East of Los Alamos, no lumberjacks. Not in town, wandering the moutains, the stars, the stars.
I forgot to mention a Minor in Chalco lithic, some claim it is a radical break from the past, but the forms continued.
Stone tool use starts with found objects, Le Art de trove. Little survives millions of years, so rocks are the best record. The first tools are defined by context, found next to and in the same fire pit as a skull with the occipital reagion broken out, with corsponding wear marks on the stone, an old CSI.
The hand ax, a stone that fit the hand, with a protruding edge, is the most common. It does not have a cutting edge, but could deliver a skull crushing blow. In rare sites, for we know little, piles of baseball size stones were found next to fire pits. It shows early Hominids lived in groups, and could throw stones to drive away something looking for lunch.
This points to forethought, gathering the right stones for throwing, and piling them where they would be waiting, then training the group in combined attack.
Most sites have only hand axes. What you would expect from smaller fast moving groups that searched far for food. The number of axes found is large for the population. Forgetfullness, fleeing, was eaten, found better, show that tools were gathered, used, discarded.
The first worked stones are made from river rounded large pebbles, drop shaped, and the small end has three large flakes removed, leaving a triangular point. Technology had begun.
Through learning, which is doubtful, or by population replacement, more likely, found tool hominids are replaced by tool making hominids. Interesting cave sites show the tools, and ten skulls, trophies, with the occipital reagion broken out so the brain could be eaten, without destroying the mount.
Hunger leads to anger, which leads to fighting, then killing, then lunch. It is most likely that this was within the group, as fighting with other groups would show frontal wounds, but all of the cave skulls were killed from the rear. Long bones found have been split to extract the marrow.
Another common head wound exactly fits the knob of a human thigh bone. This was a clever move, for a brute with a hand ax can be taken out by the longer reach and faster attack of a thigh bone. Having been split long ways for marrow, they left several daggers of bone. Some show signs of being rubbed on stone to make them smoother, and sharper.
Stabbing weapons leave no trace that lasts. The era lasts so long, that geology is needed to date sites, for they all look alike over a million years or more. It was more of a genetic trait than a technology. Whatever it was, several lines of hominids vanish from the record.
The next development is the biface, two big chips removed, leaving a long cutting edge. Where the triangeler point could put force on a point, if it could make solid contact, a biface would make a deep cut with only a glancing blow. One good cut to the ax arm, to the bone, and the rest was easy.
From the way the sites radiate, there was no time for learning, the biface people ate the triface people. Soon you find total replacement. Again genetic rather than techno, for it continues unchanged and identical for a million years.
There is evidence for spear use. Healed injuries are consistant with using the spear as a stabing weapon, charging, and thrusting with the weight of the body behind it, then getting kicked, fallen on, ususl wounds suffered by close combat hunters and Rodeo cowboys, upper body injuries. Again consistant with waiting in a tree, on a rock, and leaping on the back of an animal.
Most skulls show they died from a blow to the back of the head. Most human bones show butchering marks. Compared to other species bones found at sites, humans were a major food source.
Groups were small, ten or twelve, and moved often. Their relationship with other groups was avoid, kill and eat, be killed and eaten by. All together there were perhaps five hundred groups, the species numbered around five thousand.
A tipical group would be a couple, their children, and their children. A group would have two or three hunters, the rest being women and children. In the company of their grandfather, father, brothers, all of the females were normally pregnant. It was a close family, and a narrow family tree.
Due to conflicts with other groups, the dangers of hunting, and each other, thirty was very old. Females produced children till they died. Somewhere around eight comparing time of fertility, sixteen years.
When food supplies were good, the group could go from ten to thirty in a generation, but food supply rarely stays good for long. The did have one food supply at hand.
Larger groups hunted smaller groups. First for food, and control of the area food supply, and as their numbers increased, and the neighbors had been eaten, looked to each other. Hunger makes it's own rules.
As only groups of thirty survived, knocking off the neighbors became harder. Head on they reduced each other, and became easy prey for other groups. They needed an edge.
Inbreeding loses genes at every recombination, one of those was for body fur. Somewhere in this mist of time smooth skinned girls are born, and not eaten. Like today, girls that walk around naked get attention.
One of them was so hot, that she became the Eve, we are all of her line.
Smooth skin had been seen, but she had longer head hair too. By the time she was a teenage heart throb, she knew well how men felt about her, and as youth and beauty are short, was not waiting for the breeding season. None of the men in her cave had, when she was just a girl, and being given some extra food, she put on a few pounds, and became even hotter.
She was just a little girl, no children yet, and her choices were, feel bad about being the center of interest, resist, or as she had been doing it for as long as she could remember, and showed no signs of wearing out, to go with it, for her men, grandpa, dad, brothers, all brought her extra food.
Let the old hag and the hairy girls cook, gather wood, berries, nuts, birds eggs, she had deal. While most laid around and waited to see what would happen to them, then just laid there, she took the show on the road. She knew how to work a crowd, developed a walk that had gotten her jumped many times, danced around the fire showing wiggles that reminded men of other things, and found that she was a great bull rider, and could ride a half dozen into exhaustion.
It was not long till the men were saying, "Not tonight dear, I have a headache."
As the founder of our line, her and everything that carried a hose, I reconize an AS Nympho obsession. She was a good mother, took very good care of her daughters, and still getting extra food, fed them well, taught them to dance as soon as they could stand, and showered them with attention, touchs, petting, and as kissing evolved from mothers chewing food, and mouth to mouth transfer, with some tongue games thrown in, they grew to crave attention, touching, petting, and something in their mouth.
Don't look at me that way, it's just biology. Her daughters did grow up, had a long running act, and produced generation three. In a short period of time, they were the only female line. Running out of hose at home, they too were hunters. They spread as fast as the biface.
It was all becoming one big family, relations between groups improved. Girls had invented trade goods. It is the oldest Profession, and it still pays well.
There were some problem children. Hairy, brutish, who longed for the good old days. There is nothing wrong with killing and eating people, but there are rules to the game. They were killing musicians, because they were hunters, and the band missed them. They could play thigh bones like no one else.
Musicians were a technological elite. With skulls, thigh bones, a turtle shell, a stick, hair woven to string, they brought the sound from things, then as a group, they mixed, practiced, and backed up the dancing girls. They got a cut of the extra food, and stuff.
They were gracile, long limbs, thinner, smooth skinned. They did get bullied by the short, broad, hairy. A talent for making musical instruments, joining two things with hair, turned into a light biface, small, for the brutes prided themselves on how big a rock they could swing, so they saw no threat. The litttle scraper was nothing, just some egghead dodad, not a real mans rock.
Musicans knew which woods rang, carried sound, resinated, and the little scraper was attached to the headstock. The band sat on one side of the cave, the girls danced on the other, the audience sat in the middle. After the opening acts came the main attraction, and she was. Hot, Fresh, and had a wiggle that caused drooling. She was not your strings kind of girl, she was percussion!
As she reached the middle of her act, the slackjawed audience drooled, whopped, grunted, and did not even hear as the string section came through, using their hafted axes, to kill them all.
The feast was awsome, no human is worthless, you can make a great drum from the hide. Musicians and dancing girls traveled from camp to camp, ate well, made more drums, and technologyy was born in the late Paleolithic. It was late for the hairy grunters, as in, the late hairy grunters.
In only a few generations there were only musicians and dancing girls. As everyone had been moving north in a warming period, they followed, ate well, and when there was no more free lunch, settled down and started a rocking club called the Mesolithic.
That story is for another time children, now off to bed, and sweet dreams, go now, that's good.
26 Feb 2007, 9:31 am
Has some serious deep meaning to me. I think that's what some of the greatest teachers that ever walked were talking about. Worst kept secret in the world. It's just to simple for most to see.
Straw hats are amazing that they can shade and actually cool the head. I liked to vary my hats and found some rather odd ones, almost trying to catch the mood of my day. The only problem with your story is, I still tear the branches from the trees and beat the ground. Until I find my center, again. Yup, life on the edge.
