• Hank
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    1010 months ago

    Man, the rolling stones really have been around forever.

  • jlow (he/him)
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    410 months ago

    Wow, we did that as far back as 1.4 million years ago? I saw a documentary recently where they found rounded stones on Orkney made by stone(?) age people. Seems to be long tradition __

      • jlow (he/him)
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        110 months ago

        Yeah, totally. It might just be that people are bored and spheres are pretty nice to touch so they make them sometimes. Or something __

  • AutoTL;DRB
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    210 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Early ancestors of humans 1.4m years ago deliberately made stones into spheres, according to a study – though what the prehistoric people used the balls for remains a mystery.

    Did early hominins intentionally chip away at them with the aim of crafting a perfect sphere, or were they merely the accidental byproduct of repeatedly smashing the stones like ancient hammers?

    The team of scientists examined 150 limestone spheroids dating from 1.4m years ago that were found at the ’Ubeidiya archaeological site in the north of modern-day Israel.

    The early hominins – exactly which human lineage they belonged to remains unknown – had “attempted to achieve the Platonic ideal of a sphere”, they said.

    While the spheroids were being made, the stones did not become smoother but did become “markedly more spherical”, said the study in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

    Julia Cabanas, an archaeologist at France’s National Museum of Natural History, who was not involved in the research, said this meant that the hominins had a “mentally preconceived” idea of what they were doing.


    The original article contains 383 words, the summary contains 175 words. Saved 54%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!