All,
As expected, the Liang Bua find is leading to the development of a variety of creative cottage (accidental pun?) industries/research endeavours. This last one deals with some of the archaological implications of the recent Flores finds, extensively discussed elsewhere (e.g.,
HERE a sort of basic palaeoanthropological, evolutionary (ad)equation between big brains and certain types of “you-know-them-when-you-see-them” stone tools.
More seriously, I hope for Mark Moore that this is a case of poor reporting.
Cheese triangles shed light on hobbits
Anna Salleh
ABC Science Online - Monday, 31 January 2005
Cheese triangles are helping an Australian researcher to explain how hobbits on Flores could make the stone tools found with their bones.
Archaeology PhD student Mark Moore of the University of New England in Armidale presented his research at the recent Australian Archaeological Association conference.
One of the puzzling facts about the discovery of a new species of hobbit human in Liang Bua cave on Flores announced last year is that the remains were found alongside tools that appear to be as sophisticated as those made by modern humans.
This was a surprise as hobbits have such a small brain.
Moore began analysing tools in the cave before the hobbit remains were found.
The tools dated back around 100,000 years, much earlier than modern humans were believed to be in the area.
"When we started getting the dates back it became very puzzling indeed," he says. "We were thinking these must be modern human tools and that modern humans came into the area much earlier than we originally thought."
Then the researchers found the hobbit remains.
Could hobbits have made tools?
Most archaeologists think that tools are made by the creatures whose bones they are found beside. So far the remains of seven individual hobbits but no modern humans have been found beside tools in deposits older the 11,000 years ago. This suggests that hobbits made the tools.
But some researchers argue the hobbit brain capacity was not big enough to allow the kind of planning and intention involved in producing such sophisticated tools.
Moore uses the example of cutting cheese to demonstrate the type of thinking process involved in how humans make tools.
If you want to make perfect cheese triangles first you have to cut the cheese block diagonally, he says, then you turn one half of the block on its side and slice across it to get regular triangles.
This is an example of hierarchical thinking, which as far as we know is a unique attribute of how modern humans think.
But, says Moore, he has found is possible to make at least one particular type of the tool found alongside the hobbit, called a 'blade', quite incidentally and unintentionally, without hierarchical thinking.
Again, he uses the cheese analogy to explain.
If you were to just start slicing cheese off the block any old way, you would end up with various shaped pieces of cheese but the result would not indicate hierarchical thinking.
He is now interested in checking whether this applies to other types of tools in the cave.
Rethinking the meaning of tools?
If his theory is right, says Moore, it suggests archaeologists need to revise the way they link advanced thinking with stone tools.
Moore says determining the intention of ancient humans is fraught with difficulties but thinks he is being careful.
He has tested his theory by making tools himself in two ways: one with the intention of making a blade, and the other without. But he says this itself presents a problem.
"Since we're modern humans and we're always thinking hierarchically is it possible for him to be randomly flaking without intention?" he says.
"This is where the cheese cutting model is more useful."
In future Moore hopes to test the theory using a computer model, or by getting a bunch of people to successively flake a blade by post. Each person would flake a piece of the stone before posting it to the next, with the idea of minimising intentional flaking.
