Siphusauctum has a long stem, with a calyx – a bulbous cup-like structure – near the top which encloses an unusual filter feeding system and a gut. The animal is thought to have fed by filtering particles from water actively pumped into its calyx through small holes. The stem ends with a small disc which anchored the animal to the seafloor. Siphusauctum lived in large clusters, as indicated by slabs containing over 65 individual specimens.

Lorna O’Brien, a PhD candidate in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto and her supervisor Jean-Bernard Caron, curator of invertebrate palaeontology at the Royal Ontario Museum, report on the discovery today in the online science journal PLoS ONE.

“Most interesting is that this feeding system appears to be unique among animals. Recent advances have linked many bizarre Burgess Shale animals as primitive members of many animal groups that are found today but Siphusauctum defies this trend. We do not know where it fits in relation to other organisms,” said O’Brien.

Link -via TYWKIWDBI

(Image credit: Royal Ontario Museum)

It’s likely the larvae of many ancient insects also passively absorbed oxygen from water and were not able to regulate their oxygen intake very well—a big danger when oxygen levels were so high.

One way to decrease the risk of oxygen toxicity would have been to grow bigger, since large larvae would absorb lower percentages of the gas, relative to their body sizes, than small larvae.

“If you grow larger, your surface area decreases relative to your volume,” Verberk explained.

Read more about the study at National geographic News. Link

(Image credit: Ned M. Seidler, National Geographic)

“N. rex was a very robust and peculiar rabbit,” project leader Josep Quintana told Discovery News. “Surely he was a very calm and peaceful animal that moved with slow, but powerful, movements.”

Quintana, a scientist at the Catalan Institute of Paleontology, and colleagues Meike Kohler and Salvador Moya-Sola describe the giant fossil rabbit in a Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology paper. They believe the rabbit lost the ability to hop, because the long, springy spine typical of modern bunnies was replaced by a short, stiff backbone.

The researchers think N. rex spent most of its days peacefully digging, searching for roots and tubers to eat.

Link -via The Daily What

(Image credit: Meike Köhler)

Fossil footprints and detailed studies of its anatomy have proven that Stegosaurus didn’t drag its tail on the mud, but actually walked erect, like an elephant, with its tail held horizontally, parallel to the ground. Its back wasn’t as arched as they had us believe, and the neck was not carried horizontally as usually depicted, but upright, like a bird’s.

Also, the tail spike cluster (known among paleontologists as the “thagomizer”) didn’t actually point upwards, but sideways. This made the tail a much deadlier and more efficient weapon; to stab an attacking predator, Stegosaurus only had to swing its tail horizontally; punctures matching the Stegosaurus’ tail spikes have been found in the bones of predatory dinosaurs from the same age and place, proving once and for all that Stegosaurus wasn’t any less dangerous than the ankylosaurs that would evolve later.

And that’s just the first of ten dinosaurs we once thought we knew. Link -via the Presurfer

by Lorenzo L. Love
Yreka, California
illustrations by Peaco Todd

It has often been said that the dog was the first animal domesticated by humans. The date of this has long been placed at 14,000 to 20,000 years before present. Recent analysis of mitochondrial DNA of dogs, wolves, and other canines show that dogs had actually split off from wolves 135,000 years ago. I propose that not only have paleontologists been mistaken about the date of the domestication of dogs, dogs were not even the first animals to be domesticated. This place of honor belongs to the ancestors of the common house cat, Felis catus.

The cat was the first animal to be domesticated, more than 4 million years ago, long before the genus Homo evolved. And in fact it was the cat, or rather the loss of cats, that molded and shaped the evolution of Homo. (If “domestication” doesn’t sit well with you when applied to the relationship between a prehuman primate and a cat, think of it as a quasi-symbiotic relationship.)

There are many unexplained matters in the early history of hominines. How could the australopithecines survive in Pliocene Africa? No tools for hunting, too small and weak to complete with other scavengers, teeth (in the gracile form) unadapted for plant eating, they seem to have been unable to even feed themselves. And the slow and small australopithecines would have been easy prey for the first large carnivore to come along. Where did they spend the night? In spite of their disadvantages, australopithecines managed to survive almost unchanged for 2 million years. How? And why did these survivors suddenly evolve into a new genus, Homo, just then the large carnivores were dying out? The answer to all these questions: the Pliocene Pussy Cat.

There are five sections to the Pliocene Pussy Cat Theory (PPCT). Subsistence, defense, shelter, extinction and evolution. But first some background.

Some Background

Modern domestic cats are descendants of the African wild cat, a species which hominines have always co-existed with. Compare this with the dog.

Modern dogs are descendants of the European Gray Wolf, a species that early hominines had no contact with. This by itself means that it is more likely that cats were domesticated first.

There are several cases of modern apes adopting cats as pets. One classic example that we will examine later is that of Koko the gorilla. Cases of apes adopting any other species are far rarer. The recent case in Osaka, Japan of a wild macaque monkey stealing a kitten shows that this is not limited to captive primates

Stray cats are far more likely to move into a human’s home, and by doing so to become self domesticated, than any other species. A cat, unlike any other domestic animal, will hunt on its own and then bring its prey back to its home and drop it in its master’s lap.

Few feline fossils have been found at australopithecine living sites. However, sick cats tend to go off and die by themselves. Any fossils found would be mistaken for wild cats. Even today, it is nearly impossible to tell a domestic cat’s skeleton from that of an African Wild Cat. We do know that cats and primates were in close association in the past, because cats are known to have acquired a primate virogene some 5 to 10 million years ago.

Subsistence; or What the Cat Dragged In

How did the australopithecines find food given that they had no natural adaptations for hunting, no tools and (in the case of the gracile form) teeth unadapted for a vegetarian diet? Their cats fed them. Anyone who has owned modern cats knows that there is nothing cats love more than to bring home presents of food for their masters.

It was based on the numbers of mice, birds, lizards, toads, frogs and large insects that my cats bring me that I first developed my theory regarding the early (4 million years before present) domestication of the ancestors of the African wild cat.

Australopithecines massed from 29 to 45 kilograms. They would have required about 1000 to 2000 calories per day. A nice juicy mouse has between 200 and 400 calories. So at worse case, an australopithecine would need 10 mice or their equivalent each day. As a cat, in a mouse (or prey equivalent) rich environment, can easily catch far more than they can eat, it would not take many cats to support an australopithecine. Five cats per hominine, each bringing in an average of two extra mice (or prey equivalent) each day, together with what little the hominine could find for itself, would easily support an australopithecine. Based on the above points, it seems clear that the best way for australopithecines to have fed themselves was not by hunting, not by scavenging carnivore kills, not by gathering plant food, but by having their pet cats bring them small game.

Defense; or Cat Throwing as a Martial Art

Question: How did the early hominines protect themselves from the many large predators with which they coexisted, without any weapons?

Answer: They did have a weapon. The cat.

Imagine that you have an angry tomcat thrown at your face. That would discourage even a lion or a hyena, at least long enough for the thrower to make his escape. Hard on the cat, but they breed replacements quickly. Male cats would be the primary weapon. The australopithecine may not have been able to conceptualize that they were preserving females for future breeding, however it doesn’t take much thought to know that the slightly larger tomcats would make a better weapon.

Two million years of being carried around as a defensive weapon may account for the modern cat’s desire to be held. This carrying of cats, while almost certainly not the cause of bipedalism in Homo, would certainly have reinforced the use of a bipedal posture. I’m surprised that people don’t still carry cats as an anti-mugging defense. It works better than mace.

Experimental Proof

After obtaining a number of cats and human volunteers, perform the following steps:

1. Have volunteer attack you.
2. Throw cat at head of attacker.
3. Call ambulance for attacker.
4. Repeat steps 1 through 3 until volunteers decline to attack.

As you will see, cats can be very effective in both fighting off an attack and in preventing future attacks.

Shelter; or The Static Cling Theory

At night, the African savanna can be a savage and dangerous place even today.

During the time of our australopithecine ancestors it was far more dangerous than it is now. It is hard to see how a small and defenseless animal like an australopithecine could survive it on the ground. It has often been said that an australopithecine, with its feet and legs well adapted to bipedalism, could not climb trees very well, and would have a very hard time spending an entire night in a tree hanging on with just its hands. Females with young would have been especially vulnerable.

Other explanations of how they spent the night (such as brush fences) have their own problems. But what if they had “help” to stay in the trees?

I have already demonstrated how australopithecines could have met their food needs by use of the cat and how they could have used cats for defense. Now I will show how they could have used cats for night time shelter.

As anyone who has ever petted a cat during dry weather (weather like that on the African savanna) knows, cat fur has the potential for producing enormous amounts of static electricity. Rub a child’s balloon on a cat and it will stick to the ceiling, sometimes for days. I propose that australopithecines used this static-producing property of cats to help them spend the nights safely in the trees, out of the reach of the many large carnivores that roamed the African savanna. If an australopithecine rubbed itself briskly with one or more cats, it might be able to build up a large enough electro-static charge for it to stick to the branches of the tree just as the balloon sticks to the ceiling.

It’s possible the australopithecines had to wait for the coming of the morning dew to discharge the static charge and allow them to drop to the ground. More likely they discharged themselves by urinating. A stream of urine is a good conductor. You can test this by peeing on an electric fence. This history may explain why humans have such a disproportional large penis, the largest penis of any primate. The males may have used the better aim their long penis gave them to “shoot down” the females and young.

The australopithecines may not have needed to rub the cats against their bodies themselves; the cats would have done it automatically. A few hundred generations of selective breeding of cats could easily have produced this behavior; this is a wink of an eye in evolutionary terms. Millions of years later, modern cats still show vestiges of this behavior.

Experimental Proof

I attempted to duplicate the australopithecine’s static cling on a test subject (myself), however at over 100 kilograms, the test subject was far heavier than an australopithecine, and not quite as hairy as the australopithecines are generally believed to have been. Also, only two cats were available for the experiment, and they were not at all cooperative. For these reasons the experiment failed. There was a weight decrease of several tens of grams but as this was due to blood loss, I do not consider it pertinent to the experiment. However, valuable data was gathered on the use of cats as weapons, so the experiment was not a total loss.

Perhaps somebody else would like to try the experiment. If anyone out there has access to a young chimpanzee of a weight of 45 kilograms or less and a large number of cats, just rub the chimp briskly with the cats until the chimp sticks to the ceiling. In order to get it back down, do what an australopithecine would do and piss on it. Just make sure the chimp does not have a full bladder during the test or you may find the experiment is over before it starts.

Extinction; or Killer Kitties

It is curious that during the time of the australopithecines, many species of very large and very dangerous carnivores became extinct. The hominines could not have caused this directly, so it must have been done by their cats.

But how could a little pussy cat kill a giant hyena or a sabertooth lion? I have been giving this question a lot of thought and I have come up with a scenario in which the Pliocene pussy cats could cause the extinction of large carnivores. It came to me in a Darwinian flash of inspiration while thinking of Farley Mowat’s classic book Never Cry Wolf.

Mowat tells about the wolves which everyone had believed lived solely on big game prey. He found that the wolves really lived on mice for most of the year.

Let us propose that the large African carnivores lived in a similar manner. They would feed heavily on large prey animals at certain times of the year, i.e. during grazing animal migration, but for most of the year they would feed exclusively on mice or other rodents. When the Pliocene pussy cat population boomed due to their association with hominids, they simply out competed the larger carnivores by eating all of the mice. Most of the large carnivores died out, leaving only those few species present today who did not feed on rodents.

We see a similar situation today in Australia and New Zealand where imported Holocene pussy cats are in the process of causing mass extinction of the native animals. We need a study of five million year old hyena scats. I am confidence that they have a lot of rodent bones and hair in them compared to modern hyena scats.

Evolution; or The Making of Mankind

Australopithecines remained more or less unchanged for 2 million years. This shows that they were very well adapted to their environment. So what forced their evolution into Homo?

Australopithecines were successful only because of their association with cats. The loss of the use of cats would have forced australopithecines as a species to change or die. Cats also remained unchanged during this period which shows that they too were well adapted.

I believe that cats were so successful due to their association with australopithecines that their population increased beyond the environment’s carrying capability. The end of the Pliocene is marked by the Malthusian collapse of the cat population.

This may have been due to disease caused by overcrowding, but there is evidence that it was due to overhunting. Henry Wesselman has done research that shows that the micro-mammal fauna, rodents and other small mammals, underwent a sudden population collapse and shift in species types. Cats ate themselves out of business.

No longer able to obtain food, shelter or protection from cats, most australopithecines died out. Only the bigger and the smartest managed to survive. Some entire species of cat using australopithecines were unable to adapt, and so Australopithecus africanus quickly went extinct. The plant eating robust australopithicenes were not as dependent on cats as the graciles, and so were able to hold on longer, but in the end, A. robustus and A. boisei met their doom. Only a small group of gracile australopithecines in East Africa were able to adapt and change. The chaotic morphologies of Homo rudolfensis, H. habilis, H. microcranous, H. ergaster and other hominines of this period so odd that they can not be assigned to a species show a creature under severe evolutionary pressure.

Eventfully, out of this transitional period, Homo erectus emerged, a species fully adapted to life without cats. With its larger size, stone weapons and most of all fire, H. erectus could have provided for their own food and defense; and would have no need to sleep in trees. Indeed, its large size would no doubt have prevented erectus from taking advantage of static cling. H. erectus had no need for cats.

A Living Model for a Cat Using Hominid

One way to find out how primates get along with cats is to ask one. Koko, the famous sign language using gorilla, has long had pet cats. Many films of Koko show her playing with her pet kitten with a great deal of love and tenderness. Koko often talks about her first cat, All Ball, which was killed by a car years ago. Koko’s “Mom” and translator, Dr. Francine “Penny” Patterson reports that Koko still mourns for this long dead cat. I am sure that if Koko’s present cat is allowed to roam free, it will be bringing home mice and other prey, just as almost all free roaming house cats do. As a gorilla has about the same mental capability as an australopithecine, Koko and her kitten can serve as a model for the early domestication of the ancestors of the modern cat by members of genus Australopithecus and/or Ardipithecus over 4 million years ago.

No other hominine evolutionary theory can present a living model. There is no ape living in the savanna. There is no ape living in an aquatic environment. But there is an ape living with a cat. As a gorilla, Koko would not think of eating a mouse that her cat brought her, but there is little doubt that human ancestors were not so choosy. As famed writer Farley Mowat once proved while on a field trip as a student biologist, even modern humans can survive quite well on a diet of nothing but mice.

Two questions remain.

How Did it All Start?

The Aquatic Ape Theory (AAT) states that the very early hominines had a semi-aquatic phase in which they lived in a littoral area and fed largely on fish and shellfish. PPCT is fully compatible with AAT. We all know that cats love fish. It could be that during our semi-aquatic phase, when we were eating a lot of fish, cats first came into contact with human ancestors, by stealing leftover fish heads. A bond was formed between feline and hominine, with the hominine supplying most of the food at first, and then after moving out into the savanna, cats supplying most of the food.

What Did the Cats Get Out of It?

Basically the same thing they get out of humans today, minus the canned cat food. Protection for their kittens would have been the most important thing, but the cats would have also appreciated a warm body to curl up next to at night, and something that only a hominine can provide, fingers to scratch that spot on the neck that can’t be gotten to any other way. As any cat owner will tell you, the bond between cat and human is a deep one that goes beyond physical needs.

Timeline

I propose the following timeline:

4.4 million years ago — Ardipithecus ramidus, a non-cat using woodland biped makes first contact with Felis attica, the ancestor of all modern small cats, which was about the same size as a modern house cat.

4.2 to 3.9 million years ago — Australopithecus anamensis, a transitional species, learns to make full use of the cat which enabled its move onto the savanna.

3.9 to 2.4 million years ago — Australopithecus afarensis is fully adapted to life on the savanna using cats for subsistence, defense and shelter. Those Felis atticas in association with hominines evolve into Felis lunensis. Wild Felis atticas evolve into various species of small wild cats.

2.4 to 1.8 million years ago — Homo habilis, another transitional species, loses the use of cats and is forced to find other means of support. During this period, other cat using hominines such a A. africanus and the robust australopithecines failed to make the transition to non-cat life and went extinct. This population crash of Felis lunensis forces the evolution of Felis silvestris, the modern African Wild Cat, as the surviving cats return to the wild.

1.8 million years ago — Homo erectus is now fully adapted to life without cats. Felis silvestris is fully adapted to life without hominines.

4000 years ago — Homo sapiens re-domesticate the cat. Felis silvestris evolves into Felis catus, the modern domestic cat.

I am looking forward to having my Pliocene Pussy Cat Theory receiving the same respect and consideration that the Aquatic Ape Theory has received.

© Copyright 2001 Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)

_____________________

This article is republished with permission from the September-October 2001 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!

Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.

Scientists think the adult was an expectant pterosaur mother that somehow broke her left wing, causing her to fall into the lake and drown. The body sank to the bottom and eventually expelled the egg.

“During the decay process, you get a buildup of gases and pressure inside the carcass, and that tends to expel things out,” said study co-author David Unwin, a paleontologist at the University of Leicester in the U.K. The egg “didn’t go very far. It just came out of the body and sat there.”

In addition to the associated egg, the fossil has a larger pelvis than other known Darwinopterus fossils, which is consistent with the animal being a female.

Chemical analysis of the egg suggests that, instead of laying hard-shell eggs and watching over the chicks, as most birds do, pterosaur mothers laid soft-shell eggs, which they buried in moist ground and abandoned.

The fossil gives clues as to how the eggs were formed and hatched, and since this is the first conclusively female fossil, we’re finding out more about sex differences in pterosaurs. Read more at National Geographic News. Link -Thanks, Marilyn!

(Image courtesy of Lü Junchang, Institute of Geology, Beijing)

When you think of prehistoric cats, you probably think of Smilodon, the saber-toothed tiger. There were plenty of other big cat species you may have never heard of, like the Xenosmilus, the cave lion, or the American lion. Pictured here is Machairodus kabir, which probably resembled a modern tiger with the addition of huge fangs. Oh, and it weighed over a thousand pounds! Link -via the Presurfer

The enormous wingspan gave P. chilensis certain advantages, like the ability to travel long distances and reach areas of the open ocean thick with potential prey. The researchers think it feasted on fish and squid, and may have trolled its hunting grounds with its lower beak skimming the water until its teeth could clamp down on a wriggling meal. But lead researcher Gerald Mayr says that a 17-foot wingspan is probably close to the maximum for a flying bird.

The bird flew over South America between 10 and 5 million years ago, which means it may have been seen by our hominid ancestors. Link

Previously: Argentavis magnificens

Today’s sperm whale has no functional teeth in its upper jaw and only small ones in its lower jaw (which are mostly used in fights). It feeds through suction, relying on a rush of water to carry its prey into its open mouth. But Leviathan’s mouth was full of huge teeth, the largest of which were a foot long and around 4 inches wide. This was no suction feeder! Leviathan clearly grabbed its prey with a powerful bite, inflicting deep wounds and tearing off flesh as killer whales do, but with a skull three times bigger.

Leviathan was at the very top of the food chain and it must have needed a lot of food. While modern sperm whales mainly eat squid, Lambert thinks that Leviathan used its fearsome teeth to kill its own kind – the giant baleen whales. At the same point in prehistory, baleen whales started becoming much bigger and they were certainly the most common large animals in the area that Leviathan lived in. Lambert thinks that the giant predator evolved to take advantage of this rich source of energy. He says, “We think that medium-size baleen whales, rich in fat, would have been very convenient prey for Leviathan.”

This whale swam off the coast of Peru 12 million years ago. There’s lots more about Leviathan melvillei at Not Exactly Rocket Science. Link

The Cro Magnon were said to be the precursor to the Homo sapiens, however we know very little about their religion, traditions, and way of life. What we do know is that their cave drawings were strategically placed in inaccessible areas. What were they trying to accomplish and what did the drawings mean?

What’s interesting about the Cro Magnon cave drawings is that the animals are quite lifelike in their orientation, yet the people drawn were not. Furthermore, the animals painted-bison, horses, wild boar, and bears-depict arrows and spears plunging into their bodies at the most critical points during a hunt. This same action is shared with the Native Americans, who similarly shot arrows into certain points within the animals to provide the animal with a swift death.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by lannaxe96.

As if answering the dare to make us feel more inadequate, the world gave us Argentavis magnificens, the largest flying bird in recorded history. These beasts possessed a wingspan between 19- and 26-feet, and a wing area of 75-feet, which you may notice is only slightly smaller than a Lear Jet. In addition to its staggering size and 240-pound weight, the bird is believed to have swallowed prey as large as cattle in one fell swoop.

Link -via Gorilla Mask

For instance, the rodent-like RatCroc had buckteeth for rooting through the ground after tubers or simple animals.

The flat-bodied PancakeCroc was the “ultimate sit-and-wait predator,” Sereno said. The animal would lie motionless and “wait for something stupid” to swim into its rail-thin, 3-foot-long (0.9-meter-long) jaws, which were lined with rows of spiky teeth.

DuckCroc had a long, smooth, sensitive nose to poke through vegetation as well as hook-shaped teeth to snag frogs and small fish in shallow water.

And the plant-eating DogCroc had lanky legs that meant it was likely spry enough to run into the water if threatened.

By far the mightiest of the lot, BoarCroc was a 20-foot-long (6.1-meter-long) “saber-toothed cat in armor” that ate dinosaurs for dinner.

DuckCroc and DogCroc were previously known to scientists, and the rest are new discoveries by a team headed by Paul Sereno, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago. The expedition found fossils of all five in Niger and Morocco. Link (with video) -via Digg

(image credit: Mike Hettwer/National Geographic)

“These were big dinosaur versions of a Sherman tank,” Bill Parsons said. “They were armored and they withstood whatever came at them, and they just kept going.” T. cooneyorum was about 15 to 20 feet (4.5 to 6 meters) in length.

And this dinosaur had its share of protection, with two sets of stubby horns, one on the cheeks and the other around its eyes, two thick domes at the back of the skull and thickened areas around the nasal region.

Bill Parsons suspects T. cooneyorum was covered with hundreds or even thousands of bony plates equipped with spikes and a tail tipped with a club, similar to other ankylosaurs. Such protection, along with a swinging clubbed tail, would have kept at bay any of the small dinosaurs around at the time, Parsons said.

T. cooneyorum dates from around 112 million years ago. Link -via the Presurfer

(image credit: Bill Parsons)

Fossils of flying reptiles come in two versions: the older long-tailed pterosaurs and the more recent short-tailed versions. The fossil gap between the two was a mystery until 20 skeletons of a new species were discovered early in 2009 in northeast China. The new pterosaur was named Darwinopterus in honor of the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth.

“Darwinopterus came as quite a shock to us,” explained David Unwin part of the research team and based at the University of Leicester’s School of Museum Studies. “We had always expected a gap-filler with typically intermediate features such as a moderately elongate tail – neither long nor short – but the strange thing about Darwinopterus is that it has a head and neck just like that of advanced pterosaurs, while the rest of the skeleton, including a very long tail, is identical to that of primitive forms”.

The discovery lends credence to the theory that evolution is not an even process, but contains periods of rapid evolution. Link -via Digg

(image credit: Mark Witton, University of Portsmouth)

White and his colleagues found so many teeth of different Ardipithecus individuals that they could compare male and female canines with some confidence. The male teeth turn out to be surprisingly blunted. This result suggests that hominids shifted away from a typical ape social structure early in our ancestry. If this was a result of males forming long-term bonds with females and helping raise young, this shift was able to occur while hominids were still living a very ape-like life. Ardipithecus existed about 2 million years before the oldest evidence of stone tools, suggesting that technology was not the trigger for the evolution of nice hominid guys.

There have been a couple of hominid bones found that are even older than Ardipithecus, but none with enough fossils to even begin reconstructing a skeleton. Link -via Metafilter

He analysed 1,500 prehistoric sites in England and Wales and was able to connect all of them to at least two other sites using isosceles triangles – these are triangles with two sides the same length.

This, he says, is proof that the landmarks were deliberately created as navigational aides. Many were built within sight of each other and provided a simple way to get from A to B.

For more complex journeys, they would have broken up the route into a series of easy to navigate steps.

Anyone starting at Silbury Hill in Wiltshire, for instance, could have used the grid to get to Lanyon Quoit in Cornwall without a map.
Mr Brooks added: ‘The sides of some of the triangles are over 100 miles across, yet the distances are accurate to within 100 metres. You cannot do that by chance.

At the link, you can see a map illustrating Brooks’ hypothesis.

Link via Gizmodo

Image by flickr user Danny Sullivan used under creative commons license.

Flax was growing wild at the time. And it turns out not only to be a source of edible grain, but of fiber. These fibers were twisted — a sure sign that the flax had been spun.

Flax fibers woven together make linen, but in this case, linen doesn’t mean crisply pressed summer suits. Bar-Yosef says the fibers they found in the cave were probably braided together, macrame style.

“You can make headgear, you can make baskets, you can make ropes and strings, and so on,” he says.

Bar-Yosef didn’t find any of those objects in the cave — that’s too much to hope for 30,000 years later. But the researchers report in Science magazine that they did find evidence that the fibers were knotted and dyed — black, gray, turquoise and even pink. That’s consistent with other artifacts that show an artistic flair among these early people.

Link via Scientific American

Photo: Eliso Kvavadze/NPR

“We discovered that when we used ochre, the glue is much more robust, and the stone tool doesn’t come off the shaft,” said study team member Lyn Wadley of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.

But making the glue wasn’t easy for the ancient Africans.

It was mentally taxing work that would have required humans to account for differences in the chemistry of gum harvested from different trees and in the iron content of ochre from different sites.

“They couldn’t possibly have known about chemical pH or iron content … but they knew that certain combinations of things worked very well,” Wadley said.

Link