This is interesting especially in how it might have a bearing on
the presence of cooked foods in the paleolithic diet, a topic
also current in the Paleodiet Symposium.

Todd Moody
[log in to unmask]

--------------------------------------------------------------

New Scientist, 14 March 1998

"Ancient mariners; Early humans were much smarter than we
suspected."

The new findings will add fuel to a long standing debate about
human origins. A common view, known as the "Out of Africa"
hypothesis, is that modern humans, H.sapiens, evolved from H.
erectus in Africa in the past 150 000 years.

Now it seems that our ancestors made organized journeys more that
700 000 years earlier than previously thought - and they probably
used language to coordinate their efforts!  This surprising new
theory comes from paleontologist Mike Morwood and his colleagues
at the University of New England. It is the result of an
intriguing finding during their exploration of an ancient lake
bed at Mata Merge on the island of Flores, about 500 km east of
Bali. There, in a sandstone layer sandwiched between two deposits
of volcanic ash, they found more than a dozen stone tools!
Analysis showed that at least four were probably used for
processing plant material.

Stone tools cannot be dated directly, so their age has to be
inferred from nearby sediments. A technique called fission track
dating shoved that layers of volcanic ash surrounding the tools
were between 800 000 and 880 000 years old. Fossil plants and
animals found near the tools dated from the same period.

Homo erectus was clearly not just a glorified chimp, says
Morwood. They hunted animals with well-crafted spears. We now
believe that they made sea crossings to Flores and other
Indonesian islands. The evidence suggests that the cognitive
capabilities of Homo erectus may be due  for reappraisal! If H.
erectus acted like humans, they probably were our ancestors.