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From: Mario Petrinovic <mario.petrinovic1@zg.htnet.hr>
Newsgroups: sci.anthropology.paleo
Subject: Re: Starch-rich plant foods 780,000 y ago: Evidence from Acheulian
 percussive stone tools
Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2025 11:04:41 +0100
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On 20.1.2025. 7:04, Primum Sapienti wrote:
> Mario Petrinovic wrote:
>> On 13.1.2025. 7:14, Primum Sapienti wrote:
>>>
>>> https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2418661121
>>>
>>> Significance
>>> Despite their potential implications for
>>> hominin diet, cognition, and behavior,
>>> only rarely have plants been considered
>>> as drivers of human evolution, in part
>>> because they are less archaeologically
>>> visible. We report the discovery of
>>> diverse taxa of starch grains, extracted
>>> from basalt percussive tools found at the
>>> early Middle Pleistocene site of Gesher
>>> Benot Ya’aqov. These include acorns,
>>> grass grains, water chestnuts, yellow
>>> water lily rhizomes, and legume seeds. The
>>> diverse plant foods vary in ecological
>>> niches, seasonality, and gathering and
>>> processing modes. Our results further
>>> confirm the importance of plant foods in
>>> our evolutionary history and highlight the
>>> development of complex food-related
>>> behaviors.
>>>
>>> Abstract
>>> In contrast to animal foods, wild plants
>>> often require long, multistep processing
>>> techniques that involve significant
>>> cognitive skills and advanced toolkits to
>>> perform. These costs are thought to have
>>> hindered how hominins used these foods
>>> and delayed their adoption into our diets.
>>> Through the analysis of starch grains
>>> preserved on basalt anvils and percussors,
>>> we demonstrate that a wide variety of
>>> plants were processed by Middle Pleistocene
>>> hominins at the site of Gesher Benot
>>> Ya’aqov in Israel, at least 780,000 y ago.
>>> These results further indicate the advanced
>>> cognitive abilities of our early ancestors,
>>> including their ability to collect plants
>>> from varying distances and from a wide range
>>> of habitats and to mechanically process them
>>> using percussive tools.
>>
>>          So, agriculture is only 10,000 years old? Bloody idiots.
>>          Yes, 2 million years ago humans were just as smart as today's 
>> humans. What made today's civilization is predominantly ground stone 
>> technology, which allowed for hotter fire (because with stone axes you 
>> could cut tree trunks. No, it wasn't the "divine spark", or any 
>> similar idea that comes out of Vatican.
> 
> This is not agriculture nor even a precursor to
> it. It's still about gathering.
> 
> 
> "We suggest that the characteristics of the
> starches and their association with the
> percussive tools provide direct evidence for
> plant food processing. The variety of targeted
> plants shed light on other issues related to
> hominin evolution and behavior, including
> seasonal round, diet, and the development of
> technologies related to the gathering and
> processing of plant foods."
> 
> If hominids at 2mya were just as smart as humans
> today then they would have had cities and such

		Not 2 million years ago, but 500 kya for sure. I mean, you will not 
say that people in Africa are less smart than normal people, and they 
still don't have cities, they live in tribes, with villages. Aborigines 
in Australia also. See what happened in Tasmania.
		When you gather food, you don't process it, you eat it immediately. 
You think that they would gather apples, and not eat them? Why would 
they do that? If they are hungry, they would go and eat the apples, and 
leave the rest of it on trees. If you pick up apples and you don't eat 
them, they will rotten. If you collect food, you have to have means to 
store it. Woven plant basket would do, but you cannot transport this, 
you have to have sedentary lifestyle for that. If you have sedentary 
lifestyle, you have villages. Cities are different beasts, they are for 
trade. We, definitely, traded for salt, that's true, whether this needs 
cities, I am not sure? But, by 300 kya we definitely had very developed 
societies, with abundant hematite going around. For this you need to 
have mines. You don't open a mine if you already don't have rich market 
for hematite. And all this was in place by 300 kya, which made Homo 
sapiens. And sickles appear 500 kya, so this is a logical gradual 
progression, developed seed agriculture by 500 kya, hematite (hence, 
metal) market by 300 kya.
		And not only that, but we had people living in the north (Europe) 800 
kya. What are people doing there? Well, take a look at recent past, we 
had people strolling over Canada, north of the USA. For what? For fur 
trade, for god's sake. For fur trade you also need to have developed 
market, and you need to have trading posts.
		How you are imagining people lived 2 mya, going on around like flies 
without a head, completely stupid and unaware of anything? This is 
completely unrealistic view. Yes, they had brains, you now. And the fact 
that those brains were small doesn't prove that they were stupid, you 
should learn that by now (H.naledi, H.floresiensis).