BBC Radio 4 is on to a real winner!
They have recently started an absolutely fascinating series of 15 minute programmes, The History of the World in 100 Objects. Having downloaded the recent programmes that I missed I have been catching up as the snow falls outside and I coorie doon [snuggle down] for the evening.
The one on the Olduvai Handaxe talked about how they were made and what they might have been used for. The 15 minute broadcast is here.
They have recently started an absolutely fascinating series of 15 minute programmes, The History of the World in 100 Objects. Having downloaded the recent programmes that I missed I have been catching up as the snow falls outside and I coorie doon [snuggle down] for the evening.
The one on the Olduvai Handaxe talked about how they were made and what they might have been used for. The 15 minute broadcast is here.
The man who is narrating in the series, Neil MacGregor, was talking to a gentleman, Phil Harding, who is a knapper, i.e. a flint knapper. This is "someone who breaks or chips (stone) with sharp blows, as in shaping flint or obsidian into tools". [Wikipedia]
Furthermore, MacGregor explores the idea that there seems to have been a big conceptual leap in the history of humankind going on here.
"Recently scientists have been looking at what happens inside the brain when a stone tool is being made. They use modern hospital scanners to see which bits of the brain are being used when a knapper is working with stone. And surprisingly, the areas of the modern brain activated when making a hand axe overlap considerably with those that you use when you speak."
With speech and language, he states, you now see the real beginnings of modern humans; "there is a huge leap between those earliest first stone tools and this hand axe."
"Recently scientists have been looking at what happens inside the brain when a stone tool is being made. They use modern hospital scanners to see which bits of the brain are being used when a knapper is working with stone. And surprisingly, the areas of the modern brain activated when making a hand axe overlap considerably with those that you use when you speak."
With speech and language, he states, you now see the real beginnings of modern humans; "there is a huge leap between those earliest first stone tools and this hand axe."
1 comment:
This is a fascinating subject – it engages your mind for sure.
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