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- Bob Lord on Ford a "kick in the guts" Oh dear RichardJust watching our very own fiscal twit Nicholls stating that a raft of taxes will be rising in Queensland in ... more
- bespectacled on New schools for Queensland How about using the fv school for a library and buy the adjacent commercial buildings to add to the school oval for leisure ... more
- ArtG on New flood tax planned I knowwwww, mick, I knoowwww... more
- Bob Lord on Ford a "kick in the guts" OK Richard, fair enough.The bloke who wants to run the country doesn't need to have a vision or plans for when he gets ... more
- jaycee on Ford a "kick in the guts" my vishion 20/20,roberto earldomo, is maybe a bit on the blue side but overall I'm sitting pretty here on a north shore ... more
- mick on New flood tax planned Artg she certainly did not want them to die of thirst so she opened up Wivenhoe and flooded Brisbane trying to drown them. more
- Richard on Ford a "kick in the guts" Bob, you seem to be changing canoes mid stream and now paddling the other way.BTW Tony Abbott is not running the country.A ... more
- mick on Ford a "kick in the guts" The majority of Australians do know that they do have good plans and visions for all Australians, you are just too stupid to ... more
- Bob Lord on Ford a "kick in the guts" TSK TSKThose silly Ford people not having a good business plan hey Tony. Fabulous hindsight once again from you.Ya got a ... more
- David T. on Analog TV switch-off will not affect 4BC Anyone with an analogue TV can buy a Digital set-top box. If you're on a full Govt. pension, you might get a box for free ... more
- David T. on Lord Wedgwood on antiques Adam, Google them under Rick Milne Collectables and Shields Stamps and Coins. Both are in Victoria. I'm sure you'll find the ... more
- Adam on Lord Wedgwood on antiques Can someone please provide me Rick Milne and Tony Shields email address so we can contact them.Thanks more
- kernel fudpucker on IR changes opposed All smoke and mirrors. They all lie in the same BED !! more
- kernel fudpucker on New schools for Queensland Private companies?? There's only one, SERCO!!!. Do your research, SHEEPLE !!!! more
- kernel fudpucker on New flood tax planned How about a (POLITCAL FAILURE TAX) Payed back to the people, set at 200% more
- Kattie on $5 to browse Coorparoo store Perhaps, we've been now excited to have the actual dad's or mom's early morning hours ingest. Listed here is a lack of yet ... more
- single slot toasters review on Amalfi Coast Recpies I don't know whether it's just me or if everyone else experiencing problems with your website. It appears as if some of the ... more
- Richard on Party precinct: failed Can not think of a time in the entire history of mankind where alcohol consumption has not led to etiquette hell.Let it ... more
- hospitality is dead or rather never was on Party precinct: failed Get rid of hositality and its segeregation /and age groupdiscrimination practices and it might just bring back boomers and ... more
- Gayle on New schools for Queensland Now this is called good Government and forward planning, the demographics have changed and there are more families with ... more
Caveman, advanced thinkers
Paleontologists say they have found small blades in a South African cave proving that man was an advanced thinker making stone tools 71,000 years ago - millennia earlier than thought.
The find suggests early humans from Africa had a capacity for complex thought and weapons production that gave them a distinct evolutionary advantage over Neanderthals, say the authors of a study published in Nature.
Scientists agree that our lineage appeared in Africa more than 100,000 years ago, but there is much debate about when Homo sapiens' cultural and cognitive character began resembling that of modern humans.
Small, manufactured blades such as those found in hunting arrows were first thought to have appeared in South Africa between 65,000 and 60,000 years ago.
Now, a team of scientists say they have found much older blades, called microliths and produced by chipping away at heat-treated stone, in a cave near Mossel Bay on South Africa's south coast.
"Our research... shows that microlithic technology originated early in South Africa, evolved over a vast time span (about 11,000 years) and was typically coupled to complex heat treatment," the study authors wrote.
"Advanced technologies in Africa were early and enduring," they said, adding that long absences of tool-use evidence in the palaeontological record are explained by the relatively small number of sites excavated to date, not by an ebb and flow in early man's technological know-how.
The find is evidence that early modern humans in South Africa had the ability to make complex designs and teach others to copy them, said the researchers.
This would have allowed them to produce tools like arrows with a much longer killing distance than hand-cast spears.
"Microlith-tipped projectile weapons increased hunting success rate, reduced injury from hunting encounters gone wrong, extended the effective range of lethal interpersonal violence," wrote the team.
It would also have conferred "substantive advantages on modern humans as they left Africa and encountered Neanderthals equipped only with hand-cast spears".
Neanderthals lived in parts of Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East for up to 300,000 years but appear to have vanished some 40,000 years ago.
In a comment on the study, also published by Nature, anthropologist Sally McBrearty from the University of Connecticut said humans making the monoliths would have chipped small blades from stone carefully selected for its texture and heat-treated to make it easier to work with.
They would then have retouched the blades into geometric shapes, probably for use in arrows to be shot from bows.
This, in turn, meant the makers would have had to collect other materials such as wood, fibres, feathers, bone and sinew over a period of days, weeks or months, interrupted by other, more urgent tasks.
"The ability to hold and manipulate operations and images of objects in memory, and to execute goal-directed procedures over space and time, is termed executive function and is an essential component of the modern mind," McBrearty wrote.
