TOOLS

Behind the rock is a tool, my cell phone. By current standards it’s old technology but it still works just fine.

In front of my cell phone is another bit of old technology that also still works just fine.

That worked piece of stone.

A friend from Israel brought it to me. He was surveying a site soon to be bulldozed that’s known to have artifacts. Apparently these types of sites are so common there that unless it’s some kind of major find, it’s OK just to plow the stuff under.

So the friend picks up a few of these obviously worked stones figuring that he’s got something pretty damn old. Probably pre-Egyptian, so maybe 7000 years old? Curious, he takes them to a local archeologist (they’re more common than liquor stores in Israel) for some answers.

The archeologist points out that these stones are only worked on one side (I looked, they are.) so they’re classified as Oldowan Style. That puts them not at a mere 7,000 years old but closer to 70,000 years old, give or take a few months.

That’s incredibility old!

So old , the archeologist continues, that they were probably made by something not of our species. Something older. Pre-Homo Sapiens.

I did a quick check with Wikipedia (How could you question anything there?) and found that Homo Erectus is the likely candidate for our tool maker.

Can you imagine? Some kind of little Monkey-Man* did the work on this. A tiny, half brained, maybe furry, pre-human ancestor of ours. That’s just amazing.

More amazing than the phone. You can’t cut up a gazelle with a phone.



* I do have a basic understanding of evolution and realize that man did NOT evolve from monkeys but shared a common ancestor. But isn’t it fun to say Monkey-Man? Someone should write a song...

Too late.