do you think that the stone age people were less intelligent and clever than the people today? why?
Answers
How did humans get to be so smart, and when did this happen? To untangle this question, we need to know more about the intelligence of our human ancestors who lived 1.8 million years ago. It was at this point in time that a new type of stone tool hit the scene and the human brain nearly doubled in size.
Some researchers have suggested that this more advanced technology, coupled with a bigger brain, implies a higher degree of intelligence and perhaps even the first signs of language. But all that remains from these ancient humans are fossils and stone tools. Without access to a time machine, it’s difficult to know just what cognitive features these early humans possessed, or if they were capable of language.
Difficult—but not impossible.
Now, thanks to cutting-edge brain imaging technology, my interdisciplinary research team is learning just how intelligent our early tool-making ancestors were. By scanning the brains of modern humans today as they make the same kinds of tools that our very distant ancestors did, we are zeroing in on what kind of brainpower is necessary to complete these tool-making tasks.
A leap forward in stone tool technology
The stone tools that have survived in the archaeological record can tell us something about the intelligence of the people who made them. Even our earliest human ancestors were no dummies; there is evidence for stone tools as early as 3.3 million years ago, though they were probably making tools from perishable items even earlier.
As early as 2.6 million years ago, some small-bodied and small-brained human ancestors chipped small flakes off of larger stones to use their sharp cutting edges. These types of stone tools belong to what is known as the Oldowan industry, named after Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, where remains of some of the earliest humans and their stone implements have been found.
The more basic Oldowan chopper
The more basic Oldowan chopper (left) and the more advanced Acheulian handaxe (right) (Shelby S. Putt, courtesy of the Stone Age Institute, CC BY-ND)
Around 1.8 million years ago, also in East Africa, a new type of human emerged, one with a larger body, a larger brain and a new toolkit. This toolkit, called the Acheulian industry, consisted of shaped core tools that were made by removing flakes from stones in a more systematic manner, leading to a flat handaxe with sharp edges all the way around the tool.
Why was this novel Acheulian technology so important for our ancestors? At a time when the environment and food resources were somewhat unpredictable, early humans probably began to rely on technology more often to access food items that were more difficult to obtain than, say, low-hanging fruits. Meat, underground tubers, grubs and nuts may all have been on the menu. Those individuals with the better tools gained access to these energy-dense foods, and they and their offspring reaped the benefits.
One group of researchers has suggested that human language may have evolved by piggybacking on a preexisting brain network that was already being used for this kind of complex tool manufacture.
So were the Acheulian toolmakers smarter than any human relative that lived prior to 1.8 million years ago, and is this potentially the point in human evolution when language emerged? We used a neuroarchaeological approach to answer these questions.
Imaging brain activity now to reconstruct brain activity in the past
My research team, which consists of paleoanthropologists at the Stone Age Institute and the University of Iowa and neuroscientists at the University of East Anglia, recruited modern human beings—all we have at our disposal these days—whose brains we could image while they made Oldowan and Acheulian stone tools. Our volunteers were recreating the behaviors of early humans to make the same types of tools they made so long ago; we can assume that the areas of their modern human brains that light up when making these tools are the same areas that were activated in the distant past.
Answer:
How did humans get to be so smart, and when did this happen? To untangle this question, we need to know more about the intelligence of our human ancestors who lived 1.8 million years ago. It was at this point in time that a new type of stone tool hit the scene and the human brain nearly doubled in size.
Some researchers have suggested that this more advanced technology, coupled with a bigger brain, implies a higher degree of intelligence and perhaps even the first signs of language. But all that remains from these ancient humans are fossils and stone tools. Without access to a time machine, it’s difficult to know just what cognitive features these early humans possessed, or if they were capable of language.
Explanation:
Now, thanks to cutting-edge brain imaging technology, my interdisciplinary research team is learning just how intelligent our early tool-making ancestors were. By scanning the brains of modern humans today as they make the same kinds of tools that our very distant ancestors did, we are zeroing in on what kind of brainpower is necessary to complete these tool-making tasks.
hope it helps if not then sorryyyyyyyyy