10 ms·

Someone in the Kalahari Collected Crystals 105,000 Years Ago

126 points by wombatmobile 6y ago

seneca 6y ago
They found a buried crystal cache. The sediment they were in dates to 105k years ago. I don't have access to the journal the actual paper is published in. Does anyone know how they establish that they were gathered at that time and not just more recently buried? This article is light on details.
- jph 6y ago
  Article: We found 22 white and well-formed calcite crystals brought to the site 105,000 years ago. We determined this using a method called "optically stimulated luminescence", which dates sediments the crystals were excavated from. Our analysis indicates the crystals were not introduced into the deposits via natural processes, but rather represent a small cache of deliberately collected objects. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optically_stimulated_luminescence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optically_stimulated_luminesce...
  - seneca 6y ago
    Yes, I read the article. It specifically says the sediment was dated. I'm just curious how they're certain the placement of the crystals dates to the same time.
    - AlotOfReading 6y ago
      This dating method basically dates the last time the sediments were directly exposed to ionizing radiation (i.e. sunlight). The key here is that it sets a minimum age. Things can be older and have their "clocks reset", but the decay constant is fixed, so we can always determine the last time the object or sediment was exposed. There are a couple minor issues with it, but it's better (and sometimes cheaper!) than radioisotope dating. You can be pretty confident in OSL/TL dates more than a couple thousand years old.
- Igelau 6y ago
  Not an archaeologist, but if you're digging in a 105k year old sediment layer and none of the layers above it were disturbed, I'd say it's a pretty safe bet the stuff in it is also 105k years old.
  - seneca 6y ago
    I suppose you must be right. I'm just wondering if there's some method they use to tell the difference between "this was left here 105k years ago" and "someone dug a hole here 50k years ago and buried them". Is it just as simple as "it doesn't look like it was ever dug up"? I have no clue how this stuff works.
    - klyrs 6y ago
      If you dig a hole, you puncture layers of sediment. Do it carefully, and you'll be able to see those layers of sediment on the walls of the hole. But the dirt you extract is mixed, and homogenized in the process. Fill in the hole, and the fill won't have nicely stratified layers. If somebody carefully digs in the same place 1000 years later, a cross section will reveal a homogeneous plug amid layers of strata. They'll be able to date when you dug the hole by looking at the layers above that homogeneous plug Fun thought: archaeologists 10k years from now unearthing today's digs, finding the traces of our careful destruction of ancient evidence...
  - datavirtue 6y ago
    Archaeologists are very good at dating finds based on a range of different testing methods. In this case they used strata and an examination of the crystal's surface...at the very least.
- adolph 6y ago
  We excavated three areas of the shelter (4.75 m2 in total) and reached a maximum depth of 1.7 m, which revealed a sequence of stratified Middle Stone Age and Later Stone Age deposits Single-grain optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating of quartz from each of the three stratigraphic aggregates provided in-sequence dates with 1σ errors of 14.8 ± 0.8 ka (dark brown gravelly silt), 30.9 ± 1.8 ka (orange ashy silt) and 105.3 ± 3.7 ka (DBSR) (weighted mean, n = 3). Several lines of evidence provide support for an anthropogenic origin of the OES. First, the fragments occur within a well-preserved rockshelter context and are in direct association with many other traces of human activity (Extended Data Fig. 5). Second, the OES fragments show evidence of having been burned. Over 80% (n = 34) of the OES fragments display red colouration (Fig. 2, Supplementary Data), which reflects exposure to temperatures of 300–350 °C. Third, humans were the primary agents of accumulation for the faunal assemblage at GHN and there is no evidence for the presence of hyenas or other animals that consume ostrich eggs. The identifiable fraction of zooarchaeological material from the DBSR (n = 467) is dominated by remains of ungulates and tortoises (Table 1, Supplementary Data). Taphonomic analysis demonstrates a high frequency of anthropogenic percussion marks and cut marks (Table 1), and most of the faunal specimens show evidence of moderate burning.
  - seneca 6y ago
    Thanks for the further info.
drittich 6y ago
There is a short video showing the site here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKYo1XiyVWU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKYo1XiyVWU
- wombatmobile 6y ago
  It looks like Australia, or Arizona.
Igelau 6y ago
As soon as the crystals were removed, a vaguely humanoid cloud rose from a nearby mound and vanished, followed by a marked drop in temperature. Several witnesses reported hearing the sound of laughter and developing a sudden urge to collect rings.
- pokoleo 6y ago
  This is so familiar, what's it from? Seafall?
  - ateesdalejr 6y ago
    Sonic the hedgehog I think... Referencing Chaos Emeralds.
  - Igelau 6y ago
    Multiple things bouncing in my head. I missed the mark a little on the particular flavor of doom being courted -- TFA mentions the area is ritually associated with an entity called the "Great Water Snake".
simias 6y ago
>Crystals found across the planet and from several time periods have previously been linked to humans' spiritual belief and ritual. This includes in southern Africa. Couldn't they just have been collected because they looked nice? When I was a kid I had a stash of more or less interesting rocks I found here and there. It seems weird to me to go straight for the spiritual and ritual explanation. >Many who visit Ga-Mohana Hill today for ritual practice see it as part of a network of places linked to the Great Water Snake (Nnoga ya metsi), a capricious and shape-shifting being. Many of these spiritual places are also associated with water. >Places such as Ga-Mohana Hill and their associated stories remain some of the most enduring intangible cultural artefacts from the past, linking modern indigenous South Africans to earlier communities. Is the article positing that (relatively) modern practices and beliefs could have a link to these 100+ millennia old crystals? If true it would be fascinating, but it seems like a pretty wild conjecture to me. The culture, language and customs of people 100k years ago was probably very different from ours. It seems to me that you'd have to have pretty convincing evidence to be able to extrapolate that far into the past.
- prestonbriggs 6y ago
  Then again, crows collect shiny things too.
  - pmayrgundter 6y ago
    And bower birds!
- currymj 6y ago
  it's hard to say. there are indigenous Australian stories that have been preserved over 10,000 years that apparently have an accurate correspondence to the geological changes that took place over that time period. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ancient-sea-rise-tale-told-accurately-for-10-000-years/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ancient-sea-rise-... 100,000 years does seem like a really long time though for a direct connection to present-day people.
  - 6y ago
ed25519FUUU 6y ago
Do we believe that homosapiens from this era were really any fundamentally different than us today? Collecting cool crystals seems like such a normal thing to do, maybe without the religious aspect. I always thought the “spark” that helped propel us to the future was not biological.
- datavirtue 6y ago
  We don't know anything of humans from that time period. All the settlements are under water. Sea levels rose 400ft over just the last 20k years alone.
  - tomjakubowski 6y ago
    It's true that we know comparatively little about middle paleolithic human culture, but "anything" and "all the settlements" is a stretch. For example, we've found a structure, likely from a seasonal settlement, dated to 100 kYA in what's today southern Egypt. https://ancientegyptonline.co.uk/paleolithic/ https://ancientegyptonline.co.uk/paleolithic/
- snet0 6y ago
  I think collecting in general seems to be a fairly "normal" human behaviour. I imagine (with neither education nor research) that many pre-historic people's prized collections of fruit pits or animal teeth didn't stand the test of time, or the environment movements therein.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
a2tech 6y ago
Actual source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03419-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03419-0
matmatmatmat 6y ago
I'm deeply struck that through these crystals, we have a link to ancestors from eons ago. I can't even imagine what artifacts we leave behind that our descendants will find 105,000 years from now.
anm89 6y ago
Years ago I read Herodotus' Histories and it left a big impression on me. I believe it mostly takes place around 2kBc but you realize that psychologically the people are pretty much the same as modern people. That's not to say they act the same because the cultural norms are different but at the end of the day basically all the actions they take are relatable from some perspective. And this got me thinking how far back this applies, and my personal guess is pretty far, maybe even 100k years. When I hear stories like this, I like to imagine that they were basically modern humans, doing all the same stuff we do today, just under very different sets of norms.
- snet0 6y ago
  This is one of those things that is kind of weird until it's totally obvious and you feel dumb for having thought any other way. It was almost revelatory for me when I realised that ancient people were just people from a long time ago. It sounds obvious, of course, but for some reason (and I imagine I'm not alone in having this experience) I feel like I spent a lot of my life thinking of ancient peoples as being somewhere between "us" and (what one generalises to) neanderthals. It was startling to read stories and realise that these humans were, in fact, humans just like anyone today, living in a different culture.
person_of_color 6y ago
Do we know this someone are terrestrial and not ET?

126 points by wombatmobile 6y ago

They found a buried crystal cache. The sediment they were in dates to 105k years ago. I don't have access to the journal the actual paper is published in. Does anyone know how they establish that they were gathered at that time and not just more recently buried? This article is light on details.

jph 6y ago
Article: We found 22 white and well-formed calcite crystals brought to the site 105,000 years ago. We determined this using a method called "optically stimulated luminescence", which dates sediments the crystals were excavated from. Our analysis indicates the crystals were not introduced into the deposits via natural processes, but rather represent a small cache of deliberately collected objects. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optically_stimulated_luminescence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optically_stimulated_luminesce...
- seneca 6y ago
  Yes, I read the article. It specifically says the sediment was dated. I'm just curious how they're certain the placement of the crystals dates to the same time.
  - AlotOfReading 6y ago
    This dating method basically dates the last time the sediments were directly exposed to ionizing radiation (i.e. sunlight). The key here is that it sets a minimum age. Things can be older and have their "clocks reset", but the decay constant is fixed, so we can always determine the last time the object or sediment was exposed. There are a couple minor issues with it, but it's better (and sometimes cheaper!) than radioisotope dating. You can be pretty confident in OSL/TL dates more than a couple thousand years old.
Igelau 6y ago
Not an archaeologist, but if you're digging in a 105k year old sediment layer and none of the layers above it were disturbed, I'd say it's a pretty safe bet the stuff in it is also 105k years old.
- seneca 6y ago
  I suppose you must be right. I'm just wondering if there's some method they use to tell the difference between "this was left here 105k years ago" and "someone dug a hole here 50k years ago and buried them". Is it just as simple as "it doesn't look like it was ever dug up"? I have no clue how this stuff works.
  - klyrs 6y ago
    If you dig a hole, you puncture layers of sediment. Do it carefully, and you'll be able to see those layers of sediment on the walls of the hole. But the dirt you extract is mixed, and homogenized in the process. Fill in the hole, and the fill won't have nicely stratified layers. If somebody carefully digs in the same place 1000 years later, a cross section will reveal a homogeneous plug amid layers of strata. They'll be able to date when you dug the hole by looking at the layers above that homogeneous plug Fun thought: archaeologists 10k years from now unearthing today's digs, finding the traces of our careful destruction of ancient evidence...
- datavirtue 6y ago
  Archaeologists are very good at dating finds based on a range of different testing methods. In this case they used strata and an examination of the crystal's surface...at the very least.
adolph 6y ago
We excavated three areas of the shelter (4.75 m2 in total) and reached a maximum depth of 1.7 m, which revealed a sequence of stratified Middle Stone Age and Later Stone Age deposits Single-grain optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating of quartz from each of the three stratigraphic aggregates provided in-sequence dates with 1σ errors of 14.8 ± 0.8 ka (dark brown gravelly silt), 30.9 ± 1.8 ka (orange ashy silt) and 105.3 ± 3.7 ka (DBSR) (weighted mean, n = 3). Several lines of evidence provide support for an anthropogenic origin of the OES. First, the fragments occur within a well-preserved rockshelter context and are in direct association with many other traces of human activity (Extended Data Fig. 5). Second, the OES fragments show evidence of having been burned. Over 80% (n = 34) of the OES fragments display red colouration (Fig. 2, Supplementary Data), which reflects exposure to temperatures of 300–350 °C. Third, humans were the primary agents of accumulation for the faunal assemblage at GHN and there is no evidence for the presence of hyenas or other animals that consume ostrich eggs. The identifiable fraction of zooarchaeological material from the DBSR (n = 467) is dominated by remains of ungulates and tortoises (Table 1, Supplementary Data). Taphonomic analysis demonstrates a high frequency of anthropogenic percussion marks and cut marks (Table 1), and most of the faunal specimens show evidence of moderate burning.
- seneca 6y ago
  Thanks for the further info.

drittich 6y ago

There is a short video showing the site here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKYo1XiyVWU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKYo1XiyVWU

wombatmobile 6y ago
It looks like Australia, or Arizona.

Igelau 6y ago

As soon as the crystals were removed, a vaguely humanoid cloud rose from a nearby mound and vanished, followed by a marked drop in temperature. Several witnesses reported hearing the sound of laughter and developing a sudden urge to collect rings.

pokoleo 6y ago
This is so familiar, what's it from? Seafall?
- ateesdalejr 6y ago
  Sonic the hedgehog I think... Referencing Chaos Emeralds.
- Igelau 6y ago
  Multiple things bouncing in my head. I missed the mark a little on the particular flavor of doom being courted -- TFA mentions the area is ritually associated with an entity called the "Great Water Snake".

simias 6y ago

>Crystals found across the planet and from several time periods have previously been linked to humans' spiritual belief and ritual. This includes in southern Africa. Couldn't they just have been collected because they looked nice? When I was a kid I had a stash of more or less interesting rocks I found here and there. It seems weird to me to go straight for the spiritual and ritual explanation. >Many who visit Ga-Mohana Hill today for ritual practice see it as part of a network of places linked to the Great Water Snake (Nnoga ya metsi), a capricious and shape-shifting being. Many of these spiritual places are also associated with water. >Places such as Ga-Mohana Hill and their associated stories remain some of the most enduring intangible cultural artefacts from the past, linking modern indigenous South Africans to earlier communities. Is the article positing that (relatively) modern practices and beliefs could have a link to these 100+ millennia old crystals? If true it would be fascinating, but it seems like a pretty wild conjecture to me. The culture, language and customs of people 100k years ago was probably very different from ours. It seems to me that you'd have to have pretty convincing evidence to be able to extrapolate that far into the past.

prestonbriggs 6y ago
Then again, crows collect shiny things too.
- pmayrgundter 6y ago
  And bower birds!
currymj 6y ago
it's hard to say. there are indigenous Australian stories that have been preserved over 10,000 years that apparently have an accurate correspondence to the geological changes that took place over that time period. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ancient-sea-rise-tale-told-accurately-for-10-000-years/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ancient-sea-rise-... 100,000 years does seem like a really long time though for a direct connection to present-day people.
- 6y ago

ed25519FUUU 6y ago

Do we believe that homosapiens from this era were really any fundamentally different than us today? Collecting cool crystals seems like such a normal thing to do, maybe without the religious aspect. I always thought the “spark” that helped propel us to the future was not biological.

datavirtue 6y ago
We don't know anything of humans from that time period. All the settlements are under water. Sea levels rose 400ft over just the last 20k years alone.
- tomjakubowski 6y ago
  It's true that we know comparatively little about middle paleolithic human culture, but "anything" and "all the settlements" is a stretch. For example, we've found a structure, likely from a seasonal settlement, dated to 100 kYA in what's today southern Egypt. https://ancientegyptonline.co.uk/paleolithic/ https://ancientegyptonline.co.uk/paleolithic/
snet0 6y ago
I think collecting in general seems to be a fairly "normal" human behaviour. I imagine (with neither education nor research) that many pre-historic people's prized collections of fruit pits or animal teeth didn't stand the test of time, or the environment movements therein.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

a2tech 6y ago

Actual source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03419-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03419-0

matmatmatmat 6y ago

I'm deeply struck that through these crystals, we have a link to ancestors from eons ago. I can't even imagine what artifacts we leave behind that our descendants will find 105,000 years from now.

anm89 6y ago

Years ago I read Herodotus' Histories and it left a big impression on me. I believe it mostly takes place around 2kBc but you realize that psychologically the people are pretty much the same as modern people. That's not to say they act the same because the cultural norms are different but at the end of the day basically all the actions they take are relatable from some perspective. And this got me thinking how far back this applies, and my personal guess is pretty far, maybe even 100k years. When I hear stories like this, I like to imagine that they were basically modern humans, doing all the same stuff we do today, just under very different sets of norms.

snet0 6y ago
This is one of those things that is kind of weird until it's totally obvious and you feel dumb for having thought any other way. It was almost revelatory for me when I realised that ancient people were just people from a long time ago. It sounds obvious, of course, but for some reason (and I imagine I'm not alone in having this experience) I feel like I spent a lot of my life thinking of ancient peoples as being somewhere between "us" and (what one generalises to) neanderthals. It was startling to read stories and realise that these humans were, in fact, humans just like anyone today, living in a different culture.

person_of_color 6y ago

Do we know this someone are terrestrial and not ET?