Do people who talk this way really believe themselves, or that they are
much more likely to be correct than some bible-thumping, proselytizing hick
who’s never ventured out of his hometown, much less having taken a couple semesters in liberal arts?

“We were all once part of the same proto-star, awwwwes!  And at one
point there was like a bang, and swirls, and then hominids started banging
rocks together, and then the universe (as we knew it) had its very
first Technology!  Awwwe.  And then later we realized primates & birds and
otters and even ants use “technology” too.  Thus, humans are really no
different after all from being hairless, snarky, clothed, immunized, et.c, ad.n, Apes.  Awe. And nematodes have not just feelings, but dreams and goals, too!  Technology itself is simply stardust, thoughts are fairy-dust.  Cuz like, a scientist said so.  But there’s no wai god exists – I mean, can someone show me a picture of god-bits being swirled in a test-tube? No. 
Signed, just another bored hipster on the Godless Gadfly hipster bus.”

Test of faith, my ass. I was prepared to push the point much further, but it’s now time for me to go sing of worshipful praise to Brownian fucking motion, during which I’ll give thanks again for our beautiful universe, and also for this bowl of vitamin-fortified cereal.

question two… by cutting  a sliver of the stone and seeing how long the cut/broken pice has been exposed… so they do not accurately date the rock but rather they can accurately date when the rock was broken… 

Thank you.

Lucky for us there’s Flickr: This stone tool is only a thousand years old, but it clearly demonstrates the improvements in technology!

When I finally get my religion going, my holy book will put the age of the earth at 4.5 billion years.  And it will have a space hollowed out of the pages for a gun.  I will fight the Skeptics on my terms…

I think we’re on the edge of a new age of archaeology.  Nothing so crazy as Lemuria, but we’re finding older sites in shallow water off shore of more recent sites all the time, and the relevant time ranges are stretching.  

The critical point is that it seems clear that technology predates modern morphology.    

It’s a tool with kind of a sad, quizzical face.

It’s Oogie Boogie.

When humans fashion things they tend to leave characteristic marks, and these will be different to those arising from natural processes. So while it is not completely impossible that these rocks were formed into those shapes naturally, presumably they have the hallmarks of fashioned flint tools that have been seen elsewhere.

And as to how rocks can be accurately dated… ah, now there’s a topic. But what we’re talking about here is not how old the rocks are – that can be found by radio dating methods, because in fact they *haven’t* been in the same state since they cooled. We’re talking about when they were made into tools, which is a different problem, and which you try to solve by looking at where they were found, what other objects (animal remains, perhaps) were found in the same place, things like that.

So what we’re talking about is that guys who have experience in this field have deduced that the most likely explanation for these is that they are very old tools made by hand. Other explanations, which not completely impossible, are less likely (ranging from somewhat to extremely).

It’s getting pretty close to where we need to start differentiating “tools”, technology that is, against simple manipulation of the environment. Is a natural stair a “tool”?