dogs domesticated long before cats by perhaps millions of years Re: cat gut the best natural string? Re: modern civilization dependent on the fact that small intestine makes a nice string (cord) Re: Worlds oldest hominid *string* Re: bowfirebox

I do not see early hominids able to domesticate a cat due to its nomadic and traveling lifestyle, however a dog domestication would fit nicely with the lifestyle of early hominids.

What is the oldest known dog remains associated with hominids? And the earliest cat remains?

I suspect that the small intestine of all animals are good for string and cord but I suspect one is better than others. Perhaps the herbivore small intestine can stretch more. I suppose the gut of a large animal such as woolly mammoth could have made a nice durable rope that Homo could have used to climb trees or pull limbs with.

Has anybody conducted strength tests on various ropes made of animal guts?

The invention of the bow itself may have first been a item of musical entertainment. It may have been Earth's first musical instrument that of a bow with a string of animal gut and plucking the string created a musical sound. Sort of like a one stringed harp.

So that the bow may have been invented all by itself for musical entertainment and then later it was incorporated into the firebox instead of rubbing hands to rotate the stick, the bow would replace the hands. And of course much later the bow&arrow invented as an adjunct of the bowfirebox.

Bows show up much later than flutes. I'd guess drumming came first. Even chimps do it and the big G does it on their chest. I've been known to play a tune on my stomach.

It would be interesting just to focus on the evolution of the butt for interesting answers to several questions. For the butt size is related to bipedalism and the ability to run in hunting.

Wed, 02 Oct 2002 15:35:40 +0930 Seppo Renfors wrote: (rest deleted)

There is a very nice and easy way to determine when early primates of the Hominids used fire and were able to make their own fires. It is recorded in a spike in world CO2 and other gases in the air. Not a huge spike but a continuous upward spike.

I do not know where Antarctica was for the past 10 million years. But suppose that the ice recorded in the poles the overall climate for the past 10 million years. Now, when the Hominids first used fire for campfires and for hunting by burning would have increased the CO2 continuously from then on out. So there should be a **continuous upward spike in the increase in fire gases** in the atmosphere due to this Hominid activity. The spike will not tell us when Hominids first discovered firemaking but tell us when they predominantly had the technology in use.

I guess I should send this to sci.geo.geology looking for some permanent record in ice or rocks for the past 10 million years, especially the last 5 million years for I reckon the fire-on-demand was about 4 to 3 million years ago.

Burn a branch found on the ground in a fire and CO2 enters the atmosphere that day. Leave the branch there an let the insects get at it and the same CO2 enters the atmosphere in a decade. Let a large tree rot and it can take a century. Either way, at the end of a century just as much CO2 enters the atmosphere. Meanwhile, an almost equal amount leaves the atmosphere to grow a new branch or tree. Long term there will be changes in the total depending on the relative amounts of carbon burried in sediments and released by volcanoes. WITH HUMANS MAKINF FIRE THERE IS NOT NET CHANGE TO THE CARBON RESERVE.

Quite correct. In fact there is mounting evidence that CO2 levels **follow** global temperatures. A continuous upward change in CO2 levels is the natural consequence of an increase in global temperature.

Eric Stevens

Not sure I agree exactly but you could be right. The interconnections between water, temperature, plankton growth, land vegitation, sequestering of carbon in sediments, etc, are complex. Everything I read suggests that the feedback mechanisms tend to clip change. I.e. a cooling of the atmosphere due to orbital position or solar radiation causes an increase in CO2 and hence temperature. A rise in CO2 due to vulcanism causes loops that absorb it. For Archie to believe that the advent of the use of fire would show up as a CO2 change in the ice shows the sheer ignorance of his ideas even in the absence of these feedback loops.

If humans only burnt wood, and they grew a new tree for every one they chopped down, what you said would be true. But we are burning fossil fuels which take hundreds of millions of years to reform. Your SUV does not run on kindling!

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased by 30% over the last 100 years so no matter how much you try to reassure yourself that there is not a problem, the facts state the opposite.

Cheers, Alastair.

If things get really desparate you may be able to induce me to look up references but I assure you I did not invent the information. I have seen it in a number of places, possibly including Nature, but I did not pay too much attention to it at the time.

Eric Stevens

Alastair,

I tend to agree with you WRT the present.

This discussion, however, is about whether it would be possible to detect human's first, and increasing, use of fire by some recourse to the geological record. It is a silly discussion for the time period involved (ca. 4 million y.a. to ca. 30,000 y.a.). It's a bit of fun, really.

Tom McDonald

Yes, I realised that after I had posted the message

In fact there is a theory that the reason mankind arose in central Africa was because of the volcanoes there; Mt Kenya and Mt Kilimanjaro. I t was those which provided him with a ready source of fire. With the invention of cooking, man could become a carnivore. Presumably the first cooked meat was found by accident, then men would drive the animals onto the hot lava.

The Vestal Virgins were keepers of the flame in ancient Rome so I think the main source of ignition from early man until Roman times was a flame kept alive by the priesthood.

Cheers, Alastair.