Ancient Tools, Life On Mars, An Aurora Named Steve. March 16, 2018, Part 2.

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🗓️ 16 March 2018

⏱️ 46 minutes

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Summary

Scientists have been trying for a long time to piece together a question: When did traits of modern humans—like complex thinking and behaviors—first develop? Anthropologists have uncovered tools in Kenya that date to 280,000 years ago that contained non-local materials, indicating that early humans developed social networks and advanced technology tens of thousands of years earlier than previously thought. What would daily life be like on the Red Planet? We called a couple experts from NASA, MIT, and Georgia Tech to find out. From meals to transportation, we imagine life on Mars. Finally, how do you solve a puzzle like Steve? That was the name given to a mysterious southerly pink streak in the aurora borealis, after aurora enthusiasts using the citizen science platform Aurorasaurus began to notice the streak appearing again and again in the images they were sharing.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Science Friday. I'm Flor Lichtman. Ira Flato is away. This week at South by Southwest,
0:05.7	Elon Musk said his BFR, his big rocket capable of reaching Mars, might be ready for testing
0:11.7	early next year. Later in the hour, we'll imagine what a Martian civilization might be like
0:17.3	with some space futurists. But first, we're talking about another technological
0:21.8	revolution. It was a period when new ways of social networking were developing, and innovation
0:27.6	was totally changing how folks lived. And no, I'm not talking about Silicon Valley. I'm talking
0:32.9	about the Middle Stone Age around 280,000 years ago.
0:38.1	This week, researchers report in the journal Science that our early human ancestors were making
0:43.2	advanced tools far earlier than we thought.
0:46.7	Forget about that clunky hand axe.
0:48.5	We are talking about tiny, intricate spearheads.
0:52.1	And these ancient humans may also have been trading with each other.
0:55.5	This would push back the first evidence of trading by 100,000 years. So what did these findings
1:02.5	tell us about how we became the complicated humans that we are today? Here to talk about that is
1:07.6	my next guest. Alison Brooks is the author on these studies. She's also a professor of anthropology at George Washington University.
1:14.6	Welcome to the show.
1:15.6	Thank you.
1:16.6	Allison, tell me about these tools.
1:18.6	Well, they are very carefully made.
1:23.6	They required a lot of planning to make them because you had to prepare the block of stone
1:30.3	to get off a flake that was just the right thinness and the right shape so that you could then make that
1:38.3	flake into a point or a scraper or whatever you wanted to make it into.
	...

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