Afarensis: Vilhonneur Cave

Search

Profile

Afarensis is a 3.5-2.8 million year old hominin from the Kada Hadar member of the Hadar formation in the Middle Awash, Ethiopia. He is approximately 41 inches tall, weighs approximately 60 pounds and has a cranial capacity of a whopping 410 cc (approximately). Afarensis is currently considered to be transitional between apes and humans and displays some traits of both. Since he spends a lot of time on the couch watching monster movies, some observers question whether he is an obligate biped (although no one has observed him climbing a tree). He also has a blog called Transitions:The Evolution of Life His previous blog can be found here.
My blog banners were designed by pough - frequent commenter and Photoshop wizard, Bill Clark, and Chris Whitehouse. Thanks, you all do excellent Photoshop work!

My Amazon Wishlist

Other Information

Order the Book!

Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

Moonbat courtesy of Creek Running North

View My Openlab Entry

View My Openlab Entry

Aphorisms

"Loyalty to petrified opinion never broke a chain or freed a human soul..."
Mark Twain

"Ideology is a poor substitute for rational thought..."
Afarensis

"It isn't faith that makes good science...it's curiosity"
Prof. Jacob Barnhardt, The Day the Earth Stood Still

"This man wishes to be accorded the same privilege as a sponge. He wishes to think!"
Clarence Darrow, Inherit the Wind

"...I become fearful when I see people substituting fear for reason..."
Klaatu, The Day the Earth Stood Still

"I want you to grab life by its little bunny ears and get in its face..."
The Simpsons

"This is between me and the vegetable..."
Seymour Krelborn, The Little Shop of Horrors

"There are bad laws and cruel laws and the people who enforce them are both bad and cruel..."
Thea, Isle of the Dead

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." Jean- Luc Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation

"But the limit of tolerance for these human foibles is obtained when the proponent of a questionable scientific doctrine endeavors to maintain it against all possible odds by misrepresentation, misinformation and suppression of contradictory data, and by insinuating unfairness in opponents of his views."
Franz Weidenreich, Morphology of Solo Man

"Man stands alone in the universe, a unique product of a long, unconcious, impersonal material process with unique understanding and potentialities. These he owes to no one but himself, and it is to himself that he is responsible. He is not the creature of uncontrollable and undeterminable forces, but his own master. He can and must decide and manage his own destiny."
George Gaylord Simpson, Life of the Past

Yeah he's the Dick to the Dawk to the phd, he's smarter than you he's got a science degree! Yeah he's the Dick to the Dawk to the phd, he's smarter than you he's got a science degree!
Unknown

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
Frederich Nietzsche

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
The Declaration of Independence

View My Stats

« X-Men: The Last Stand | Main | Into the Lion's Den »

Vilhonneur Cave

Category: Paleoanthropology
Posted on: June 5, 2006 12:52 PM, by afarensis, FCD

According to Science News Daily a new cave, containing paleolithic art dating to ~27,000 years ago, has been discovered in France. Also found is a skeleton:

Baratin underscored the significance of the human skeleton, a young male, placed on the ground inside a decorated room. The only other instance in which a body was known to have been found in a decorated room of a cave is in the hamlet of Cussac, a grotto that experts have said was as important for engravings as paintings are for the famed Lascaux caves.
The archaeologist said two rib bones were analyzed at a Miami, Florida, laboratory, dating the skeleton at 27,000 years.

Also found:

A crude representation of a human face found in the cave could be among the oldest ever discovered, said Jean-Yves Baratin, archaeology curator for the Poitou-Charentes region.
The face is ''represented in the most elementary way, using an anomaly of the wall,'' Baratin said.

Two pieces of calcite that split are used to form the hair with two black horizontal strokes depicting the eyes. A vertical stroke forms the nose and another horizontal stroke the mouth.

V%20face.jpg

So far no pics of the skeleton, which is damn annoying, but I did find the above pic of the face (on Times Online).

John Hawks also has a story on the find. He asks:

I wonder if those bones are really human. I guess we'll find out.

Which is what I was wondering myself...be totally cool if they were Neanderthal wouldn't it? That's the question everyone wants answered. Speculation, though, is pointless.