Europe's Earliest Bone Tools Found in Britain - BBC News

One of the most dynamic areas in current archaeology is the re-dating of technologies. In turn, this alters our understanding of human development. Paul Rincon describes the Homo heidelbergensis Boxgrove site in West Sussex, and the significance of these possibly 500,000-year-old finds. Bruce Bower moves us closer to ourselves with The Oldest Known Grass Beds from 200,000 Years Ago Included Insect Repellents. This South African discovery more than doubles the advent of plant bedding, and like the UK report illustrates extrapolations made from such data. Tessa Koumoundouros keeps us in southern Africa with the news that Humans Have Been Making Poison Arrows For Over 70,000 Years, Study Finds. Current indigenous population practices as well as inferences based upon how poisoned and un-poisoned arrows accomplish their tasks helped lead to this conclusion. Even the appearance of new diseases can be approximated, as the Remains of 17th Century Bishop Support Neolithic Emergence of Tuberculosis. A tuberculosis genome reconstructed from Bishop Peder Winstrup's lungs provided "a secure and independent calibration for our estimates of how old TB, as we know it, actually is," per Dr. Kirsten Bos. The conclusion: "the pathogen is much younger than previously believed." This has implications for understanding the onset of pastoralism and sedentary lifestyles. (WM)

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from THE ANOMALIST https://bbc.in/2EaIC9X