List,
I guess, cognitive capacity of Homo erectus and Denisova can only be estimated by artifacts. I guess, from 700,000 years ago, only stone and bone artifacts are found, as wood, leather, and plant fibre rots, except in swamps, where it may be conservated. Conservating swamps, I guess, do rather occur in northern places.
To make a machine consisting of more than one part reqires more cognitive capacity than is needed to make a one-part-tool, like a scraper or a fist chisel. I guess: A bow-and-arrow (consisting of four to five parts) is more complex than a spear (consisting of one to two parts), and a sailboat is even more complex, or at least as complex as a bow-and-arrow.
So I think it would be interesting to know, if in the Philippines stone spearheads, or even stone arrowheads have been found, that can be dated 700,000 years ago. Or if so dated (rhino...) bones also have shown impact marks of these weapons.
Best, Helmut
John - I think a sailboat and navigation requires a completely different cognitive process than a stone tool.
Again - I wonder about the land base 700,000 years ago, whether the waters were lower, whether the lands base was more extensive and whether tides and periodic low rainfalls and so on - permitted land access.
Additionally - what we are talking about, indirectly, is two different types of action. The physical and the cognitive. These hominids might be quite capable with the former, but, with a low 'EG' or image-creation-capacity with the latter.
Edwina
On Sat 18/08/18 10:11 AM , John F Sowa [email protected] sent:
On 8/17/2018 9:36 AM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:
> Interesting. If the time analysis is scientifically correct.
I did a bit more Googling, and I found the original publication
in _Nature_:
Earliest known hominin activity in the Philippines by 709
thousand years ago
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0072-8
But that is just the abstract. I didn't buy the article,
but the National Geographic has more information:
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/05/stone-tools-rhinoceros-luzon-philippines-ancient-hominins-science/
>From the Nat. Geo.: They used several methods to derive the
estimated dates. Not coincidentally, 700 kya is about the
same time for the "Java man" -- Homo erectus in Indonesia.
Stone tools have also been found on various islands around there.
But stone tools in conjunction with a dateable edible is a big plus.
Nobody knows how any of those hominins got to those islands.
They seriously doubt that Homo erectus had sailboats.
John
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