Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Rock engravings made by Homo Naledi ~300k years ago

biorxiv.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 103 posts

Re: Rock engravings made by Homo Naledi ~300k years ago

#71

Post by cmrdporcupine »

irrational wrote: post #64
akiselev wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can't know that for certain! See Lee Berger's announcement video [1] for a discussion. Paraphrasing the slide: There is no evidence of *homo sapiens* use or presence beyond the light zone of the cavern system Cultural context: there are *homo nadeli* graves in the cave system with the drawings Access to the cavern system has not changed and would have been much easier for the smaller *homo nadeli* (Lee Berger ha…

I still don't understand how burials indicate how it was Homo Nadeli who made the marks. All it would take is a single human (maybe some teenagers) wandering down one afternoon on a lark and making the marks.

Having read his "Almost Human" book... these are not caves you casually enter. The passages to get to the Naledi burial chambers are impassable to adult males and most women, and are very deep and far in the cave system. He specifically recruited petite women with caving experience to work on his projects.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rising_Star_Cave

"A portion of the cave, used by the excavation team en route to the Dinaledi Chamber, is called "Superman's Crawl" because most people can fit through only by holding one arm tightly against the body and extending the other above the head, in the manner of Superman in flight"

Or take a look at this map: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/human-evolution/sites/human_evolution/...

Re: Rock engravings made by Homo Naledi ~300k years ago

#72

Post by AndrewKemendo »

betocmn wrote: post #67

A Hominins timeline to help put things in perspective: 7-6 million years ago: Possible divergence of the lineage leading to humans from the lineage leading to chimpanzees and bonobos (our closest living relatives). Ardipithecus kadabba (~5.8-5.2 million years ago) Ardipithecus ramidus (~4.4 million years ago) Australopithecus anamensis (~4.2-3.9 million years ago) Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy) (~3.9-2.9 million y…

Thank you! Always good to see our family tree when talking about the extremely recent transition to sapiens

Re: Rock engravings made by Homo Naledi ~300k years ago

#73

Post by [deleted] »

irrational wrote: post #70
bbor wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plausible but The burials and drawings were made over a long period of time,

That makes it even more likely it could have been humans, doesn’t it? Over a long period of time, probably lots of humans wandered deeper into the cave.

[deleted]

Re: Rock engravings made by Homo Naledi ~300k years ago

#74

Post by tdaltonc »

thegabriele wrote: post #68

What kind of language did they have? The signs could be just signpost for a location "look for the rocks with the straight incisions"...but they would need some way to comunicate that to each others.

Bees can communicate a kind of "map" to other bees, but they don't have anything like a proper language.

I'm not aware of anyone teaching rodents to learn from maps, but I'd bet they could.

Re: Rock engravings made by Homo Naledi ~300k years ago

#76

Post by cmrdporcupine »

famouswaffles wrote: post #45
edgyquant wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you think dehumanization was a prerequisite for slavery.

Dehumanization is a prerequisite for slavery. It just doesn't have to be grounded in "race"

Arguably the specific form of racist dehumanization and invention of race itself came about as ideological justification for an already existing slave practice.

e.g. the Romans kept slaves on a huge scale, but never bothered with a racist ideology to justify it. They just dehumanized almost anyone, their ethical system permitted blatant "might makes right." But the nominally Christian ethical system predominant in our most recent western society required a "reason" why slavery was permissible, and so we got the invention of race.

Re: Rock engravings made by Homo Naledi ~300k years ago

#77

Post by cmrdporcupine »

dheera wrote: post #18

I wonder how society would behave if those homonids were still around today. A lot of society norms are based on our intelligence levels being remarkably approximately equal across all of our species. What if there existed a bunch of beings on Earth that were somewhere in-between a human and a monkey in intelligence, cognitive, and language abilities? Would they go to school and be a part of the economy and job marke…

This whole idea of classifying by intellectual ability, or even thinking we can measure it along some single axis... is going to look mighty quaint once our machines truly and fully surpass us on that axis.

Wouldn't it be nice if Neanderthal, Erectus, Denisovan and Naledi was with us today but we didn't see them as "stupider forms of us" but "intelligent in different way"?

My two border collies are clearly less "intelligent" than me on something like the axis I refer to above. But holy crap do they have better physical / situational awareness; their minds are incredibly sharper than mine for what's happening in terms of motion, sound, smell, etc. and they surely get as much or more pleasure/stimulation out of running through my field after a rabbit or frisbee than I do writing Rust or making comments on hackernews...

I was talking to my son in the car last night about this -- in and around the whole world of "races" (elves, dwarves, etc.) in Tolkien-esque fantasy novels, D&D, Dwarf Fortress, etc. In a way this is almost like a fantastical projection of a world where other Hominin species co-exist.

Our yearning for fantastical elves to live along side us might actually be a feeling of loneliness knowing that we are the only species of our kind left.

Re: Rock engravings made by Homo Naledi ~300k years ago

#78

Post by akiselev »

betocmn wrote: post #67

A Hominins timeline to help put things in perspective: 7-6 million years ago: Possible divergence of the lineage leading to humans from the lineage leading to chimpanzees and bonobos (our closest living relatives). Ardipithecus kadabba (~5.8-5.2 million years ago) Ardipithecus ramidus (~4.4 million years ago) Australopithecus anamensis (~4.2-3.9 million years ago) Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy) (~3.9-2.9 million y…

In addition, a timeline of culture & technology:

    Oldowan industry - simple flaked stone tools (~2.9-1.7 million years ago)
    Acheulean industry - advanced tools like hand axes (~1.7 million - ~160,000 years ago)
    Archaic humans in Southeast Asian islands like Indonesia (~1.8-1 million years ago, dating is a bit uncertain on this one)
    First control of fire (~1 million - ~700,000 years ago)
    First archaic humans living in colder climates like Atapuerca, Spain (~800,000 years ago)
    First wooden spears denoting a change in hunting tech (~400,000 years ago)
    Widespread control of fire (~400,000 years ago)
    ==> First homo sapiens
Disclaimer: "First [...]" means "oldest surviving evidence of [...]". I tried my best to select a realistic middle ground age but each one has error bars of tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of years and there's a lot of overlap in industries.

This list is so incomplete it's not even funny :)

Re: Rock engravings made by Homo Naledi ~300k years ago

#79

Post by idiocrat »

akiselev wrote: post #78
betocmn wrote: post #67

A Hominins timeline to help put things in perspective: 7-6 million years ago: Possible divergence of the lineage leading to humans from the lineage leading to chimpanzees and bonobos (our closest living relatives). Ardipithecus kadabba (~5.8-5.2 million years ago) Ardipithecus ramidus (~4.4 million years ago) Australopithecus anamensis (~4.2-3.9 million years ago) Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy) (~3.9-2.9 million y…

In addition, a timeline of culture & technology: Oldowan industry - simple flaked stone tools (~2.9-1.7 million years ago) Acheulean industry - advanced tools like hand axes (~1.7 million - ~160,000 years ago) Archaic humans in Southeast Asian islands like Indonesia (~1.8-1 million years ago, dating is a bit uncertain on this one) First control of fire (~1 million - ~700,000 years ago) First archaic humans living in…

A thought experiment.

It has been said that if a modern "average" human were transported back in time, it would be difficult for that person to build anything useful, because of the lack of material manufacturing (c.f. "Toaster from Scratch" and "Primitive Technology" channels) and lack of specific knowledge.

So goes my thought experiment. If I were transported 100,000 years back, I would big-scale industrialize the production of soap blocks and then build soap distribution networks over wast lands (the King of Soap). Soap is quite easy to produce with wood ash.

I would also mass-scale press-print porno comics (using wooden plate carvings).

I think these two what defines civilization and will give me a chance for not being killed as a practitioner of witchcraft.

Re: Rock engravings made by Homo Naledi ~300k years ago

#80

Post by f6v »

idiocrat wrote: post #79
akiselev wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition, a timeline of culture & technology: Oldowan industry - simple flaked stone tools (~2.9-1.7 million years ago) Acheulean industry - advanced tools like hand axes (~1.7 million - ~160,000 years ago) Archaic humans in Southeast Asian islands like Indonesia (~1.8-1 million years ago, dating is a bit uncertain on this one) First control of fire (~1 million - ~700,000 years ago) First archaic humans living in…

A thought experiment. It has been said that if a modern "average" human were transported back in time, it would be difficult for that person to build anything useful, because of the lack of material manufacturing (c.f. "Toaster from Scratch" and "Primitive Technology" channels) and lack of specific knowledge. So goes my thought experiment. If I were transported 100,000 years back, I would big-scale industrialize the…

Or you’d just cut your toe on an rock and die (with no medical care).
Post reply on HN