November 16th, 2015: What's That You Axe

Looks like a rock but I don’t know, mind if I axe? Yes, it is. Is what? Axe. I already did!

We’ve heard too many stories about GPS units sending drivers down railroad tracks, around parking lots, and up the creek. This time it sent a 2 archeologists the wrong way along a dead end dry creek bed. But they were men so when they reached end instead of admitting they were in the wrong place or asking directions, they jumped out echoing, we cool, we cool, and started looking at rocks. The previously rushing water had unearthed some rocks the lost patrol recognized as hand tooled. They dug up more, but it took 2 years to verify the age of the soil they were in.



It doesn’t look very special, just a dirty rock, but it’s a hand axe, held in the hand with no handle. It was chipped and flaked into a cutting tool by somebody other than Mother Nature. We’ve found lots of stone tools made by the ancestors of everyone not descended from Noah & Co. The oldest of the stone tools were made around 2.6 million years back, by our Oldowan uncles.
But this dirty axe head was fashioned 700,000 years before that. Yup, 3.3 millionish years ago, somebody made this and a bunch of other stone tools, in Kenya. They don't know who, or what, the toolmakers were... yet.

Funny thing about science, everything they know is true, it’s actual, everything is satisfactual. But better check back tomorrow.
Link

I guess after you've studied this stuff for a while, you just see the important bits and are able to spot a hand worked rock with ease.

I see a jagged rock. Doesn't look tooled to me. Is it that flake on the left?

Damifino, being an archeologist is haaaaaaaaard.

Quote:

Originally Posted by glatt Is it that flake on the left?