From Newsgroup: sci.anthropology.paleo


https://www.iflscience.com/300000-year-old-wooden-tools-made-by-denisovans-discovered-in-china-79857

A remarkable collection of wooden tools dated to
around 300,000 years ago has been discovered at an
archaeological site in southwest China. Specially
designed to harvest vegetation, the assemblage
reveals how prehistoric hominids in this
subtropical environment relied heavily on plants
for their diet, while also highlighting the
surprising technological skill of East Asian
humans at a time when the region was supposedly
inhabited by primitive communities.
...



https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adr8540
300,000-year-old wooden tools from Gantangqing,
southwest China

EditorrCOs summary
Wooden tools from the early Paleolithic Period are
extremely rare, with only two previously known
discoveries, one in Europe and one in Africa. In
both cases, the tools were hunting implements,
spears, and spear tips. Liu et al. describe several
wooden tools from a 300,000-year-old site in China.
These tools were not used for hunting, but rather
appear to have been designed to obtain and process
plant foods. This finding shows that wooden tools
were being used across a much wider range at the
time, and also provides insight into how cultures
from different environments may have developed
locally useful implements. rCoSacha Vignieri


Abstract
Evidence of Early and Middle Pleistocene wooden
implements is exceptionally rare, and existing
evidence has been found only in Africa and western
Eurasia. We report an assemblage of 35 wooden
implements from the site of Gantangqing in
southwestern China, which was found associated
with stone tools, antler billets (soft hammers),
and cut-marked bones and is dated from ~361,000
to ~250,000 years at a 95% confidence interval.
The wooden implements include digging sticks and
small, complete, hand-held pointed tools. The
sophistication of many of these tools offsets the
seemingly rCLprimitiverCY aspects of stone tool
assemblages in the East Asian Early Paleolithic.
This discovery suggests that wooden implements
might have played an important role in hominin
survival and adaptation in Middle Pleistocene
East Asia.

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: sci.anthropology.paleo

On 7/10/25 12:14 AM, Primum Sapienti wrote:

A remarkable collection of wooden tools dated to
around 300,000 years ago has been discovered at an
archaeological site in southwest China.

Well the word "Remarkable" is extraneous. It's a
value judgement, editorializing. Whoever wrote it
wants you to internalize a narrative.

Specially
designed to harvest vegetation

"Specially" is another value judgement, editorial.

To be honest, even stating as fact that it's for
harvesting vegetation is a reach.

While we're at it: What vegetation?

And notice the word "Harvesting?" What an odd
choice. Isn't the correct or most accurate word
"Harvesting" as we are speaking of a pre agricultural
people?

IF and I do mean IF these artifacts were tools for
the collection of food, would these people not be
hunter-gatherers and the collection of vegetation
would be "Gathering." Correct?

the assemblage

Okay maybe they're showing off their spiffy new
vocabulary or maybe a pattern is forming here, or
already formed...

reveals how prehistoric hominids in this
subtropical environment relied heavily on plants
for their diet

So they avoided the word "Humans" because that invokes
all kinds of nonsense, like the idea that Out of Africa
purity bullshit can be questioned. But these would be
humans.

Correct?

Homo stretches back at least as far as habilis, officially,
and these Specially designed for harvesting" tools are
significantly new than that -- a few million years younger
than the usual dates thrown around. We we're speaking of
humans.

But they don't say "Humans," now do they?

And with precisely ZERO confirmation on what these artifacts
were used for they can tell that these humans relied HEAVILY
on vegetation for food?

Do you think, and I mean if you really tried here, you could
word this in a way that isn't disseminating a narrative and
is instead trying to be limited to useful facts?

while also highlighting the
surprising technological skill

"Surprising" and "technological skills." And here I thought
they were talking about sticks...

Can you see this? This isn't an accident. Nobody sat down
to do this right only to sneeze and produce this claptrap.

of East Asian
humans at a time when the region was supposedly
inhabited by primitive communities.

Even the word "Communities" is loaded!

They're not even humans, by the way this tripe is written,
yet the live in communities, "Harvest" plants -- which they
rely heavily on -- and "Specially Design" tools that are of
a surprising level of "technological skill."

Something like that. Or, exactly that... according to this
rubbish.
--
https://jtem.tumblr.com/tagged/The%20Book%20of%20JTEM/page/5
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2