Twin Ritual.

By w.y. in Everything Else on Nov 17, 2006 at 1:24 am

twin-ritual.jpg From ScienceShots:

Anthropologists working in eastern Austria have uncovered the bodies of three infants buried by hunter gatherers 27,000 years ago. Two appear to be twins because they were buried together and have leg bones that are the same length. Although babies buried by Neandertals and modern humans have been found that date farther back, the new bodies are unusual in that they are adorned with ivory beads, red ochre, and mammoth bone. That makes this the oldest evidence of the ornate decoration of infants in the human fossil record, indicating a shift to a more modern social behavior in this Stone Age culture.


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  1. Tim
    Nov 17th, 2006 at 10:25 am

    The 27,000 years is a guess and could be a little as 100 years old. Anthropologists have no foolproof way of knowing the date of items found. Accurate methods of testing has yet to be found.

    I wish they would just say “We Think it is xxx old” instead of just picking a number out of thin air.

  2. sam
    Nov 17th, 2006 at 4:42 pm

    Actually, Tim, they do have several accurate methods. There are relative dating methonds (Stratigraphy, flourine dating, biostratigraphy, poleomagnetic reversals) and chronometric dating methods (carbon-14 dating, potassium-argon dating, argon-argon dating, etc.) I don’t know where you got the idea that they just pick numbers out of thin air, but maybe you should do a little research.

  3. Jenny
    Nov 17th, 2006 at 5:29 pm

    Plus, it’s not like these methods are very new. Radiocarbon dating was discovered in 1949, and stratigraphy has been around… forever?

  4. Alex
    Nov 17th, 2006 at 6:58 pm

    Next year, it will be 27,001 years old!


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