Stone tools were found alongside the remains of the meter-tall human species recently discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores. One of the many mysteries left behind by Boing Boing's mascot, Homo floresiensis, is how they managed to make sophisticated tools given their small brains. Archaeology graduate student Mark Moore of the University of New England in New South Wales, Australia has a theory that's most easily demonstrated by cutting triangles of cheese. From ABC Science Online:
If you want to make perfect cheese triangles first you have to cut the cheese block diagonally, he says, then you turn one half of the block on its side and slice across it to get regular triangles.This is an example of hierarchical thinking, which as far as we know is a unique attribute of how modern humans think.
But, says Moore, he has found is possible to make at least one particular type of the tool found alongside the hobbit, called a 'blade', quite incidentally and unintentionally, without hierarchical thinking.
