Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Hang on, isn't this how some horror movies start?

By taking a wrong turn in a dry riverbed in Kenya, scientists discovered a trove of stone tools far older than any ever found before. Nobody knows who made them — or why.

At 3.3 million years old, they push back the record of stone tools by about 700,000 years. More significantly, they are half-a-million years older than any known trace of our own branch of the evolutionary tree.
Well, part of it's obvious: they made them to kill and/or eat something.

And now they'll look for more tools.  Which will lead to remains.  Which might lead to...


Do I still have those silver bullets?



3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why does anyone make tools? To use them. Dumbasses!

When a single sample is that far off the scale, I question the scale.

Firehand said...

From the sound of it, repeated tests were done to try to date them and the results were consistent.

'Course, we also have the example of 'humans only made it to the Americas 'x' years ago'. Which was defended against all challenges until the proof became undeniable.

Maybe we'll find out.

Anonymous said...

If they did multiple tests using the same equipment, all set with the same calibration sample, One would expect they to have a consistent result, even if that result if 700,000 years off the expected norm.

Anything that old, they are just pulling this out of their asses.