Acheulean edit
This article was one of the more egregious ones Nature used in its Britannica/Wikipedia comparison with 7 errors. See also Wikipedia:External_peer_review#Nature. I have addressed the errors and have also overhauled the original, added a picture, sections, biblio etc and would like to get it to featured quality. Any corrections, suggestions for expansion or clarification gratefully received. adamsan 21:23, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
- Very nice. I don't know anything about archaeology, but in the interests of further redeeming/defending our honor I did some light copy editing--preserving all the British English spellings even ;)--and tidied up the bibliography. Congrats on a fine job. jengod 05:35, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
- Nice article. First up to have the lead as a complete summary of the article you should proably mention why archeologists are- and why the reader should be interested in acheulean. Merge single sentence paragraphs into longer paragraphs. There are no inline citations in the article - anything that is the result of primary scientific research should probably be further cited, and an article with no inline cites might not get wide support on FAC; some examples
- In the four divisions of prehistoric flint-working developed by Nick Barton, Acheulean artefacts are classified as Mode 2, meaning they are more advanced that the (usually earlier) Mode 1 tools of the Oldowan, Clactonian or Abbevillian industries but lacking the sophistication of the (usually later) Mode 3 Middle Palaeolithic flint-working, exemplified by the Mousterian industry. Citation for specific papers would be useful for follow up reading
- Loren Eiseley has calculated that Acheulean tools have an average useful cutting edge of 20cm making them much more efficient that the 5cm average of Oldowan tools, as for the first one
- The symmetry of the hand-axes has been used to suggest that Acheulean tool users possessed the ability to use language; the parts of the brain connected with fine control and movement are located in the same region that controls speech. Who made this claim, where was it published, who supported it?
- Finds such as the Venus of Berekhat Ram have been used to argue for artistic expression amongst Acheulean tool users and the incised elephant tibia from Bilzingsleben in Germany and ochre finds from Kapthurin in Kenya and Duinefontein in South Africa are sometimes cited as being some of the earliest examples of an aesthetic sensibility in human history. There are numerous other explanations put forward for the creation of these artefacts however and there is no unequivocal evidence of human art until around 50,000 years ago following the emergence of modern Homo sapiens. Once again who makes these claims/observations, unless they are cited they soulnd weasley.
- Acheulean tools were not made by modern humans that is, Homo sapiens, but by their ancestors, notably Homo erectus, whose assemblages are almost exclusively Acheuelan. The related subspecies of Homo ergaster and Homo heidelbergensis also used the technique. Around one million years ago it was Acheulean tool users who left Africa to colonise Europe and Asia. Really should mention on what evidence these observations were made and who made them.
--nixie 16:52, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
- Thanks folks, I'm giving this one references out of its wazoo. adamsan