Continuous stone tools use and manufacture in one location 2.75 million years ago.

"Researchers have found that the primitive humans who lived 2.75 million years ago at an archaeological site called Namorotukunan used stone tools contonuously for 300,000 years"

The depth of those time spans makes me wonder what it was like to be caught up in that moment in time.
These are our ancestors and a rough estimate gives me 100,000 generations have passed from then until we find ourselves at this present stage of cultural and biological development.

Some 10,000 of those generations were characterised by "settlements" of humanoids who busily used their stone tools and their ability to manufacture them to enable them to withstand the vagaries of climate change throughout those 300 000 years.

Recorded history (as far as I know) goes back less than 10,000 years or some 30 times less than that.

Can we draw any conclusions or perspectives from these astonishing timescales (and our ancestors' ability to "surf" them, as it were?

The numbers are hard to imagine and yet these were our own ancestors.Does that bring about a sense of familiarity despite those caverns of history?

The Barbarian said:

It's been known that hominids were making tools millions of years ago.

List of earliest tools - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

This isn't news. That's been known for a very long time.

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What about the finding of continuous use in the same location?

Is that not significant ,or is that something that was already known or assumed to be the case even if not directly ascertained till now. ?

I think the article I linked may have suggested that until now the use and manufacture may have been thought to be sporadic in nature rather than "industrial" and "centralised" as seems likely here.

You don't see this as especially significant?

The Barbarian said:

Of course it's significant. But we have evidence of human structures earlier than that. I don't think anyone was surprised that humans would stay in a place that had all the resources they needed, or that they'd be making tools, possibly for trade. Interesting, but not a surprising find.

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Yes ,interesting - and encouraging that evidence of hominid culture can be unearthed and interpreted after such a long time frame and generation spans.

(I have no expertise in the field myself)

The Barbarian said:

Humans have been humans for a very long time. It is of considerable interest that from very early times, the evidence shows they had much in common with humans today.

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Yes ,I often hear it said that ,in terms of individual intelligence they may have been our equal(more "equal" in my case no doubt)

In my own lifetime understanding of physics and society has increased so greatly that I wonder whether or not the gap between our grand parents and these ancient groups is much "greater" than the corresponding gap between ourselves and them(our grandparents)

Not that every new advance in understanding doesn't raise as many questions as it seems to confine to the past.

Only yesterday it seems the ever accelerating expansion of the universe has been called into question as the "supernova candles" may well not be as reliable as thought and their brightness may vary depending on their age-young vs old.

So that a collapsing universe may be back on the cards.