Posted: Oct 14, 2014 1:42 pm
Always worth reading the source article to see how scientists report this to their peers:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v5 ... 13422.html
The point is that little or no evidence had been found prior in South and South East Asia - that is a puzzle, but of course has numerous explanations that are well known in the discipline; for example, there's an automatic bias on account of the level of research conducted in different areas, there's the problem of much of the early human migration routes now being submerged off the coast, and the different climatic effects on preservation of material culture.
Definitely a case of science reporting being done all-too-typically wrong. It's great to inspire people to value such a discovery, to impress on people its importance, but not to the detriment of the very discipline which discovered it.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v5 ... 13422.html
Archaeologists have long been puzzled by the appearance in Europe ~40–35 thousand years (kyr) ago of a rich corpus of sophisticated artworks, including parietal art (that is, paintings, drawings and engravings on immobile rock surfaces)1, 2 and portable art (for example, carved figurines)3, 4, and the absence or scarcity of equivalent, well-dated evidence elsewhere, especially along early human migration routes in South Asia and the Far East, including Wallacea and Australia5, 6, 7, 8, where modern humans (Homo sapiens) were established by 50 kyr ago
The point is that little or no evidence had been found prior in South and South East Asia - that is a puzzle, but of course has numerous explanations that are well known in the discipline; for example, there's an automatic bias on account of the level of research conducted in different areas, there's the problem of much of the early human migration routes now being submerged off the coast, and the different climatic effects on preservation of material culture.
Definitely a case of science reporting being done all-too-typically wrong. It's great to inspire people to value such a discovery, to impress on people its importance, but not to the detriment of the very discipline which discovered it.