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For some reason the Guardian's link to the original study doesn't work. This does: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-12677-5 https://www.nature.com/ar

by s1mon 4y ago

For some reason the Guardian's link to the original study doesn't work. This does: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-12677-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-12677-5 I've only managed to skim it so far, but it seems like there was a lot of effort to compare the similarities of the shapes of the artifacts which were collected over large areas. What I didn't see was anything beyond correlation. In my very simplistic view, I wonder how much of the shape is driven by the size of a person's hand holding the rough stone to be shaped, and the structure of the rock and how easily it cleaves while still holding a useful edge. With cooking, there are small circular dough things stuffed with some filling all over the world (pierogis, gyoza, etc). I don't see this as some sort of massive social phenomenon. It's something that is relatively easy to invent independently. Somehow someone decides that they want to grind up a grain, and make a dough. Rolling that dough into a ball is something that any 5 year old will do with Playdoh with no prompting. Then flattening that into a circle is pretty natural. The leap to adding a filling, folding it in half and then cooking it somehow is not that great.

svnt 4y ago
Basically the authors concede that everyone makes these stone gyoza, but claim that the reduced variation in the tool within this region means increased communication of tool-making is associated with this era of increased tool-production. The data seem to bear this out, but they do not really address differences in materials or differences in morphology of the user. Arguably valid reasons for ignoring both of these are given, 1) that in a limited view material has little impact and material was not selected for within populations who could have traded or traveled for similar materials, and 2) (this may have just been implicit) these are repeatedly indicated to be backed tools. This means they were designed to be mounted in a carrier tool (typically wood or bone that did not survive to present day). Like a safety razor blade, you don’t hold it in your hands.
ncmncm 4y ago
The last sentence in the article explains that they compared the tools to others collected from Australia, which must have been used for similar purposes, and found much more variation between African and Australian than between African tools from different places. I.e., this is not a question of convergent evolution. There is more than one way to skin a cat or thylacine. What we see here is path dependence. Tools were made a certain way because one's father, grandfather, and great-grandfather made them that way and reproduced successfully, and not because that was the only way to make such a tool. And, people who had previously made tools differently, or did without, adopted these, and maybe abandoned others. Maybe these were superior, or maybe people using them had more social cachet, prompting emulation; either way, the design was learned, so communicated.

by s1mon 4y ago

svnt 4y ago

Basically the authors concede that everyone makes these stone gyoza, but claim that the reduced variation in the tool within this region means increased communication of tool-making is associated with this era of increased tool-production. The data seem to bear this out, but they do not really address differences in materials or differences in morphology of the user. Arguably valid reasons for ignoring both of these are given, 1) that in a limited view material has little impact and material was not selected for within populations who could have traded or traveled for similar materials, and 2) (this may have just been implicit) these are repeatedly indicated to be backed tools. This means they were designed to be mounted in a carrier tool (typically wood or bone that did not survive to present day). Like a safety razor blade, you don’t hold it in your hands.

ncmncm 4y ago

The last sentence in the article explains that they compared the tools to others collected from Australia, which must have been used for similar purposes, and found much more variation between African and Australian than between African tools from different places. I.e., this is not a question of convergent evolution. There is more than one way to skin a cat or thylacine. What we see here is path dependence. Tools were made a certain way because one's father, grandfather, and great-grandfather made them that way and reproduced successfully, and not because that was the only way to make such a tool. And, people who had previously made tools differently, or did without, adopted these, and maybe abandoned others. Maybe these were superior, or maybe people using them had more social cachet, prompting emulation; either way, the design was learned, so communicated.