A reminder from Stonehenge: we’re the same
Stonehenge continues to teach us important lessons – as long as we reject the distractions. Reuters of all places was where I found a new study in Nature about the provenance of the Altar Stone – Scotland, almost 500 miles away per this study. Here’s the summary from Nature article:
Understanding the provenance of megaliths used in the Neolithic stone circle at Stonehenge, southern England, gives insight into the culture and connectivity of prehistoric Britain. The source of the Altar Stone, the central recumbent sandstone megalith, has remained unknown, with recent work discounting an Anglo-Welsh Basin origin1,2. Here we present the age and chemistry of detrital zircon, apatite and rutile grains from within fragments of the Altar Stone. The detrital zircon load largely comprises Mesoproterozoic and Archaean sources, whereas rutile and apatite are dominated by a mid-Ordovician source. The ages of these grains indicate derivation from an ultimate Laurentian crystalline source region that was overprinted by Grampian (around 460 million years ago) magmatism. Detrital age comparisons to sedimentary packages throughout Britain and Ireland reveal a remarkable similarity to the Old Red Sandstone of the Orcadian Basin in northeast Scotland. Such a provenance implies that the Altar Stone, a 6 tonne shaped block, was sourced at least 750 km from its current location. The difficulty of long-distance overland transport of such massive cargo from Scotland, navigating topographic barriers, suggests that it was transported by sea. Such routing demonstrates a high level of societal organization with intra-Britain transport during the Neolithic period.
While that is all interesting, fascinating really, the point and reminder I found is more existential. A large recency bias exists in human thought – it seems, we think that modern humans are much more capable, intelligent and evolutionary advanced than our prehistoric ancestors. Our modern way of life proves that, right? Our surprise and befuddlement when we discover fantastic innovations and work from prehistory is our tell … we just can’t think of them as capable as us.
I ask another question – could biological evolution of human capability (brain) advance that much over a few thousands of years? Really? Or, if you’re a believer in Devine creation, they created two different types of humans – one less smart / capable than the other? Both arguments fall dead from common sense.
We keep finding these amazing prehistoric feats and we just can’t believe that those people (our ancestors) were just as smart, just as capable and just as creative / innovative as we are today. They just had different materials and technologies to work with, but certainly they were not inferior to moderns.
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