Podcasts about blombos cave

Firebringer (2016) is a musical play about the discovery of fire by a tribe of polyamourous, matriarchal ancient humans. They also invent stone tools, art, hunting—they pretty much hit all the classic caveman tropes, and even subvert some of them. The only problem is… it's a musical. Win some SotSA Merch! Send your mistakes, inaccuracies, and corrections to us by email or social media: Twitter: @SotSA_Podcast Bluesky: @sotsapodcast.bsky.social Facebook: @SotSAPodcast Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/sotsa/ Email: screensofthestoneage@gmail.com In this episode: Watch Firebringer (2016) on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmVuNlu0LCk The earliest controlled use of fire: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2743299 The oldest stone tools: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-32804177 Neanderthals hafted tools with birch tar: https://www.science.org/content/article/50000-year-old-tar-smeared-tool-shows-neanderthal-smarts The oldest cave paintings: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aap7778 Divje Babe Neanderthal “flute”: https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/holes-in-a-bone-flute-or-fluke Palaeolithic Lithophones: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0092.1985.tb00229.x Homo naledi: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/homo-naledi-your-most-recently-discovered-human-relative.html Early art at Blombos Cave: https://theconversation.com/south-africas-blombos-cave-is-home-to-the-earliest-drawing-by-a-human-103017 Goog Enough on Twitter: https://x.com/goog_enough Sima de los Huesos: https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/the-sima-hominins-an-ancient-human-cold-case The Mauer mandible: https://efossils.org/page/boneviewer/homo%20heidelbergensis/Mauer%201 Bae et al. (2023) Moving away from “the Muddle in the Middle” toward solving the Chibanian puzzle: https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.22011 Roksandic et al. (2021) Resolving the “muddle in the middle”: The case for Homo bodoensis sp. nov. https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.21929 The Middle Pleistocene was renamed to “Chibanian”: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/chibanian-age-earths-newly-named-geological-period-180974224/

Firebringer (2016) is a musical play about the discovery of fire by a tribe of polyamourous, matriarchal ancient humans. They also invent stone tools, art, hunting—they pretty much hit all the classic caveman tropes, and even subvert some of them. The only problem is... it's a musical.Win some SotSA Merch! Send your mistakes, inaccuracies, and corrections to us by email or social media:Twitter: @SotSA_PodcastBluesky: @sotsapodcast.bsky.socialFacebook: @SotSAPodcastLetterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/sotsa/Email: screensofthestoneage@gmail.comIn this episode:Watch Firebringer (2016) on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmVuNlu0LCkThe earliest controlled use of fire: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2743299The oldest stone tools: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-32804177Neanderthals hafted tools with birch tar: https://www.science.org/content/article/50000-year-old-tar-smeared-tool-shows-neanderthal-smartsThe oldest cave paintings: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aap7778Divje Babe Neanderthal “flute”: https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/holes-in-a-bone-flute-or-flukePalaeolithic Lithophones: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0092.1985.tb00229.xHomo naledi: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/homo-naledi-your-most-recently-discovered-human-relative.htmlEarly art at Blombos Cave: https://theconversation.com/south-africas-blombos-cave-is-home-to-the-earliest-drawing-by-a-human-103017Goog Enough on Twitter: https://x.com/goog_enoughSima de los Huesos: https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/the-sima-hominins-an-ancient-human-cold-caseThe Mauer mandible: https://efossils.org/page/boneviewer/homo%20heidelbergensis/Mauer%201Bae et al. (2023) Moving away from “the Muddle in the Middle” toward solving the Chibanian puzzle: https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.22011Roksandic et al. (2021) Resolving the “muddle in the middle”: The case for Homo bodoensis sp. nov. https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.21929The Middle Pleistocene was renamed to “Chibanian”: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/chibanian-age-earths-newly-named-geological-period-180974224/

Episode: 2734 Artisan flintknappers of Blombos Cave, 60,000 years too soon.  Today, we meet some ancient flintknappers.

There's a common story about the human past that goes something like this. For a few hundred thousand years during the Stone Age we were kind of limping along as a species, in a bit of a cognitive rut, let's say. But then, quite suddenly, around 30 or 40 thousand years ago in Europe, we really started to come into our own. All of a sudden we became masters of art and ornament, of symbolism and abstract thinking. This story of a kind of "cognitive revolution" in the Upper Paleolithic has been a mainstay of popular discourse for decades. I'm guessing you're familiar with it. It's been discussed in influential books by Jared Diamond and Yuval Harari; you can read about it on Wikipedia. What you may not know is that this story, compelling as it may be, is almost certainly wrong. My first guest today is Dr. Eleanor Scerri, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, where she heads the Pan-African Evolution research group. My second guest is Dr. Manuel Will, an archaeologist and Lecturer at the University of Tübingen in Germany. Together, Eleanor and Manuel are authors of a new paper titled 'The revolution that still isn't: The origins of behavioral complexity in Homo sapiens.' In the paper, they pull together a wealth of evidence showing that there really was no cognitive revolution—no one watershed moment in time and space. Rather, the origins of modern human cognition and culture are to be found not in one part of Europe but across Africa. And they're also to be found much earlier than that classic picture suggests.  Here, we talk about the “cognitive revolution" model and why it has endured. We discuss a seminal paper from the year 2000 that first influentially challenged the revolution model. We talk about the latest evidence of complex cognition from the Middle Stone Age in Africa—including the perforation of marine shells to make necklaces; and the use of ochre for engraving, painting, and even sunblock. We discuss how, though the same complex cognitive abilities were likely in place for the last few hundred thousand years, those abilities were often expressed patchily in different parts of the world at different times. And we consider the factors that led to this patchy expression, especially changes in population size.   I confess I was always a bit taken with this whole "cognitive revolution" idea. It had a certain mystery and allure. This new picture that's taking its place is certainly a bit messier, but no less fascinating. And, more importantly, it's truer to the complexities of the human saga.  Alright friends, on to my conversation with Eleanor Scerri & Manuel Will. Enjoy!   A transcript of this episode will be available soon.   Notes and links 3:30 – The paper by Dr. Scerri and Dr. Will we discuss in this episode is here. Their paper updates and pays tribute to a classic paper by McBrearty and Brooks, published in 2000. 6:00 – The classic “cognitive revolution” model sometimes discussed under the banner of “behavioral modernity” or the “Great Leap Forward.” It has been recently featured, for instance, in Harari's Sapiens. 11:00 – Dr. Scerri has written extensively on debates about where humans evolved within Africa—see, e.g., this paper.  18:00 – A study of perforated marine shells in North Africa during the Middle Stone Age. A paper by Dr. Will and colleagues about the use of various marine resources during this period.  23:00 – A paper describing the uses of ochre across Africa during the Middle Stone Age. Another paper describing evidence for ochre processing 100,000 years ago at Blombos Cave in South Africa. At the same site, engraved pieces of ochre have been found. 27:00 – A study examining the evidence that ochre was used as an adhesive. 30:00 – For a recent review of the concept of “cumulative culture,” see here. We discussed the concept of “cumulative culture” in our earlier episode with Dr. Cristine Legare.  37:00 – For an overview of the career of the human brain and the timing of various changes, see our earlier episode with Dr. Jeremy DeSilva. 38:00 – An influential study on the role of demography in the emergence of complex human behavior. 41:00 – On the idea that distinctive human intelligence is due in large part to culture and our abilities to acquire cultural knowledge, see Henrich's The Secret of Our Success. See also our earlier episode with Dr. Michael Muthukrishna.  45:00 – For discussion of the Neanderthals and why they may have died out, see our earlier episode with Dr. Rebecca Wragg Sykes.    Recommendations Dr. Scerri recommends research on the oldest Homo sapiens fossils, found in Morocco and described here, and new research on the evidence for the widespread burning of landscapes in Malawi, described here.  Dr. Will recommends the forthcoming update of Peter Mitchell's book, The Archaeology of Southern Africa. See Twitter for more updates from Dr. Scerri and Dr. Will.   Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala. Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com.   For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.

On this episode, Dr. Predrag (Pedja) Radović joins us to talk about The Man from Earth (2007), the story of an academic who tries to convince his colleagues that he is 14,000 years old. This low budget movie was filmed on camcorders and takes place in a single room, and yet it's somehow one of the better movies we've seen! Get in touch with us!Twitter: @SotSA_Podcast Facebook: @SotSAPodcastLetterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/sotsa/ Email: screensofthestoneage@gmail.com In this episode: Watch The Man from Earth on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5Fjr658CQs Doggerland: https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/doggerland/ Magdalenian Culture: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Magdalenian-culture Magdalenian artifacts: http://www.fhw.gr/chronos/01/en/glos_plml/typos7.html Why Call Them Back From Heaven? By Clifford Simak: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/757061 Panspermia: https://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/postcards-from-the-universe/life_traveling_in_space_a/ Alfred Russel Wallace's battle with flat-earthers: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/rosetta-stones/wallace-8217-s-woeful-wager-how-a-founder-of-modern-biology-got-suckered-by-flat-earthers/ D'Errico et al. (2001). An engraved bone fragment from c. 70,000-year-old Middle Stone Age levels at Blombos Cave, South Africa: implications for the origin of symbolism and language: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00060968 McBrearty and Brooks (2000). The revolution that wasn't: a new interpretation of the origin of modern human behaviour: https://doi.org/10.1006/jhev.2000.0435 Neanderthals and modern humans share the same FOXP2 “language” gene: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05859-7 QAnon supporters though JFK Jr. would return: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/11/02/qanon-jfk-jr-dallas/The Nxivm Cult: https://www.nytimes.com/article/nxivm-timeline.html

On this episode, Dr. Predrag (Pedja) Radović joins us to talk about The Man from Earth (2007), the story of an academic who tries to convince his colleagues that he is 14,000 years old. This low budget movie was filmed on camcorders and takes place in a single room, and yet it's somehow one of the better movies we've seen! Get in touch with us! Twitter: @SotSA_Podcast Facebook: @SotSAPodcast Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/sotsa/ Email: screensofthestoneage@gmail.com In this episode: Watch The Man from Earth on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5Fjr658CQs Doggerland: https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/doggerland/ Magdalenian Culture: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Magdalenian-culture Magdalenian artifacts: http://www.fhw.gr/chronos/01/en/glos_plml/typos7.html Why Call Them Back From Heaven? By Clifford Simak: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/757061 Panspermia: https://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/postcards-from-the-universe/life_traveling_in_space_a/ Alfred Russel Wallace's battle with flat-earthers: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/rosetta-stones/wallace-8217-s-woeful-wager-how-a-founder-of-modern-biology-got-suckered-by-flat-earthers/ D'Errico et al. (2001). An engraved bone fragment from c. 70,000-year-old Middle Stone Age levels at Blombos Cave, South Africa: implications for the origin of symbolism and language: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00060968 McBrearty and Brooks (2000). The revolution that wasn't: a new interpretation of the origin of modern human behaviour: https://doi.org/10.1006/jhev.2000.0435 Neanderthals and modern humans share the same FOXP2 “language” gene: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05859-7 QAnon supporters though JFK Jr. would return: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/11/02/qanon-jfk-jr-dallas/ The Nxivm Cult: https://www.nytimes.com/article/nxivm-timeline.html

Blombos Cave is an archaeological site in South Africa where evidence of humans using abstracts symbols to express meaning were found. Our ability to reason, use metaphor and create symbols makes poetry, science, the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Mass, possible. But there is a dark side! The readings for the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/012322.cfm Arthur's Dream by Nutmeg is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License.

Episode: 1908 In which Blombos Cave triples the length of the Upper Paleolithic Era.  Today, let's visit Blombos Cave.

Scientists have just discovered the oldest known rock drawing in the world. The drawing was found in Blombos Cave, South Africa, which has been the source of numerous artifacts from about 70,000 to 100,000 years ago.  Created on a rock fragment, the drawing was composed with crosshatch strokes and was described to resemble a “hashtag.” Based on archaeologists' findings, the 73,000-year-old drawing was sketched by Homo sapiens, the species to which all modern humans belong. Researchers studied the artifact using electron microscopy, a procedure that makes observing small details easier, and Raman spectroscopy [spek-TROS-kuh-pee], a technique that helps identify the chemical composition of a sample. Through these methods, the researchers determined that the strokes were drawn with red ochre [OH-ker], a rock rich in iron. Furthermore, the researchers speculated that the drawing was part of a bigger and more complex picture, based on its stroke patterns. For a long time, archaeologists believed that the Homo sapiens only began drawing symbols on rocks when these humans entered Europe about 40,000 years ago. The recent discovery is a sign that early humans had started doing this practice even before they migrated to Europe. While the artifact from Blombos Cave is the oldest known drawing made on a rock, an earlier discovery has already shown evidence of early humans using tools to mark surfaces. In 2014, researchers found a zigzag line carved on a 400,000- to 500,000-year-old shell in Indonesia. They concluded that it was carved by an earlier human species called Homo erectus and is considered to be the oldest engraving ever discovered.

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:02:34 Archaeologists working in the Blombos Cave in South Africa have discovered what could be the world's oldest drawing - from 73,000 years ago. 00:10:40 Surfers have long believed that nearby dolphins are a good sign that there are no sharks around. But new research suggests that's not the case, as attacks on dolphins have increased in line with rising ocean temperatures. 00:19:33 The mirror test is an attempt to measure self-awareness in non-human animals. Now the Cleaner Wrasse has become the first fish ever to pass.   Become a Patreon and help us out! Come see Dr. Pamela Gay and the Science on Top team in Melbourne on 10 October 2018! Get your tickets to the Australian Skeptics National Convention!   This episode contains traces of Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson commenting on the dangers of smoking weed in space.

Matteo Scardovelli discusses a decorated piece of ochre from Blombos Cave in South Africa, and questions whether the beginning of decorative mark making is such a significant moment in human evolution, or whether other evidence shows fundamentally "human" behavior as far back as Homo erectus.

A new discovery of abstract symbolic drawings on a rock has been found in the Blombos Cave, about 300 km east of Cape Town in South Africa. The fragment - which some say looks a bit like a hashtag - puts the date of the earliest drawing at 73,000 years ago. As archaeologist Chris Henshilwood tells Adam Rutherford, the discovery is a "a prime indicator of modern cognition" in our species. Nearly half the human genome contains genes that regulate what your organs should be doing at a specific time of day, This has enormous potential importance to the efficacy of drugs - what time of day you take them could be a real issue. John Hogenesch from Cincinnatti Children's Hospital has been studying the genes that cycle with our daily lives. His new database of cyclic genes could help plan the best timing for a host of therapeutic interventions Physicist Helen Czerski has been in the Arctic for the last five weeks, aboard the Swedish research vessel and ice breaker Oden. As the expedition comes to a close we hear about the team's attempts to elucidate the driving forces behind the unusual weather patterns around the North Pole. Inside Science has been profiling authors shortlisted for the prestigious Royal Society science book prize. This week it's mathematician Hannah Fry's new book, Hello World: How to be human in the Age of Machines. You can hear extracts from it on Book of the Week on Radio 4 all this week too. Producer Adrian Washbourne.