"This discovery dramatically shifts the known time frame of a game-changing behavior for our ancestors," Alemseged remarked in a prepared statement. "Tool use fundamentally altered the way our early ancestors interacted with nature, allowing them to eat new types of food and exploit new territories. It also led to tool-making—a critical step in our evolutionary path that eventually enabled such advanced technologies as airplanes, MRI machines and iPhones."

11 Comments

1. 1. gnomonklater 08:04 AM 8/12/10

   Watch the left hand. Keep watching the left hand. What crap! This is not science. These people decided that they wanted to find older remains that PROVE hominids were using tools earlier than previously thought, and LO, they found it. Amazing! Paleo-Anthropology has now been reduced to the same guessing game as weathermen. They might be cut marks, so they are cut marks. Losing my faith in anthropologists. I thought they were smarter than that.

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2. 2. candide in reply to gnomonklater 09:16 AM 8/12/10

   "Losing my faith in anthropologists" - and gaining faith in what , the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
   
   " These people decided that they wanted to find older remains that PROVE hominids were using tools earlier than previously thought..." so, you come out against their science, but rely on your ability to read minds?
   
   If you have objections try to be specific and scientific in your objections, otherwise you just lose credibility.

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3. 3. SpoonmanWoS in reply to gnomonklater 02:29 PM 8/12/10

   @gnomonklater: yup, 'cause those cut marks look totally natural. Obviously must've been an animal.
   
   

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4. 4. Extremophile 04:14 PM 8/12/10

   "Cut marks" do not prove butchering and meat eating.
   
   If they are true cut marks, all they prove is cutting. We have no idea why Australopithecus has done this cutting - if they really did, anyway.

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5. 5. SpoonmanWoS in reply to Extremophile 09:42 PM 8/12/10

   @Extremophile: well, then, you completely missed the point of the article, didn't you?

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6. 6. Pierre-Francois PUECH 11:44 AM 8/13/10

   Paleo-Anthropology, specialy in analysing V-shaped grooves on bone surface, must not confuse component of prove with a definite prove. In order to reconstruct past hominid activity at a site it is crucially important to have a context : P.F. Puech and R. Pant. BLUEPRINT TO STUDY THE FOOD OF FOSSIL MAN
   http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/bmsap_0037-8984_1980_num_7_1_3777

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7. 7. Extremophile 04:05 AM 8/15/10

   @SponnmanWoS,
   
   which point have I missed?
   
   Paleo-Anthropologists have conditioned themselves to presume hunting/butchering in every little thing they find.
   
   This presumption has only been validated by mutual agreement between researchers. Looking at fossil findings, there is no clear evidence to support this presumption, especially if you take a strictly Darwinian perspective.
   
   The article is just another example for this behavior.

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8. 8. Extremophile in reply to Pierre-Francois PUECH 02:52 AM 8/17/10

   Pierre,
   
   is there somewhere an English version of this article available?

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9. 9. Neptunerover 10:59 PM 9/6/10

   Sorry, no smoking Ginsu here.
   
   There is no evidence here of any tool use for cutting meat.
   
   A couple of cuts does not evidence butchering. If somebody had butchered that leg (or whatever it is), why would there be only those two little parallel cuts?
   
   Anyway, and FIRST off, what is the proof that there was meat on the bones when the cuts were made? (none)
   
   So, how do we know a tool was used on the bone rather than the bone being rubbed or banged against the sharp edge of a rock or something? It could just be a case of some bored, idle hands grabbing the nearest thing (an old dried bone) and hitting it against the next nearest thing (the edge of a sharp rock).
   
   When looking for something in particular, it can be easy to make the evidence fit whatever story you're after. I saw the marks on those bones, and I thought to myself, "yes, I've made marks like that on plenty of sticks while outdoors."
   

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10. 10. Pierre Francois Puech in reply to Extremophile 10:52 AM 9/30/10

    additional references:
    -The Diet of Early Man: Evidence From Abrasion of Teeth and Tools. Current Anthropology 20, 590-592
    ___http://independent.academia.edu/pfpuech/Papers/252579/Tooth-Microwear-and-Dietary-Patterns-In-Early-Hominids-From-Laetoli--Hadar-and-Olduvai
    ---[PDF] 4. Dental microwear and Paleoanthropology: Cautions and possibilities - 16:15 - [ Traduire cette page ]
    Format de fichier: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Afficher
    de MF TEAFORD - 2007 - Cité 4 fois - Autres articles
    Keywords: dental microwear, diet, australopithecines, primates, ..... 1986a; Puech et al., 1986; Radlanski and. Jäger, 1989; Teaford and Runestad, 1992; ...
    norwalk.bluerange.se/ark/files/eventfile215.pdf
    ----pfpuech@yahoo.fr

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11. 11. Happy Hal 09:31 PM 3/13/13

    Are you sure those cuts were not made by Velociraptors, which had a specialized claw just for that purpose?

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