Page 28 - ARUBA TODAY

A28 SCIENCE
Tuesday 20 March 2018

Stone tools from Kenya give early glimpse of human behavior

By MALCOLM RITTER in the future," said Brooks.
NEW YORK (AP) — Stone The researchers also report-
tools and other items from ed finding evidence for use
ancient sites in Kenya give of pigments.
a glimpse at the emer- Two rocks appeared to
gence of some key human have been ground and
behaviors, perhaps includ- chopped, evidently to
ing a building of relation- produce a powder of the
ships with distant neighbors, bright red ochre pigment
new research says. they contained. Some
Scientists can't be sure other rocks brought in from
whether the objects were elsewhere contained man-
made by our species, ganese, which has been
Homo sapiens, or some used in other archaeologi-
close relative that's now ex- cal settings as a black pig-
tinct. But at about 320,000 ment.
years old, they're roughly The researchers don't know
the same age or a bit older what the toolmakers may
than the earliest known H. have colored, but in other
sapiens fossils, which ap- settings the use of color
peared in Morocco. is often "something that is
In any case, they show basically advertising that
"foundations of the origin of This image provided by the Smithsonian's Human Origins Program shows artifacts found in south- you're part of a group," as
modern human behavior," ern Kenya's Olorgesailie Basin. with flags or uniforms, Potts
says Richard Potts of the Associated Press said.
Smithsonian Institution, one Experts not connected with
of the researchers report- ington, D.C., and another old tool style by a more ad- The rock was evidently the work called it signifi-
ing the find in three papers author of the papers. vanced one, Potts said. valuable, and so it might cant.
released Thursday by the The newer tool style, known Analysis showed much have been traded, Potts The three papers "lead us
journal Science. from other sites as Middle of the obsidian was from said. towards a more nuanced
The tools are much smaller Stone Age technology, places about 15 miles to He also said the toolmak- understanding of our spe-
and more sophisticated produced smaller stone 30 miles (25 to 50 kilome- ers may have been spurred cies' origins," said Sarah
than the older, teardrop- flakes for uses like scrap- ters) away in five different to create a wide-ranging Wurz of the University of the
shaped stone tools found in ing and points on projec- directions. So that means social network as a hedge Witwatersrand in Johan-
the same area in southern tiles. It required a lot more the toolmakers maintained against the unpredictability nesburg. A key advance
Kenya. Some were made planning to break off those mental maps of where to of water and food supplies, is tying the appearance
of a volcanic rock, obsid- chips to a desired size and go find it, Potts said. caused by shifts in the nat- of the cultural changes to
ian, that didn't come from shape, and so indicates a The volcanic rock was ural environment. evidence of environmen-
the area, meaning the level of mental sophistica- brought in as a raw mate- "Networks are the way that tal changes, such as rapid
toolmakers traveled miles tion, Potts said. The findings rial, and then turned into hunter-gatherers protect wet-dry cycles, she wrote in
to get it. include some small stone the sharp-edged chips. themselves against disaster an email.q
And those excursions must points that were carefully
have led them to encoun- modified at the base so
ter groups of H. sapiens or they could be attached to Century-old shipwreck found
our close evolutionary rela- something like a spear.
them so that they wouldn't they've identified the birth- in Lake Erie, 8 died in sinking
tives. The toolmakers likely Potts stressed that the re-
made connections with searchers don't claim that
be threatened when they place of this tool style, but
showed up on somebody rather that the finds repre- By JOHN SEEWER . etschle, who first looked for
else's turf, the researchers sent what was going on in Associated Press The steam barge, called the barge nearly 30 years
said. at least one part of Africa. TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) — The the Margaret Olwill, was ago, discovered its remains
"I don't think you would The older stone tools are wreckage of a steamer loaded with limestone and last summer. He and others
last very long if you went from 1.2 million to about that sank in Lake Erie over bound for Cleveland when later confirmed the identity
around grabbing some- 500,000 years ago. Then, a century ago and elud- it went down in a storm in of the wreckage, the mu-
one else's obsidian without because of the geology ed shipwreck hunters for 1899, killing eight people seum said.
their permission," said Alison of the sites, nothing is pre- decades has finally been including the captain, his Lake Erie is the shallowest
Brooks, an anthropology served until 320,000 years found off the Ohio shore, wife and their 9-year-old of the Great Lakes and lit-
professor at George Wash- ago, when "we have a according to the National son. tered with shipwrecks from
ington University in Wash- total replacement" of the Museum of the Great Lakes Shipwreck hunter Rob Ru- an era when people and
cargo often traveled by
water.
But its violent storms that
can whip up in a hurry have
taken down hundreds of
schooners, freighters and
steamships over the years.
How many wreckage sites
are below the surface is
not known — estimates
vary from several hundred
to several thousand.q