That one on the left looks super useful.

  • @some_guy
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    3715 days ago

    It’s pretty cool how you don’t need training or study to be an expert these days. /s

    • Flying SquidOP
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      1215 days ago

      The sad thing is that I wouldn’t consider myself anywhere near to an expert in archaeology or geology. I couldn’t tell you the difference between slate and shale and I couldn’t tell you the difference between a neanderthal spear point and a homo sapiens spear point… but I would never look at any of those rocks and think, “these were clearly worked by the hands of a human” let alone “these were clearly worked by the hands of a species of human that we have no evidence ever lived in North America.”

      Like I said in the body of the post, what the hell would you even use the one on the left for? It looks like the second you’d put any pressure on it, it would shatter.

        • Flying SquidOP
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          15 days ago

          But that’s exactly why I wouldn’t assume that any rock was worked by human hands. Especially when there is a far greater chance that any given rock will not have been worked by them and is just a rock.

          I will stand by my point that the one on the left looks like it would be unusable as a tool though.

      • @some_guy
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        615 days ago

        The only difference between you and the “scientist” who “discovered” these important “Neanderthal” “tools” is confidence. You should work on that. ;-)

        • Flying SquidOP
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          515 days ago

          I am fairly confident that this “scientist” is a loony. Does that count?

      • @Geobloke@lemm.ee
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        415 days ago

        That’s actually pretty hard… slate is a lightly metamorphosed shale. Without looking too much into it, I’d say the most obvious thing would be the prominence of the foliation in the slate would be fading away

      • @beebarfbadger@lemmy.world
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        27 days ago

        If movies and right-wing propaganda have taught me one thing: forget about knowledge, facts and expertise, if you really want something to be true, and it benefits Donald Trump, then it IS now true!

        • Flying SquidOP
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          27 days ago

          I would not be at all surprised if you asked Trump if neanderthals lived in North America, rather than say he didn’t know like he should, he’d come up with some long-winded bullshit about it as if he knew what he was talking about. And get everything wrong.

          • @beebarfbadger@lemmy.world
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            27 days ago

            And then the entire billionaire-controlled propaganda industry behind him would jump in and start inventing reasons why AKTSCHUALLY, what he said was right all along, not what all those high-falutin’ elitist leftist “experts” were spending their lives researching.

    • Flying SquidOP
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      515 days ago

      Yeah, but think about actually using a rock that thin as a knife. We’re not talking galvanized steel here. You could use it for what, one cut? And hope that works before it breaks into pieces?

      • @Maalus@lemmy.world
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        415 days ago

        Obsidian scalpels are used in medicine successfully, they’re ridiculously sharp. I’m not a rockalogist to say it would or wouldn’t have been useful tho

        • They’re also very delicate. Not to say obsidian isn’t/wasn’t used for cutting tools, but afaik they were thicker and just knapped on the edge.

        • Maven (famous)
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          615 days ago

          Obsidian is a very special rock made under special circumstances. When I hear someone say “made of rock” I think of rocks I would find anywhere and not obsidian.

          So yeah rock based knives are useful but if you only include common rock types I imagine they would probably suck or have to be sharpened constantly.

        • Flying SquidOP
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          15 days ago

          That rock is not obsidian. It doesn’t look like flint to me either when I look up images of flint. So, again, looks way too flimsy to be a tool.

          It’s not like sandstone and granite have the same hardness because they’re both rocks.

      • tiredofsametab
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        215 days ago

        Assuming it’s an actual old tool, my bet would be more scraper than knife. However, taking things out of their archaeological context and stratigraphic placement and/or manufacturing fakes kinda ruins all of the everything.