Early human ancestors turned stones into spheres on purpose, study suggests

Re:Early human ancestors turned stones into spheres on purpo... by c420 on Wednesday September 06, 2023 @03:41PM (#37410183)

There's a huge difference in population density between the two groups; there was no place in the US that wasn't inhabited even before projectile points were fully diffused across the area.

Combine that with the fact that we're temporally very close to the Indigenous occupation. Whereas there's over a million+ years of geological processes to affect those artifacts original provenance.

Also, if we haven't been looking for crudely rounded stones we aren't going to have much of a sample size to say whether or not they are, to use archeologist's favorite word, ubiquitous.

I'd wager most people aren't aware that spheres aren't common in nature.

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Re:Early human ancestors turned stones into spheres on purpo... by JoeAltmaier on Wednesday September 06, 2023 @04:14PM (#37410672)

Interesting point - population density when such spheres were being manufactured was low. Which leads to the next idea: when population density increased, spheres were no longer manufactured. Why? Something replaced them. Arrowheads?

We can start to unpick the mystery with insights like that.

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Re:Early human ancestors turned stones into spheres on purpo... by SnaggyJoker on Wednesday September 06, 2023 @08:39PM (#37413338)

Kind of makes you wonder if the first arrow heads were formed when someone was trying to make a sphere and struck the rock with flint (or one of the other suitable stones) and accidentally cut themselves on the sharp resulting shard.

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