Path: ...!feeds.phibee-telecom.net!weretis.net!feeder8.news.weretis.net!newsfeed.CARNet.hr!Iskon!.POSTED!not-for-mail
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 11:12:37 +0100
Organization: Iskon Internet d.d.
Lines: 107
Message-ID: <vmnruk$1i4$1@sunce.iskon.hr>
References: <vm2b16$1m2st$1@dont-email.me> <vm467h$kad$1@sunce.iskon.hr>
 <vmkp17$2t3pe$2@dont-email.me> <vmnrfo$vva$1@sunce.iskon.hr>
NNTP-Posting-Host: 83-131-239-81.adsl.net.t-com.hr
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-Trace: sunce.iskon.hr 1737454356 1604 83.131.239.81 (21 Jan 2025 10:12:36 GMT)
X-Complaints-To: abuse@iskon.hr
NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2025 10:12:36 +0000 (UTC)
User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird
Content-Language: en-US
In-Reply-To: <vmnrfo$vva$1@sunce.iskon.hr>
X-Antivirus: Norton (VPS 250121-0, 21.1.2025.), Outbound message
X-Antivirus-Status: Clean
Bytes: 6573

On 21.1.2025. 11:04, Mario Petrinovic wrote:
> 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).

		BTW, if you think that people today live some very sophisticated 
lifestyle, I assure you, not they don't (at least, I don't, :) ):
https://youtu.be/tPcA_GjWIDo?si=WI_pNmxtxn8Sslbh