layer of greenish silts and sands is overlain by a chert-rich layer of Nile gravel. Above this level were three layers containing no chert. The chert-rich layer could be seen in outcrop (place where the rock comes to the surface). These miners apparently had the geological understanding to predict where the flint rich layer would go. They dug a 9-m long, 2-m wide trench as well as 7 vertical shafts to reach the flint layer. This would mean hours of work digging through layers which contained no flint in order to reach the prized flint. What is even more amazing, is what Bednarik (1992, p. 13) says about the miners.

"Some information has been recovered about the people responsible for the quarrying. Numerous lithic artefacts were fashioned from the chert cobbles of the substratum, and they include blades and bifacially trimmed axes. On the summit of a boulder hill 400 m to the north-west, at Nazlet Khater 2 site, two graves were discovered. One contained the outstretched remains of a human, probably a sub-adult male, the other was of a human foetus. The former had been covered with loose aeolian sand and several boulders, some exceeding 0.4 m in diameter. Next to the cranium (an archaic Homo sapiens, op. cit. Fig. 9), a 12 cm-long axe head was found in the grave fill, possessing concave sides for hafting, and matching the axe heads at the nearby mining site in every respect."

According to the definition of archaic Homo sapiens, the miners are not anatomically modern humans (Churchill et al, 1996, p231)!

Could this mining be the result of ancient, Egyptian Dynastic miners? No. The axes found with the miners are not the same type as those found in Dynastic times. Dynastic age graves always bury the body in a contracted position, yet in the burial found at Nazlet Khater 4 the man is laid out in an extended position. And finally, there are no archaic Homo sapiens in ancient Egypt.

But mining in the Nile Valley goes even further back in time. Vermeersch and Paulissen report on four other sites, Qena and Nazlet Safaha, dating to 50,000 years ago, and Nazlet Khater-2 and Beit Allam, which date to 60,000 years ago (Vermeersch and Paulissen, 1989, p. 36). All of these sites were flint quarries.

At Lion Cave in Swaziland, ancient miners cut a tunnel 25 feet wide, 30 feet deep, and 20 ft high. This tunnel was cut into a cliff face 500 feet tall. This is apparently the oldest known mining operation. The activity has been securely dated to go back at least 43,000 years by carbon 14 and probably goes back even further to 70-110,000 years ago.(Dart and Beaumont, 1971, p. 10; Bednarik, 1992, p. 15; Dart and Beaumont, 1967; Vermeersch and Paulissen, 1989, p. 36). Apparently, the mining was terminated when a 5-ton boulder fell from the roof of the tunnel and blocked the entrance. (Dart and Beaumont, 1967, p. 408)

In the case of this mine, it is even known where the ancient miners "mined" their tools. Dart and Beaumont (1967,p. 408) write:

"Quartz, white quartzites, grey and white dappled quartzite, black indurated shales and greenish cherts were the principal materials used by the miners. These rock types occur mostly on a ridge overlooked by, and about 0.25 miles from, the cavern. The exposures there are patently flaked. Dappled grey and white quartzite exposures occur about a mile and more northwest of the site."

Major mining activity dating back possibly as far back as 110,000 years ago? Just how old is humanity and just how advanced were some of these lost cultures?

 

[the_leander]

2008 news, but not discussed here afaik.

Discovery of 12,000-year-old Temple Complex Could Alter Theory of Human Development

http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/i ... 708a.shtml

Dated at around 9,500 BC, these stones are 5,500 years older than the first cities of Mesopotamia, and 7,000 years older than Stonehenge.

That blows a lot of accepted facts out of the water but what of much, much older human activity?

Subterranean Mining and Religion in Ancient Man

http://home.entouch.net/dmd/mining.htm

[quote:27z6wv40]Nazlet Khater 4 is a site in Upper Egypt between Asyut and Sohag, which dates from between 35,100 to 30,360 years BP. A layer of greenish silts and sands is overlain by a chert-rich layer of Nile gravel. Above this level were three layers containing no chert. The chert-rich layer could be seen in outcrop (place where the rock comes to the surface). These miners apparently had the geological understanding to predict where the flint rich layer would go. They dug a 9-m long, 2-m wide trench as well as 7 vertical shafts to reach the flint layer. This would mean hours of work digging through layers which contained no flint in order to reach the prized flint. What is even more amazing, is what Bednarik (1992, p. 13) says about the miners.

"Some information has been recovered about the people responsible for the quarrying. Numerous lithic artefacts were fashioned from the chert cobbles of the substratum, and they include blades and bifacially trimmed axes. On the summit of a boulder hill 400 m to the north-west, at Nazlet Khater 2 site, two graves were discovered. One contained the outstretched remains of a human, probably a sub-adult male, the other was of a human foetus. The former had been covered with loose aeolian sand and several boulders, some exceeding 0.4 m in diameter. Next to the cranium (an archaic Homo sapiens, op. cit. Fig. 9), a 12 cm-long axe head was found in the grave fill, possessing concave sides for hafting, and matching the axe heads at the nearby mining site in every respect."

According to the definition of archaic Homo sapiens, the miners are not anatomically modern humans (Churchill et al, 1996, p231)!

Could this mining be the result of ancient, Egyptian Dynastic miners? No. The axes found with the miners are not the same type as those found in Dynastic times. Dynastic age graves always bury the body in a contracted position, yet in the burial found at Nazlet Khater 4 the man is laid out in an extended position. And finally, there are no archaic Homo sapiens in ancient Egypt.

But mining in the Nile Valley goes even further back in time. Vermeersch and Paulissen report on four other sites, Qena and Nazlet Safaha, dating to 50,000 years ago, and Nazlet Khater-2 and Beit Allam, which date to 60,000 years ago (Vermeersch and Paulissen, 1989, p. 36). All of these sites were flint quarries.

At Lion Cave in Swaziland, ancient miners cut a tunnel 25 feet wide, 30 feet deep, and 20 ft high. This tunnel was cut into a cliff face 500 feet tall. This is apparently the oldest known mining operation. The activity has been securely dated to go back at least 43,000 years by carbon 14 and probably goes back even further to 70-110,000 years ago.(Dart and Beaumont, 1971, p. 10; Bednarik, 1992, p. 15; Dart and Beaumont, 1967; Vermeersch and Paulissen, 1989, p. 36). Apparently, the mining was terminated when a 5-ton boulder fell from the roof of the tunnel and blocked the entrance. (Dart and Beaumont, 1967, p. 408)

In the case of this mine, it is even known where the ancient miners "mined" their tools. Dart and Beaumont (1967,p. 408) write:

"Quartz, white quartzites, grey and white dappled quartzite, black indurated shales and greenish cherts were the principal materials used by the miners. These rock types occur mostly on a ridge overlooked by, and about 0.25 miles from, the cavern. The exposures there are patently flaked. Dappled grey and white quartzite exposures occur about a mile and more northwest of the site."

Major mining activity dating back possibly as far back as 110,000 years ago? Just how old is humanity and just how advanced were some of these lost cultures?[/quote:27z6wv40]

Depends on how you're defining "humanity" Homo Sapiens is relatively modern in evolutionary terms, first popping up on the scene around 200,000 years ago, however their were also the well known Neanderthals at around 150-200,000 years ago. There were earlier ancestors to Sapiens such as Homo heidelbergensis which may be a common ancestor to both modern man and the now extinct Neanderthals and lived around 600,000 years ago.

As for how advanced, at least in heidelbergensis there is the suggestion that they had rudimentary language, fashioned tools such as spears and perhaps even buried their dead.

 

[Wayne]

I see all this and all I can think is how disappointed I am that the first sign of human intelligence seems to indicate some need for a deity of some sort.

Wayne

 

[faethor]

2008 news, but not discussed here afaik.

Discovery of 12,000-year-old Temple Complex Could Alter Theory of Human Development

http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/i ... 708a.shtml

Dated at around 9,500 BC, these stones are 5,500 years older than the first cities of Mesopotamia, and 7,000 years older than Stonehenge.

That blows a lot of accepted facts out of the water but what of much, much older human activity?

Subterranean Mining and Religion in Ancient Man

One item that might answer your question is the Discovery of 12,000-year-old Temple Complex Could Alter Theory of Human Development

Just how old is humanity and just how advanced were some of these lost cultures?

I don't really see any facts being blown out of the water here. What I see is some modifications on the best working theories we have to date as new facts come to light. Though that's simply science doing it's job. As new evidence comes to light our understanding is increased and our accuracy is increased.

One item that can be used to illustrate the lost knowledge of an old culture is the Greek Antikythera. It had metal workings equivalent to the 14th Century and the mechanisms like this weren't seen until the late 18th Century. I think we can see throughout history that knowledge isn't a straight line. It does get lost and destroyed as cultures die out. Imagine what we could learn if we still had the Library of Alexanderia? This library was destroyed through various wars and of course the Christians destroyed what they didn't like then the Muslims followed up and did the same.

 

[faethor]

I see all this and all I can think is how disappointed I am that the first sign of human intelligence seems to indicate some need for a deity of some sort.

Though I also see it as enlightening. I see it as more evidence that humans are constructed in such a way that they can detect patterns. We're built to find a cause and effect relationship and when we find a pattern is frequent enough we'll assign a cause even if we haven't truly determined a cause. Though this ability is clearly flawed as we detect patterns where none truly exist (example: paradolia).