Laziness led to extinction of Homo erectus according to Australian National University

[ichingcarpenter]

New archaeological research from The Australian National University (ANU) has found that Homo erectus, an extinct species of primitive humans, went extinct in part because they were 'lazy'.

An archaeological excavation of ancient human populations in the Arabian Peninsula during the Early Stone Age, found that Homo erectus used 'least-effort strategies' for tool making and collecting resources.

This 'laziness' paired with an inability to adapt to a changing climate likely played a role in the species going extinct, according to lead researcher Dr. Ceri Shipton of the ANU School of Culture, History and Language.

"They really don't seem to have been pushing themselves," Dr. Shipton said.

"I don't get the sense they were explorers looking over the horizon. They didn't have that same sense of wonder that we have."

Dr. Shipton said this was evident in the way the species made their stone tools and collected resources.

"To make their stone tools they would use whatever rocks they could find lying around their camp, which were mostly of comparatively low quality to what later stone tool makers used," he said.

"At the site we looked at there was a big rocky outcrop of quality stone just a short distance away up a small hill.

"But rather than walk up the hill they would just use whatever bits had rolled down and were lying at the bottom.

"When we looked at the rocky outcrop there were no signs of any activity, no artefacts and no quarrying of the stone.

"They knew it was there, but because they had enough adequate resources they seem to have thought, 'why bother?'".

This is in contrast to the stone tool makers of later periods, including early Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, who were climbing mountains to find good quality stone and transporting it over long distances.

Dr. Shipton said a failure to progress technologically, as their environment dried out into a desert, also contributed to the population's demise.

"Not only were they lazy, but they were also very conservative," Dr. Shipton said.

"The sediment samples showed the environment around them was changing, but they were doing the exact same things with their tools.

"There was no progression at all, and their tools are never very far from these now dry river beds. I think in the end the environment just got too dry for them."

The excavation and survey work was undertaken in 2014 at the site of Saffaqah near Dawadmi in central Saudi Arabia.



Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-08-laziness-extinction-homo-erectus.html#jCp


Homo erectus
From Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_erectus

[Orph]

It's too bad they went extinct. Otherwise I could parlay that "laziness gene" into money. I could demand special government handouts, compensations, and privilege's due to this laziness gene that I inherited from my long ago ancestors.

It's not my fault. I'm a victim. I can't help but be lazy. Pay me money.

Ahhhhh well. It was a good thought. :P

[Flash]

Lesson, harsh enough environment makes you brighter and more agile to survive.

Because, like Orph, these days, don't I know so many but so many that are as lazy as described for Homo Erectus.

[ichingcarpenter]

They were too busy making and drinking booze according to another study I just read

[CurEus]

I read this article last month BUT I was actually TOO LAZY to post it.

[Deux Corbeaux]

I read this article last month BUT I was actually TOO LAZY to post it.

See? That’s how it starts.

[Antagenet]

"Not only were they lazy, but they were also very conservative," Dr. Shipton said.

More Liberal propaganda BS.
It's gotten to where I dont believe a lot of so called "scientific" reports anymore.

[Bill Ryan]

Hilarious. :)

Actually, listening to Richard Dolan recently talking to Joseph Farrell (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?97768-Richard-Dolan-s-Radio-Shows-and-Interviews&p=1243490&viewfull=1#post1243490) (and also, earlier, to Gordon White (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?97768-Richard-Dolan-s-Radio-Shows-and-Interviews&p=1242499&viewfull=1#post1242499)), I'd agree that it's FAR more likely that our ancestors were intelligent, proactive, perceptive, aware, highly tuned into their environment, and actively problem-solving every hour of the day — successfully, too.

In comparison, we, now, may be the [very!] lazy ones.

[ichingcarpenter]

"Not only were they lazy, but they were also very conservative," Dr. Shipton said.

More Liberal propaganda BS.
It's gotten to where I dont believe a lot of so called "scientific" reports anymore.

I really hate this so called left /right paradigm people can't get over. Let's look at the word itself
Conservative which means holding to traditional attitudes and values and cautious about change or innovation.
Now if they had gone out their paradigm of staying where they were and got better stone to make better tools they might have evolved.

I wouldn't call exploring new things Liberal but progressive innovation...... which means progress....
Are we now gonna redefine the word conservative so in any use it doesn't offend you?

I thinking conserving your resources is a good idea as hunters did so the next season they didn't deplete the herd.
Teddy Roosevelt understood this and he was a progressive if you want to go there and know your history on what he gave this nation. Was he conservative or progressive?


The ancient humans . didn't belong to a political party so its use doesn't have any relevance to making this political

[Sophocles]

And they (our ancestors) may also have been a bit less xenophobic than us :)

50,000-Year-Old Bone Fragment Reveals First Known Half Neanderthal, Half Denisovan Child (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8A2nrj47V8)
M8A2nrj47V8


So from this single genome, we are able to detect multiple instances of interactions between Neandertals and Denisovans.

[ichingcarpenter]

And they (our ancestors) may also have been a bit less xenophobic than us :)

50,000-Year-Old Bone Fragment Reveals First Known Half Neanderthal, Half Denisovan Child (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8A2nrj47V8)
M8A2nrj47V8


So from this single genome, we are able to detect multiple instances of interactions between Neandertals and Denisovans.

Honestly I saw that and was gonna post that but did too many posts already...... guess I'm lazy
You need to post this story separately for it needs its own discussion

[A Voice from the Mountains]

It's too bad they went extinct. Otherwise I could parlay that "laziness gene" into money. I could demand special government handouts, compensations, and privilege's due to this laziness gene that I inherited from my long ago ancestors.

Yes, you could demand every working person to hand over their accumulated resources to the lazy and retard their own progress.

That whole mentality is a real ball and chain, not only for hard-working people, but for the entire human race. Even third-world countries today receive benefits from the technological innovations that come from the free market system. When the best people do well, it helps everyone, but the scum at the top don't actually want that.



"Not only were they lazy, but they were also very conservative," Dr. Shipton said.

The only reason they say this is because they also argue that ancient people used the same stone tools for millennia without ever figuring out anything more advanced. I think they've just screwed the chronology up, and so you have otherwise-modern humans (not homo erectus, but homo sapiens sapiens) supposedly running around for thousands of years after the ice age with primitive arrowheads before learning how to make an extra notch in them to better attach them to a stick. It's completely ridiculous.

A single generation could figure out how to make an extra notch just from a lifetime of trial and error, even as short as their lives were back then. But that would collapse their dating system so they have to stretch everything out as far as possible in order to make certain past events seem irrelevant to current events, even when the different kinds of artifacts "mysteriously" appear in the exact same archaeological strata. "Cosmic conspiracy" seems to be an appropriate term. They don't want us to understand our history and how close it is to us right now.



Actually, listening to Richard Dolan recently talking to Joseph Farrell (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?97768-Richard-Dolan-s-Radio-Shows-and-Interviews&p=1243490&viewfull=1#post1243490) (and also, earlier, to Gordon White (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?97768-Richard-Dolan-s-Radio-Shows-and-Interviews&p=1242499&viewfull=1#post1242499)), I'd agree that it's FAR more likely that our ancestors were intelligent, proactive, perceptive, aware, highly tuned into their environment, and actively problem-solving every hour of the day — successfully, too.

Exactly.

So why would it take them 5,000 years to advance from one form of arrowhead to a slightly different one?

That is what they are referring to as "conservative." They imagine a lack of innovation, because of the time frames they've constructed.


This is supposed to be many thousands of years of human innovation:

https://mlsvc01-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/f32ca80f101/d0dffd62-a340-403f-a41b-dfb7744e5cea.gif

And yet in less than 1000 years we went from bows and arrows to nuclear bombs and space lasers.

I have papers from archaeological journals where archaeologists are resorting to all kinds of bizarre theories to try to explain why spear point styles that are supposedly from thousands of years apart are found in the same strata.

[Sunny-side-up]

Who in the majority of the "WE" (as you put it Bill) have the free time to do any real in-tune, proactive living any more, we are totally governed by the "Time Master"

WE do have much spare time, in which we do our own, individual thing outside of the we.
To the most part we (all the lucky ones that is), have the fabric of our lives spread out before us.

We could be cleaver enough to create and develop our arrow heads into better versions, but if it takes power from the time masters, the PTB, it will be brought up from under the collective whole and thrown in the bin.
Keeping us down.

We live by the clock, it gives us our routine lives minute by minute, day by day. year by year.

We graze around the overflowing pastures of the Super-Sized "Super Markets " (Hypermarkets)

We go virtual hunting through the Internet, ebay and the amazons to find our cloths, and supplies etc.

We have our bath and wash in our preheated personal, always flowing water holes "Tap Water"

We go to the ready stocked social drinking/eating houses/bars and pubs.

We spectate and cheer the warriors of the virtual tribe/clans of the big games

We are also feed by the MSM and established Sciences

We are on the whole very weak, soft and pampered.

We have to live most of the time in the Work which give us our currency which is just enough to keep us in that routine.
On the whole it is a safe routine for many but not, to the greater extent a healthy, proactive, perceptive, truly aware life.

If the system stooped most would not have a clue how to continue, or the space or the means.

Maybe this is the way of the lost civilisations who's cities we find under the soil or tangled in the fast demising forests and jungles.
Those peoples of old, with their personal skills could leave their valleys (Their personal civilisations) and go join with others peoples in other valleys, we today all live in one big valley, no other valleys to go to when this one comes to an end.

Maybe that is why they joined together to produce the vast Stonehenges, gtreat pyramids and temples, the mega structures we find around the world.
It was a last ditch attempt to keep their civilisations together as a functioning peoples and demonstrate their collective.

What would be our demonstrated collective be?
What would be our demonstrated collective for those in the distant future to see and wonder over?
Maybe our mastery of the destruction and total pollution of this planet.

[Deux Corbeaux]

Somehow I had to think of Ol'George ..... :bigsmile:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ww9abi_SYqM