William Atkins
Monday, 17 August 2009 02:31
Science -
Biology
Page 2 of 3
After making such a tool, these ancient peoples attached it to a handle so it could be used to hunt and butcher animals.
The conclusion of their discovery and research is written within the article “
Fire As an Engineering Tool of Early Modern Humans,” in the magazine
Science.
Headed by Dr. Brown, the other researchers involved in the discovery include Curtis W. Marean, Andy I. R. Herries, Zenobia Jacobs, Chantal Tribolo David Braun, David L. Roberts, Michael C. Meyer, Jocelyn Bernatchez
In an associated 8/13/09 article by ScienceNOW Daily News titled “
Early Tools Were Born From Fire,” the scientists (from South Africa, the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, and France, relate a story on the difficulties they were having in recreating the tools these ancient humans were using.
The article explains,
“Kyle Brown … and colleagues were trying to recreate the axes and hafted tools they were finding in the Pinnacle Point caves--a site containing many artifacts of early human activity--to learn more about how they were made. One of the local rocks that these early humans fashioned tools from is silcrete…. But when the researchers tried to recreate the tools, they couldn't quite get it right. ‘We were having a really hard time coming up with [something] that looked like what we were finding at the site,’ Brown says.”
Continuing,
“So the researchers began experimenting with heat treatment. After much trial and error, they found that it took 20 to 40 kilograms of hardwood and almost 30 hours to create the 300°C temperatures in silcrete needed to fashion tools like those seen at Pinnacle Point. Those conditions alone were a good sign that the stone tools were no campfire accident…. ‘It requires a lot of planning,’ Brown says. ‘It's not the kind of thing people would do with an ordinary cooking fire.’ Heating makes the stones easier to flake and shape into blades.”
Page three concludes.
