from Hacker News

Archaeologists in China Discover the Oldest Stone Tools Outside Africa

by montrose on 7/13/18, 4:06 PM with 24 comments

  • by victor106 on 7/14/18, 11:34 PM

    TIL From the article “To determine the age of the tools, the researchers took advantage of the planet’s changing magnetic field.

    From time to time, Earth’s magnetic field flips, turning north to south. Magnetic minerals in the soil and ocean are pushed into alignment with the field; when they are trapped in rocks, they still point in the telltale direction.

    Geophysicists have precisely determined the timing of these magnetic flips, which have taken place at the same time all around the world. It’s a useful way to date the material found in layers of rock.”

  • by tomlock on 7/14/18, 11:59 PM

    As I understand it there's a strong belief amongst Chinese nationalists that the Chinese diverged early from other humans. It makes me suspicious of this announcement, as it may be playing to those beliefs. However, I'm not sure it is untrue, doesn't bother me either way.

  • by rossdavidh on 7/14/18, 10:28 PM

    So, if we looked at all of the "oldest yet found" discoveries (that held up to later scrutiny), and plotted their date vs. the date they were found, would we see it asymptotically approaching some (presumably actual true) value? A job for an enterprising data scientist/archaeologist out there.

  • by njarboe on 7/15/18, 4:02 AM

    The original Nature article published July 11[1].

    [1]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0299-4

  • by ggm on 7/14/18, 9:57 PM

    The 'out of africa' story gets more and more hard to sustain the longer people look around for other stories in the emergence of modern humans. Yes, the apes is out of africa. And then? it gets really complicated really fast.

    Also, reminded of the endless jokes about who is more advanced from what archeologists find in their own country: Americans find copper wire: invented primitive networks. Russians find Glass threads: invented optical networks. Irish dig up a bog and find nothing: invented wifi!