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Very old, very sophisticated tools found in India

washingtonpost.com

31–40 of 77 posts

Re: Very old, very sophisticated tools found in India

#32

This is in Tamil Nadu. As usual, Central Government will stop excavation like they did in Keeladi, because the site was from Sangam Era.

Why would the Central Government want to stop excavation because its from the Sangam Era?

They won't. Like USA, we have our own gaggle of extreme conspiracy theorists who are always paranoid that the Central Government is a dictator that wants to reduce states to powerless puppets.

Re: Very old, very sophisticated tools found in India

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would the Central Government want to stop excavation because its from the Sangam Era?

They won't. Like USA, we have our own gaggle of extreme conspiracy theorists who are always paranoid that the Central Government is a dictator that wants to reduce states to powerless puppets.

But what's with the Sangam Era that (some people thinks) the gov is trying to cover?

Re: Very old, very sophisticated tools found in India

#35
post #13

Ah, when I read "very sophisticated" I was hoping to see something more than images of few stones. To clarify: for a few days in my pre-adolescent years in India, I had gotten into a quirky habit of picking chipped-stones lying around (which I imagined could be from pre-historic ages). Finding some really interesting shapes wasn't all that difficult. I'm genuinely curious about how archeologists/anthropologists come…

Perhaps there are signs of knapping on the pieces? I would surmise such signs may not be obvious to a layman, but may be to an archaeologist.

they seem to have the same doubts as the layman

"Alison Brooks, a paleoanthropologist at George Washington University, said she's not convinced that the smaller tools described by Pappu and her colleagues are true Levallois points.

“It's still basically a single point in a giant continent,” she added — more discoveries are required to give context to this find"

Re: Very old, very sophisticated tools found in India

#36
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They won't. Like USA, we have our own gaggle of extreme conspiracy theorists who are always paranoid that the Central Government is a dictator that wants to reduce states to powerless puppets.

But what's with the Sangam Era that (some people thinks) the gov is trying to cover?

If I had to guess the conspiracy is that Central government does not want to excavate sites that prove that Sangam culture was greater and earlier than the Northern Indian culture.

Re: Very old, very sophisticated tools found in India

#37
post #33

"spans 385,000 to 172,000 years ago (plus or minus about 50,000 years on either end)" do journalists now get paid by word?

This sounds like a perfectly natural description of the estimated date range to me. Is there some significantly more efficient way of phrasing it that I'm overlooking? (Without resorting to scientific ± notation, at least?)

Re: Very old, very sophisticated tools found in India

#38
post #13

Ah, when I read "very sophisticated" I was hoping to see something more than images of few stones. To clarify: for a few days in my pre-adolescent years in India, I had gotten into a quirky habit of picking chipped-stones lying around (which I imagined could be from pre-historic ages). Finding some really interesting shapes wasn't all that difficult. I'm genuinely curious about how archeologists/anthropologists come…

There's something called a Conchoidal fracture, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conchoidal_fracture ... the presence of which is technically diagnostic of material that's been artificially manipulated.

Re: Very old, very sophisticated tools found in India

#39

Did that find seem awfully pat? A neat layering of all know tool types found in one site. Its what you'd find if somebody was constructing a myth. Is this actually atypical? What other sites worldwide compare with this complete history in one plot?

It's pretty typical for this type of site, where it naturally harbors the resources for building tools and being inhabited. It's a somewhat unusual site in that the water brings a lot of quartz and other materials used for tool making.

Re: Very old, very sophisticated tools found in India

#40
post #38
post #13

Ah, when I read "very sophisticated" I was hoping to see something more than images of few stones. To clarify: for a few days in my pre-adolescent years in India, I had gotten into a quirky habit of picking chipped-stones lying around (which I imagined could be from pre-historic ages). Finding some really interesting shapes wasn't all that difficult. I'm genuinely curious about how archeologists/anthropologists come…

There's something called a Conchoidal fracture, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conchoidal_fracture ... the presence of which is technically diagnostic of material that's been artificially manipulated.

Link didn't work for me, this did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conchoidal_fracture
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