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Regarding the discussion below, this 2018 Royal Society Phil Trans B paper gives a date of 44-42 thousand years for the bone, and describes "44–42 ka old notched baboon fibula from Border Cave, South Africa, shows that notches were added to this bone at different times, suggesting that devices to store numerical information were in use before the Upper Palaeolithic." ... "This bone is an ideal candidate for an AMS [artificial memory system] with accumulation of information over time as the single factor governing the AMS code. Apparently, between 1 and 14 homologous units of infor- mation were recorded in different sessions on the Border Cave bone. This implies, considering the age of the layer in which the bone was found (44 –42 ka), that exosomatic devices to store numerical information are not an innovation strictly associated with the emergence of the European Upper Palaeolithic. Antecedents are found in Africa and similar or different devices may have been invented previously, in this same continent or elsewhere."
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2016.0518
I have communicated by email with Peter Beaumont who discovered the bone. He adduces evidence (which I have incorporated in the article) that the Lembobo bone is NOT a mathematical artifact.
Neurolinguist (
talk) 19:22, 30 August 2014 (UTC)
The problems discussed below are resolved by the new reference [1] which, without calling the notched bone the Lembobo Bone, gives a definitive description with extensive illustrations in the article's Supplementary Information Figures 8 and 9. Neurolinguist ( talk) 15:18, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
The 35 kya date raises a WP:REDFLAG. It is poorly sourced. The "Lebombo bone" comes up with 4 hits on google books [1] and the 35 kya claim is referenced to a 1987 article in The Mathematical Gazette here. Clearly, this cannot be the origin of the date. The date must have been established by archaeologists, but we lack that information. An obscure source like a 1987 article in a "Mathematical Gazette" and the surprisingly thin attestation of this extremely surprising artefact in literature since should caution us to treat this carefully. The bone appears to exist only in popular literature on the history of mathematics, but not in archaeology. -- dab (𒁳) 12:47, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
I found the 1987 article here. It is a single page note. It says "has been dated to approximately 35,000 years ago" without giving any information as to who dated it and on what grounds. The references cited by the article are
So it appears that our only archaeological publication is the immediate excavation report of 1973. This is fishy. Even if the date had preliminarily been dated to 35 kya in the excavation report, it would certainly pop up in later archaeological publication if the date had been at all substantiated. --[[User:Dbachmann|
Even more alarmingly, the 2002 edition of Flegg's book, searchable on google books [2], contains no mention of the Lebombo bone. In 2002. It discusses the wolf bone and the Ishango bone but doesn't have a single word to say about the "Lebombo bone". Our only source for this "Lebombo bone" is thus a 1973 excavation report that made into "history of mathematics" literature through a single-page note submitted by three authors of the Department of Mathematics at Cape Town University in 1987. I am placing the {{ hoax}} template at this point. -- dab (𒁳) 13:02, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
yes, it's probably an accident, not a deliberate hoax. The upshot remains that this bone keeps popping up in popular "history of mathematics" literature, and it quite obviously either doesn't exist, or it exists but was misidentified, or incorrectly dated, or both. "Middle Stone Age" is clearly wrong. Even if the date is correct, that would be Late Stone Age. Perhaps there are "Middle Stone Age bones with striations" but that hardly amounts to tallying. We have a Middle Stone Age artefact with a hatching pattern right here, but nobody would claim this as a "mathematica artefact". All I am saying is WP:REDFLAG. -- dab (𒁳) 08:07, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
I added... Bushmen in Namibia today continue to use calendar sticks that are similar to the Lebombo bone. [1] - an early mathematician 50.153.106.144 ( talk) 15:35, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
References
"Lebombo bone from Contagem, Brazil." does not match the information in the article Housecarl ( talk) 01:10, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
Where is this bone. Is it on public display? Jason Quinn ( talk) 14:56, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Lebombo bone article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
![]() | This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to multiple WikiProjects. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Regarding the discussion below, this 2018 Royal Society Phil Trans B paper gives a date of 44-42 thousand years for the bone, and describes "44–42 ka old notched baboon fibula from Border Cave, South Africa, shows that notches were added to this bone at different times, suggesting that devices to store numerical information were in use before the Upper Palaeolithic." ... "This bone is an ideal candidate for an AMS [artificial memory system] with accumulation of information over time as the single factor governing the AMS code. Apparently, between 1 and 14 homologous units of infor- mation were recorded in different sessions on the Border Cave bone. This implies, considering the age of the layer in which the bone was found (44 –42 ka), that exosomatic devices to store numerical information are not an innovation strictly associated with the emergence of the European Upper Palaeolithic. Antecedents are found in Africa and similar or different devices may have been invented previously, in this same continent or elsewhere."
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2016.0518
I have communicated by email with Peter Beaumont who discovered the bone. He adduces evidence (which I have incorporated in the article) that the Lembobo bone is NOT a mathematical artifact.
Neurolinguist (
talk) 19:22, 30 August 2014 (UTC)
The problems discussed below are resolved by the new reference [1] which, without calling the notched bone the Lembobo Bone, gives a definitive description with extensive illustrations in the article's Supplementary Information Figures 8 and 9. Neurolinguist ( talk) 15:18, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
The 35 kya date raises a WP:REDFLAG. It is poorly sourced. The "Lebombo bone" comes up with 4 hits on google books [1] and the 35 kya claim is referenced to a 1987 article in The Mathematical Gazette here. Clearly, this cannot be the origin of the date. The date must have been established by archaeologists, but we lack that information. An obscure source like a 1987 article in a "Mathematical Gazette" and the surprisingly thin attestation of this extremely surprising artefact in literature since should caution us to treat this carefully. The bone appears to exist only in popular literature on the history of mathematics, but not in archaeology. -- dab (𒁳) 12:47, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
I found the 1987 article here. It is a single page note. It says "has been dated to approximately 35,000 years ago" without giving any information as to who dated it and on what grounds. The references cited by the article are
So it appears that our only archaeological publication is the immediate excavation report of 1973. This is fishy. Even if the date had preliminarily been dated to 35 kya in the excavation report, it would certainly pop up in later archaeological publication if the date had been at all substantiated. --[[User:Dbachmann|
Even more alarmingly, the 2002 edition of Flegg's book, searchable on google books [2], contains no mention of the Lebombo bone. In 2002. It discusses the wolf bone and the Ishango bone but doesn't have a single word to say about the "Lebombo bone". Our only source for this "Lebombo bone" is thus a 1973 excavation report that made into "history of mathematics" literature through a single-page note submitted by three authors of the Department of Mathematics at Cape Town University in 1987. I am placing the {{ hoax}} template at this point. -- dab (𒁳) 13:02, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
yes, it's probably an accident, not a deliberate hoax. The upshot remains that this bone keeps popping up in popular "history of mathematics" literature, and it quite obviously either doesn't exist, or it exists but was misidentified, or incorrectly dated, or both. "Middle Stone Age" is clearly wrong. Even if the date is correct, that would be Late Stone Age. Perhaps there are "Middle Stone Age bones with striations" but that hardly amounts to tallying. We have a Middle Stone Age artefact with a hatching pattern right here, but nobody would claim this as a "mathematica artefact". All I am saying is WP:REDFLAG. -- dab (𒁳) 08:07, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
I added... Bushmen in Namibia today continue to use calendar sticks that are similar to the Lebombo bone. [1] - an early mathematician 50.153.106.144 ( talk) 15:35, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
References
"Lebombo bone from Contagem, Brazil." does not match the information in the article Housecarl ( talk) 01:10, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
Where is this bone. Is it on public display? Jason Quinn ( talk) 14:56, 7 May 2021 (UTC)