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| The dinosaurs have long since died out millions and millions and millions of years ago. In the Pleistocene Age is where mammals are developing and thriving. |
I am conveying in pictures what I have attempted to convey in writing over the last two posts.
The topic?
What was it like before the "Days of Genesis" in the Christian Bible?
- Post 1 speaks to these timelines.
- Post 2 the last great Ice Age.
- And today, in Post 3, we'll take a much farther step back BEFORE the evolution of humanity and their cultural developments down to around 12,000 BCE.
At this time period begins the transition FROM the Stone Age and into the earliest beginnings of the Anthropocene Age of Man (from 12,000 BCE to today).
Let's begin...
The Earth is 4.6 Billion years old. The last Dinosaur Age ended around 65 Million Years Ago. From the era of the dinosaurs to now there was a lot of change which we cannot discuss.
Instead, let us start with the last of the Great Ice Ages of the planet beginning around 1.8 million years ago (the most recent of which occurred from 25,000 BCE to 19,000 BCE).
During this time the genome of humanity begins around 2+ million years ago as the species of homoninin moved slowly away from its genetic ancestors. Here are some charts to help visualize these ancient time periods:
The Last 5 Million Years
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| Hominin evolution in millions of years |
Commonly known as the Stone Age, the Pleistocene Era from 2 million years ago to around 12,000 BCE is subdivided into four ages with their corresponding rock units:
- The Gelasian (2.6 million to 1.8 million years ago)
- The Calabrian (1.8 million to 774,000 years ago)
- The Chibanian (774,000 to 129,000 years ago)
- And Stage 4 (129,000 to 11,700 years ago)
Humanity 100,000 Years Ago - Life In The Paleolithicby Stefan Milo | July 7, 2021
100,000 years ago was an incredibly interesting time in our story. Artwork by Ettore Mazza: https://www.instagram.com/ettore.mazza/
Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins c. 3.3 million years ago and the invention of writing systems. The use of symbols, marks, and images appears very early among humans, but the earliest known writing systems appeared c. 5000 years ago and it took thousands of years for writing systems to be widely adopted. In some human cultures, writing systems were not used until the nineteenth century and, in a few, are not even used until the present. The end of prehistory therefore came at very different dates in different places, and the term is less often used in discussing societies where prehistory ended relatively recently.
The Last Great Ice Age - The Pleistocene Era
The Pleistocene Era is the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations.
Before a change was finally confirmed in 2009 by the International Union of Geological Sciences, the cutoff of the Pleistocene and the preceding Pliocene was regarded as being 1.806 million years Before the Present (BP). Publications from earlier years may use either definition of the period.
The end of the Pleistocene corresponds with the end of the last glacial period and also with the end of the Paleolithic age used in archaeology.
This video covers major events that occurred in the Holocene (the current epoch). Major glacial and interglacial cycles occurred in the Pleistocene and after the LGM, climate shifted back into a cooling regime called the Younger Dryas. The possible causes of the Younger Dryas include obstruction of ocean circulation and comet impacts. The impact hypothesis has also been proposed as a possible cause of the megafauna extinctions that occurred around this time. Large mammals, such as mammoths, mastodons, saber tooth cats, American elephants, giant armadillos, giant ground sloths, and short faced bears went extinct during this extinction event. Why? 2 hypotheses: the human-hunting hypothesis (humans hunted these animals to extinction) and the climate hypothesis (the rapid switch to cooling and possible comet impacts & wildfires caused the extinctions). After the Younger Dryas, things warmed back up and temperature remained relatively constant until ~1950 when the Anthropocene began.
Modern Man's Earlier Ancestors
Stone Age Depictions
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| Eurasion Homo Sapiens of Southern Europe, 50,000 BCE |
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| Stone Age Beasts around 50,000 BCES |
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| Comparison of Panthera gombaszoegensis |
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| comparison of canis mosbachensis |
September 12, 2013
An introduction to the Stone Age for World History students, comparing and contrasting the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic periods using cave art, Venus figurines, and the Çatalhöyük community.
Series PostsINDEX
PART I
PART II
PART III
PART IV
ECO-CIV 1
ECO-CIV 2
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| The entrance to Tunel Wielki cave. (Miron Bogacki/University of Warsaw) |
Prehistoric stone tools found in a cave in Poland 50 years ago were recentlyidentified as some of the oldest ever discovered in the region.
The tools from the Tunel Wielki cave in Małopolska are between 450,000 and 550,000 years old. This dating may allow scientists to learn more about the humans who made them, and their migration and habitation in Central Europe across prehistory.
For example, the timeframe likely means that the tools were made by extinct human species Homo heidelbergensis, usually considered the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans (us). And it means the region was inhabited by humans at a time that Central Europe's harsh climate would have required significant physical and cultural adjustment.
"This is an extremely interesting aspect of analyses for us," archaeologist Małgorzata Kot of the University of Warsaw in Poland explained to Science in Poland back in October 2022 when the research was released.
"We can examine the limits of the possibilities of survival of Homo heidelbergensis, and thus observe how he adapted to these adverse conditions."
Tunel Wielki cave was excavated in the 1960s, with archaeologists returning again to the site in 2016. Layers of material were dated to the Holocone, dating back to around 11,700 years ago, and the Middle Paleolithic, stretching as far as 40,000 years ago.
But archaeologist Claudio Berto of the University of Warsaw thought the dating was at odds with what he was observing. Animal bones recovered from the site, he concluded, were almost certainly older than 40,000 years.
So, in 2018, Kot and her team returned to the cave. They reopened and extended one of the trenches, carefully examining the different layers of material accumulated over the years, and collecting more bone material to analyze.
They found that the upper layers did indeed contain the bones of animals that lived in the Late Pleistocene and the Holocene. But the bottom layer was distinctly older. It contained the bones of several species that lived half a million years ago: the European jaguar, Panthera gombaszoegensis; the Mosbach wolf, ancestor to modern gray wolves, Canis mosbachensis; and Deninger's bear, Ursus deningeri.
The layer that yielded the bones also contained evidence of flint knapping, including flint flakes, the "blanks" from which other tools can be shaped, and the cores from which they are struck. There were also some finished tools, such as knives.
"Since these items come from the same layer as the bones, it means that their age is very similar," Kot explained. "This assumption was confirmed by excavations carried out in the cave in 2018. They confirmed the arrangement of layers described by researchers half a century ago. We also discovered more production waste and animal bones."
Previously, she added, there were only two known sites in Poland with tools from around the same time period: Trzebnica and Rusko. But the Tunel Wielki cave artifacts are different. Several archaeological sites in the area show evidence of ancient human habitation – but they are all open-air sites.
To find artifacts dating from that time in a cave is, according to Kot, very unexpected.
"We were surprised that half a million years ago people in this area stayed in caves, because those were not the best places to camp," she noted.
"Moisture and low temperature would discourage that. On the other hand, a cave is a natural shelter. It is a closed space that gives a sense of security. We found traces that may indicate that the people who stayed there used fire, which probably helped tame these dark and moist places."
Also of interest was the technique used to knap the flint found in the cave. This technique is the simplest used by ancient humans, and, at the time the tools were created, rarely used as a primary mode; usually, it was only used on poor-quality materials, or when flint was in short supply.
Only one other site, Isernia La Pineta in Italy, was using the technique as the primary one. The Tunel Wielki flint was not poor quality, nor was it scarce, being locally obtained. This was also the case for Isernia La Pineta; finding a second site with the same characteristics might help archaeologists work out the reason these ancient humans used that specific technique.
The team hopes to return to the cave to search for bones of Homo heidelbergensis.
The research was published in Scientific Reports.
A version of this article was first published in October 2022.
