Archaeologica.org

From Haaretz in Israel.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/941174.html

According to University of Haifa researchers, these activities show that as early as the middle period of the Early Stone Age - about a quarter of a million years ago - people with modern hunting capabilities lived in the Carmel region.

The ability to hunt large animals, choose the most suitable cuts of meat for consumption and grill them is behavior that serves to differentiate between Homo sapiens and earlier forms of human life.

It is possible that one of the most ancient testimonies to the existence of a human population with modern behavior patterns has been found in the Misliya caves of the Carmel.

Interesting. Trying to define modern "humans" by behavior instead of bones.

I've been to Carmel. Californians have always been hard to classify.

Minimalist wrote:
The ability to hunt large animals, choose the most suitable cuts of meat for consumption and grill them is behavior that serves to differentiate between Homo sapiens and earlier forms of human life.

Large animals also have the ability to hunt other large animals and know which bits of the carcass are best and to eat first. The only way the homo sapien is different in this case is that he knows how to use a barbecue.

I don't think how a being selects and eats his meat is a very good definition of what makes humans different from animals. It tells us more about the writer of the piece than about mankind in general. Was it homo simpson?

Hey, hey! I'll have you know that I'm pretty handy with a barbeque.

A few years ago there were some messy pictures the body of a hiker in Alaska that got attacked by a really big Grizzly bear.
The only thing eaten was both legs, from the knee to the waist.
No sign of a fire.

kbs2244 wrote:A few years ago there were some messy pictures the body of a hiker in Alaska that got attacked by a really big Grizzly bear.
The only thing eaten was both legs, from the knee to the waist.
No sign of a fire.

See, even a grizzly bear knows how to select a nice piece of loin!

That's why bears have never ruled the world.

kbs2244 wrote:A few years ago there were some messy pictures the body of a hiker in Alaska that got attacked by a really big Grizzly bear.
The only thing eaten was both legs, from the knee to the waist.
No sign of a fire.

His Zippo had run out of lighter fluid?

The ability to hunt large animals, choose the most suitable cuts of meat for consumption and grill them is behavior that serves to differentiate between Homo sapiens and earlier forms of human life.

The remains found at the Misliya cave include numerous flint tools such as knives, scraping instruments, sharp points and tools for working with meat.

The report demonstrates advanced cognition, something animals do not possess. These people knew what they were going to hunt, prepared themselves with tools in advance, and probably were planning the barbecue as soon as the kill hit the ground. Even though my daughter's pug plays a mean game of tug-o-war with his leash, when I ask him to make a tool out of it he still gives me a blank stare. Then again, my teen daughter gives me the same stare every so often, so you might have a point.

I've just watched a lioness on the telly bring down a wilderbeest as it crossed a river. The lioness was part of a pack that was waiting for the wilderbeest to cross, as they do at that point of the river every year - and every year the lions are waiting for them.

So I'd say that was a planned hunt by beings that were using their cognitive processes and working in cooperation with one another.

All that was missing was the barbecue - but lions like their meat raw. Maybe if they didn't, they'd have invented fire!

The lioness was part of a pack that was waiting for the wilderbeest to cross, as they do at that point of the river every year

It could also be construed as poor wildebeest leadership, too.

You know....

"Uh...fellahs....every year we cross the river at the same spot and a lot of us get killed because the lions are waiting for us. Maybe we should try to cross somewhere else this year? No? Okay."

Very funny!

But it's a bit like love, isn't it? A triumph of hope over freaking certainty! Gets us every time!

Apt analogy.

And why is it that man's use of tools is always cited as one of the factors that makes him superior to animals.

Man has to use tools to catch, kill and consume his prey because he is so physically weak. He is not as fast and as agile as a lion. His teeth are not strong enough to kill his prey with just one bite of its jugular. And he needs knives to cut up his kill afterwards into tiny chunks so that he can consume it.

A lion doesn't need any of these things. Otherwise, he might have invented them. Who knows?

The longer man goes on not killing his prey with his bare hands but buying bits of it, shrink-wrapped, in supermarkets, the weaker he becomes. He is handicapping himself and as he does so, he has to invent more or better crutches ('tools'). Then he sits around at barbecues bragging that he is superior to the animals.

Minimalist wrote:Hey, hey! I'll have you know that I'm pretty handy with a barbeque.

Funnily enough, I was just the other day thinking I haven't seen much of your extensive catalogue of esoteric emoticons recently. Good to see you've still got it, Min.