I heard some people yesterday talking about a paleolithic period? What are they talking about.?
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Paleolithic period (pā"lēulith'ik, –lēō–, păl"–) [key] or Old Stone Age,the earliest period of human development and the longest phase of mankind's history. It is approximately coextensive with the Pleistocene geologic epoch, beginning about 2 million years ago and ending in various places between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago, when it was succeeded by the Mesolithic period. By far the most outstanding feature of the Paleolithic period was the evolution of the human species from an apelike creature, or near human, to true Homo sapiens (see human evolution). This development was exceedingly slow and continued through the three successive divisions of the period, the Lower, Middle, and Upper Paleolithic. The most abundant remains of Paleolithic cultures are a variety of stone tools whose distinct characteristics provide the basis for a system of classification containing several toolmaking traditions or industries.\n\nThis site shows there was at least three different stages of this time period Low--Middle--And Upper class's
193069
In fact we have no more time! \n\nJust think, as archaeologist Robert J. Braidwood wrote before, if we see all history as a one day, it is now one to midnight. Human groups living in Africa made first stone tools only one minute ago. Jesus was born just 1 second ago. Roman empire, Middle Ages all were in one second time. \n\nBefore that one minute, it was the evolution of mamalians, reptiles, other livin creatures. Before 3-4 hours ago, there was no life on earth. \n\nSo, we should understand that, we just see a small part of our earth's adventure. We think 70-80 years is a lot of time. Yes it is, but only for us. It's nothing for the earth, which is nearly 4-5 bilion years old. It's nothing if we compare human evolution. First humans apeared 2.5 milion years ago. \n\nDinosours lived the timespan between 180-65 milion years. That were their time. But the earth changed, and they disappeared. \n\nHuman will disappear too. The earth is changing faster. We change it. And it's not a success. We kill other living creatures. And everyday one specie disappears because of our pressure on the nature. \n\nAfter, 10-20 milion years, maybe a understanding creature will see our remains as a greyish ash layer in a geological statigraphy (as we see Miocene like this today). Maybe they will find atomic bomb explosions too. But we will disappear. But the life in earth will continue. I believe.
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In prehistoric times, children so loved their parents that when the parents passed away, the children plastered their corpses with lime and began to pray to their ancestors. They stood these human totem poles in the center of the cave and danced around them hoping that their parent's love would reach out and touch them just as the spirit of the animal totem they hunted and ate would grant them the strength of the animal. They painted the animal totems on the walls of their caves. See the Lascaux cave paintings in France. Similar art appeared in other lands. Then came the ice age 20,000 years ago which ended 12,500 years ago.\n\nAfter the ice age ended, and the floods came and agriculture took hold, people began farming around 11,000 years ago and built "god houses" to house the clay and lime plastered corpses of their relatives. Some societies ate soft morsels of their beloved ones to gain their strength, (such as in New Guinea highlands) while other cultures made statues out of their parent's or grandparent's bodies to keep them around so they could talk to them. \n\nBy the end of the neolithic era about 5,500 years ago, the idea of a spirit in the body was said to dwell in the trees, and people prayed to trees. Finally, people began to fashion idols and animals or 'venus' fertility figures out of clay and fire the clay. Women were worshipped because only they could be factories for producing men who could hunt in teams and bring down the mammoths. Women were highly valued during the ice age from producing children. Men who were alpha types instead of team workers were banned from the settlements. People began to tattoo the energy meridian lines as in acupuncture, about 5,000 years ago. Spirit, then became something within the energy of the body as well as dwelling without in the fertility goddesses who brought the cycles of the harvest and new children.\n\nAbout 14,000 years ago, instead of their parent's corpses inside the clay, just the art work/sculpture remained of these idols--people, venuses, fertility goddesses with huge mammaries to feed the world, and other sculpture appeared as cults, such as the clan of the cave bear and the cat cult.\n\nBy 9,000 years ago, the idol then went inside the god house to protect it--in the center of the village. That's how people began to pray to idols. Finally the spirit dwelling in the idol was released by smashing the idol or opening it's mouth to speak.\n\nBy the time of Abraham in the Hebrew year 5756 years ago, Sumerian shops for making ceramic idols evolved into the art of smashing the idol to let the spirit free. Then monotheism occurred to those contemplating the invisible God. By 4,000 years ago people eventually realized the spirit isn't in the man-made idol after all, it's in heaven and is too omnipotent to be knowable, but has created all, just as your parents created you from stardust. In Egypt, one pharoah prayed to the sun disk. In the deserts, the monotheists wandered, led by Cohanic priests who prayed to Yahweh, the one invisible, unknowable God....and suddenly, worship of female venuses and female reproduction cycles was not fashionable any more, and a patriarch male God took the woman's place in the God house in the middle of the village. From then on, societies were divided into pagan worshippers of female goddesses such a the cat cult in Egypt and the cult of mammary gland-clad female deities, such as Astarte in Greece/Anatolia. \n\nThe competition was on, and by the close of the classical period, God was male and sacrificed his only son, Jesus just as Abrahim almost sacrificed his Isaac, but let Ishmael wander in the desert with his slave mom...So the moral of the story is male patriarchs kick to the curb the female...After all, God didn't give his only daughter...The female venus statue was hammered to gravel, and the male God reigned in the patriarchy. \n\nThe female cat cult ended...by men's dogged
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The "IN" civilization of its day (about 4000 B.C. it is said)! Great dances, written language, innovative societal structure... a people ahead of their time. Possibly the true founders of 'civilization'. They seem to have arrived on the scene fully developed (economically, politically, intellectually) and certainly established themselves in myth and history as the "Ancient Ones", even to those civilizations we consider ancient. Hmmmmm.... where DID they come from?
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I have an MS in paleoclimatology, and I have to say that it is one of the most fascinating topics Ive ever delved into.  It's also amusing to see non-scientist's responses here and on other message boards!\n\nIf you wanted to ask a scientist, you would have to define what you mean when you say "ice age."  There are varying degrees of "ice ages."  For brevity sake, I will assume you mean the relatively cold periods that last approximately 100,000 years that have dominated global climate for the last 2 million years.  Contrary to popular belief, there are periods during the "ice ages" that are almost as warm as today.\n\nBased on paleoclimate evidence that suggest the ice ages have come and gone at least six times in the last 2 million years, the probability is that it will occur again.\n\nThe difficult and possibly dramatic question is: when?  Seeing as though the last "ice age" generally ended about 12,000 years ago (this is debatable, since there is no one date where everywhere across the globe it suddenly became warm), and the average interglacial is 10,000 years, we are overdue.\n\nConsider the widely accepted hypothesis that "global warming"--whether it be natural, human-induced, or a combination--can ultimately (Ill spare you the details) lead to an ice age.  Melting polar sea ice, indicator species dying off in the tropics, large disintigrations of ice shelves in the Antarctic, estimations that global sea level may rise 4 inches in the next 100 years, "wild" weather in many parts of the US...  are these all tell-tale signs that we have already begun down the road to the next glacial period?!?!?\n\nNew-ish data suggest that past climates have changed rapidly--like someone else mentioned either in this thread or another similar one--several degrees Celsius in a matter of decades or less!  The great ice sheets that once reached as far south as Long Island and Iowa wont reappear for tens of thousands of years, but it could get chilly across much of the country real quick!  And possibly as soon as 2020!
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It's a fantasy time, very ancient, eras prior to the dominance of man (homo sapiens).  No particular year.\n\nBy the way, it's the BOOKS that evoke this time - the film is came later.
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About 2,000 years i think
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Hey! Your "other" question is already cluttered up with some high voltage discussion and nice arguements so, I thought I should post my answer here as it is more peaceful and calm here. I was wondering whether I should have posted my answer there? \n\nNow, I'll try to make sense while talking about a topic that I know little about. \n\n1- It all started with the arrival of the first bipedal- Australopithecus anamensis. (some might argue that it was Ardipithecus ramidus). Ok, the point is, as our ancestors started to learn to walk on two feet, they had some challenges to face as bipedalism reduced their speed considerably putting them at a clear disadvantage against their predators.\nNow, as this problem was faced by all the hominids all over the world at the same time, it led to some parallel thoughts (and thus inventions and discoveries) all over the world e.g. building homes, making weapons and tools etc. (The stone tools were first made by the handy man i.e. Homo habilis and not Australopithecus).\nThis tool technology was spread by Homo ergaster as they  migrated outside Africa.\n\n2- Then, in the course of evolution, the early humans started to have a complex cultural lives and they grew emotionally, e.g. the Neanderthals (who aren't our direct ancestors) started to bury the dead.\n\n3- As the homo species like homo erectus, homo neanderthalis, homo heidelbergenesis and ancient homo sapiens (Cro Magnon) made further advances in creativity and productivity, they all felt a natural need to pen down their thoughts. This led to the cave painitngs and carvings. All of those paintings can be interpreted as diary entries as you may see that the paintings and carvings simply depict what the early men "did" i.e. hunting, using tools etc.\nSo, I guess it is understandable why the "pictorial-scripts" developed contemporarily to each other.\n\n4- But the question still remains: Why were the origin of world's ancient scripts so contemporary to each other? I guess, as man found the pictorial depiction of thoughts and emotions more and more unconvenient and tedious due to the diverseness of thoughts and situations to be depicted, it started taking help of symbols. Perhaps, this behaviour was so "human-like" that every sub-species of the homo sapiens followed this pattern of 'depicting thoughts symbolically' universally.\n\n5- Another reason of this might be migration. Before the ancient civilizations like Inka, Mesopotamia, Egyptian etc. even came into existence, the early hominids led a nomadic life. According to the "Out of Africa Hypothesis", all the modern humans "Homo Sapiens" originated from Africa. Later, they migrated to Africa, Asia and Europe and formed groups.\nSo, I guess due to their similar ancestral origins, the human beings had a common problem solving approach and hence, attempted the problem of inconvenience of pictorial scripts in a nearly identical manner.\n\nThe scientific difference in the scripts can explain that they were devised on completely different grounds but, the approach was similar due to common origins and creative grounds.
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Where do you get your information that the settlers were stealing from Indian graves?  And if this is true, you're putting way to bad of a slant on it.  The settlers of Massachusetts were a very religious group that would just steal unless it was a matter of survival more than likely.  What would you do for your family in a life and death situation?  Don't taint our country's history by making the settlers at Plymouth sound like a group of selfish and careless people.  Their first winter was very difficult, and they had to learn how to live all over again.  As for teaching this to elementary students, I think they would be a little young to understand the whole truth.  An older group of students would be able to grasp the details better and know that nothing was malicious in their acts, whatever their acts may have been.  Regardless of the truth, it should be told.  The truth shouldn't be twisted, but made to be understood.  Obviously there are adults out there that can't grasp the meaning behind some things either.
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I'm an old-earth creationist.... yes Neanderthals existed. There is plenty of evidence that they did exist before humans. My question to you is what exactly is it about a neanderthal that makes it a different species than human? If we evolved from neanderthals and they are so similar to our genetic make up? Then why not just consider them Human? Where do you draw the line?
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I think the messy business of the European colonization of the American Continents is pretty much common knowledge.  Who, exactly, are you trying to incite then?  Is it the millions of North & South Americans who now lead comfortable, modern lives, or the two or three other people -- like yourself -- stuck in 1492?  Besides, people are solid believers in something that was made 'by man', but they are also free to choose not to believe, or to not be 'solid' believers.  Let it go, no one appriciates the people like you who have mistaken this service as a soapbox (though your ranting does help make the rest of us feel better about ourselves, so thanks for that public service) ;)
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I have studied this topic for nearly 4 years. I believe it is less than 7,000 years. I had trouble with this until I saw how things are dated. Then I knew that there was no "proof" of anything over  about 5500 years old. Every thing over that age, whether 20,000 years or 4.5 billion years is speculation. I have worked in the science industry for about 30 years. I know my way around a lab. I certainly don't know everything, but I know these old dates given to fossils and rocks are speculation. Recent discoveries in DNA and Micro-biology have placed serious doubt in a lot of scientist minds about evolution. I know for a fact that creation is debated by scientists daily. Many can no longer support theories once held by the majority.
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I took anthropology 101 and they didn't cover that question, sadly!  You think all the cave people would want to keep up with the Jones, or whatever they called them back then.  Maybe a lot of them were unsure, and there were no "Interior Decorating for Neanderthals" books available.  Plus (as you know) it was too far to drive to the nearest IKEA which is where I buy all my art, because they weren't as widespread as they are now.
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Since before recorded history.  There has been evidence of slavery found in the fossil record.
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Prehistoric Ice Man maybe .. i dunno
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I think the author is trying to get across the idea that there was no big leap from our non-human ancestors to modern humans.  You can look at modern humans, and recognize them as modern humans, but if you look at our ancestors, say, 2 million years ago, you would not call them modern humans.  In between are a bunch of different hominid species, which, as you move closer and closer to us, look more and more human.  But there is no bright line, no point at which you can say "Ah, that population is defiantely the first population of humans".
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what a troubling Q: but i agree with that 6k yrs of this planet... the carbon dating is nothing but a paleontological gibberish... the world is not a million or so yrs old... mybe they just need a lil more tyme checking the computations... one million yr wud mean a day or a week in the christian "dating" watdayathink?? (,"}