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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13476 Posts |
 Posted - 06/26/2007 : 19:48:33 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by JEROME DA GNOME
How would one date a stone tool?
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There are several elements used in radiometric dating that are good for certain time periods. Most often, a tool is dated by dating volcanic ash, or other datable minerals from the level of strata that the tool came from. There are also certain assumptions that can be made about strata, previously dated, that the tools were found in, or what the tools were found with. For example, it would be unlikely that a tool found with A. Afarensis actually belonged to that creature. And one way of knowing that is a stone tool has never been found in the same strata as A. Afarensis. So we can pretty much rule out stone tool making dating back as far as 3.5 million years ago.
On the other hand, tools have been found a-plenty with Homo Erectus. So it becomes a matter of dating the site or the strata in which the tool was found. That dates both the hominid and the tools.
I wrote this off the top of my head. I'm sure you can google dating methods easy enough…
Try not to wonder too far into creationist sites while doing that…
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Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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JEROME DA GNOME
BANNED
2418 Posts |
Posted - 06/26/2007 : 19:51:32 [Permalink]
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Kil, UGGGH.
For the last time I do not read creationist sites or literature.
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What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires -- desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way. - Bertrand Russell |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13476 Posts |
Posted - 06/26/2007 : 19:54:00 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by JEROME DA GNOME
Kil, UGGGH.
For the last time I do not read creationist sites or literature.
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I just meant that when you google this stuff, they will come up... |
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 06/27/2007 : 03:07:57 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by JEROME DA GNOME
Originally posted by HalfMooner
Originally posted by JEROME DA GNOME
How would one date a stone tool?
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One method is Obsidian hydration dating. That works with this volcanic glass, by measuring the amount of water that has seeped into it since it was knapped. In other cases, stone tools may be dated by applying the dates given to other material found directly associated, or in the same level of strata. (Thus, a spearhead embedded in a mammoth bone can be accurately dated if the bone can be.)
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Were the stone tools found at this site made from obsidian or found within bones or found in strata?
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We here don't have any of those answers. We're all up in the air about these alleged finds, apparently at several sites in northern Africa. It's not been peer reviewed and published, apparently. We can only answer in generalities about dating technique, as damned little is known about the findings at the sites that lead to the "H. erectus villagers" claim.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 06/27/2007 03:14:17 |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 06/27/2007 : 04:35:39 [Permalink]
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The thing about it is that nomadic peoples are not really all that nomadic. They travel, yes, but it is anything but aimless wandering. They cover a defined territory that reliably produces certain necessities, and indeed luxeries, at given times of the seasonal year. And they defend these territories as if their lives depended upon it, which they do. This not only encourages some pretty bitter, territoral warfare, but commerce as well. Example: should a tribe, for lack of a better word, have a place where a good-quality tool-stone such as obsidian can be easily obtained, they might have traded some for perhaps jerked meat or dried roots, or even spices such as chillies. And they might well have had certain places where these trades are made, again on a seasonal basis.
It is entriely concievable that the described site could be such a place, and be regularly occupied by a varity of peoples over many centuries and even milinia. Which would make it a hell of a lot more interesting than a mere village. If Professor Ziegert and his potassium argon isotopic dating are correct.
Of course, I'm just playing with conjectures, here. Like everyone else, I too, must wait for the science to confirm or deny. I am also hoping that someone finds a midden. That will tell us volumes about the site and the peoples that frequented it.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard
3192 Posts |
Posted - 06/27/2007 : 05:34:04 [Permalink]
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| How would we classify a group which lived on an island and fished as a primary source of food? Just because you dont breed animals and grow crops doesnt mean you cant have hunter/gatherer villages, New Guinians are proof of that. The HGs arent nessisarily nomads, jungles can support small villages without farming/breeding. |
"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History
"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini |
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BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard
3192 Posts |
Posted - 06/27/2007 : 05:43:26 [Permalink]
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http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dating.html
This page has amazing details on dating and strata science, Jerome. I also suggest all you Skeptics review the material as it is quite interesting and can come in quite handy during arguements.
The short answer to your question is that there are many many ways to date things, from studing the chemical makeup of ice cores, tree rings, lake bottom sediment layers, volcanic ash depostits, charcoal in fire pits, elemental half-lifes and so on. These can then be cross referenced with each other, you could determine that the ash layer present in the ice from 50,126 years ago matches the chemical signiture found in the ash which killed the mammoth you are digging out of the ground in Siberia. |
"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History
"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini |
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Original_Intent
SFN Regular
USA
609 Posts |
Posted - 06/27/2007 : 08:09:52 [Permalink]
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Very interesting.....
I often wonder if we will ever know a decent timeframe for things like his, due to massive events leading to migration, societal de-evolution, etc....
I wonder what was buried long ago in the oceans, near the mountains, etc......
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400,000 year old, H. erectus village?
