From: Spudboy100@aol.com
Date: Fri Mar 07 2003 - 21:06:02 MST
<http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-sci-ax22feb22004433,1,6024
64.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dworld%2Dmanual>
Los Angeles Times: Stone Ax Hints at First Stirring of Compassion
Prehistoric rock found among human remains is said to testify to the origins
of burial rites.
By Robert Lee Hotz, Times Staff Writer
NEW YORK -- To the primitive hands that deftly shaped it from rose-colored
quartz 350,000 years ago, a glittering stone ax may have been as dazzling as
any ceremonial saber.
It was found in the depths of a Spanish cavern among the skeletal remains of
27 primitive men, women and children -- pristine, solitary and placed like a
lasting tribute to the deceased whose bones embraced it. For the
archeologists who unearthed this prehistoric blade, the unique burial site
is a compelling but controversial glimpse of arguably the earliest evidence
of humanity's dawning spiritual life. The ax may be a token of the first
known funeral. If so, the find is 250,000 years older than any other
evidence that such early human species honored their dead, said experts led
by Eudald Carbonell at Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Tarragona, Spain, and
the Museum of Natural History in Madrid. The researchers believe that the ax
-- perhaps the earliest offering to the dead -- testifies to what skulls and
bones alone cannot: the origins of spirituality and ritual. In their view,
this mute rock embodies compassion, grief and a desire to commemorate the
dead among creatures until now considered incapable of modern human
behavior. "This would mean that human cognitive complexity emerged on the
planet much earlier than previously thought," Carbonell said. Exploring the
origins of the mind is a risky research endeavor under any circumstances. It
can be all but impossible to distinguish hard evidence of something as
fleeting as thought, especially from the distance of so many thousands of
years.
But if the research team's claim is borne out, the ax marks a crucial
milestone in the archeology of the mind.
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