Stone tool problem reported in BBC News, Nature News and ScienceDaily 21 April 2015. Scientists working in Kenya have found a collection of stone tools on the shores of Lake Turkana. The finds included flakes of stone that had been chipped off other stones, along with larger stones that were used as hammers and anvils. The largest was a 15kg rock that would have been used as an anvil. Nick Taylor, from the National Centre of Scientific Research, France, explained: “On this piece, it doesn’t show the signs of actually having been flaked to produce other artefacts… rather, it was probably used as an anvil. It probably rested in the soil and the other cobbles brought to the site, which were intended to be smashed apart to make tools, were struck against this large anvil”.
The volcanic ash and minerals around the tools are dated as 3.3 million years. This makes these tools the oldest ever found. According to Taylor “They are significantly earlier than anything that has been found previously. It’s really quite astonishing to think what separates the previous oldest site and this site is 700,000 years of time. It’s monumental”.
This date also makes them older than the oldest dated Homo fossils, which raises the question as to who made them, because scientists did not believe that pre- humans such as Australopithecines (e.g. Lucy) had the brain power and manual dexterity to make stone tools. Bernard Wood, a palaeoanthropologist at George Washington University, commented: “This is a momentous and well-researched discovery. I have seen some of these artefacts in the flesh, and I am convinced they were fashioned deliberately”.
The Nature news article is entitled “Oldest stone tools raise questions about their creators”.
Editorial Comment: Ignoring the number of ‘probablys’ in what is or isn’t described as a tool or anvil, if it wasn’t for the old date given to these tools, and the belief that apes turned into people, no-one would have any problem in assigning most of the flaked items to the handiwork of human beings. Therefore, the problem these evolutionist researchers have concerning who made the tools is one of their own making. It is not the evidence from the tools themselves.
Note the Nature article states these stone tools were created, i.e. they did not happen naturally, and the scientists who found them recognised that they were created. So what did they recognise to reach such a conclusion? They recognised that an intelligent being outside the stones, who knew the properties of the stones, and had pre-existent information about what shape and structure was needed to achieve a purpose (cutting, etc.) applied that information to the stones and got a result that could never have happened by chance random processes acting upon the stones.
In spite of this, it is obvious that these evolutionary researchers also believe the pre-existent intelligent toolmakers somehow themselves evolved such a magnificent brain by chance random processes. What hypocritical inconsistency. As the old saying goes, there are none so blind as those who will not see. (Ref. information, design, Palaeolithic, creation)
Evidence News vol. 15, No. 9
10 June 2015
Creation Research Australia