Early Modern Humans

The timing and geographic origin of the common ancestor of modern humans and Neandertals remain controversial. A poor Pleistocene hominin fossil record and the evolutionary complexities introduced by dispersals and regionalisation of lineages have fuelled taxonomic uncertainty, while new ancient genomic data have raised completely new questions. Here, we use maximum likelihood and 3D geometric morphometric methods to predict possible morphologies of the last common ancestor of modern humans and Neandertals from a simplified, fully resolved phylogeny. We describe the fully rendered 3D shapes of the predicted ancestors of humans and Neandertals, and assess their similarity to individual fossils or populations of fossils of Pleistocene age. Our results support models of an Afro-European ancestral population in the Middle Pleistocene (Homo heidelbergensis sensu lato) and further predict an African origin for this ancestral population.

Since its discovery and initial description in the 1960s, the penetrating lesion to the left ninth rib of the Shanidar 3 Neandertal has been a focus for discussion about interpersonal violence and weapon technology in the Middle Paleolithic. Recent experimental studies using lithic points on animal targets suggest that aspects of weapon system dynamics can be inferred from the form

Uranium-Thorium (U-Th) datations  of the panel 78 (Hall XI, gallery C) from La Pasiega cave (Puente Viesgo, Cantabria, Spain), have provided a longer than expected chronology for its most ancient pictorial element, a scalariform pattern, contemporaneous to the Neanderthalian context  in the Iberian Peninsula and later augmented by Anatomical Modern Humans (AMH). The interpretations  of these late pictorial elements coupled to archeological remains and Genetics not only oppose common theories about Prehistoric Art by demonstrating that they belong to a single continuum of summary of state associated to the Agricultural knowledge, but also illustrate a new theory about first AMH Wave-of-Advance through Mediterranean Sea based on a Agricultural Value Network shared by Neanderthal and Sapiens that has played the role of accelerator.

In this sense, the emergence of symbolic representations was a local process that took place in Europe after the early modern human immigrations and seems to have been reserved to this human species and this type of environment. We argue that the processes of modern human expansion and Neanderthal acculturation were interrelated during this time period.

Settlement and mobility patterns can be deduced from studies of lithic technology and the raw materials found on-site. This study focuses on raw material procurement and inferred aspects of mobility in two stratigraphic layers of Qafzeh Cave (XIX and XIII) dated ~100,000 – 90,000 ka and associated with modern humans, and two stratigraphic layers of Amud Cave (B4 and B1) dated to 68 - 55 ka from Israel, linked with Neanderthals. The lithic assemblages in both sites are made exclusively on flint and occur as many different visual raw material types, distinguished by their colors and textures. An  ArcGIS model is used to create a topography-sensitive predictive model for Daily Exploitation Territories (DET) around each site. This model was used to designate local vs. nonlocal outcrops. By linking the visual data with geochemical information (ICP-MS, ICP-AES), using a battery of statistical methods (e.g., ANOVA, Principle Component Analysis and Cluster Analysis) to establish the relationship between the two types of observations, the analysis shows that in both sites local materials are most abundant and were brought to the cave to ‘provision the place’. Additionally, distant raw materials, some from a distance of over >60 km, were brought to the caves in particular typo-technological forms, suggesting ‘provisioning of individuals’. Distant raw materials are more pronounce in Amud Cave, suggesting relativelylong-distance transport and high mobility. We discuss the implications of these observations in the context of reconstructing territoriality and mobility patterns of Levantine MP groups.

This paper argues that for interaction between modern humans and Neanderthals to have been meaningful, there must be evidence of behavioural modernity in Neanderthals.
Using Henshilwood and Marean's (2003) 'table of attributes used to identify anatomically modern human behaviour',  evidence of Neanderthal behavioural modernity from the archaeological record is considered.

In 2017, archaeological studies of the Pleistocene deposits in the South Chamber of Denisova Cave have been resumed. The deposits constituting the upper part of the Pleistocene strata have been examined at the mouth of the cave on the lines forming grids Е and Ж, including lithological layers 9 and 11. Layer 11, containing the deposits accumulated during the first half of MIS 3, has yielded lithic artifacts that can be attributed to the Early Upper Paleolithic. Primary flaking in this industry is characterized by radial and sub-prismatic cores. The analysis of flakes suggests that the parallel and Levallois reduction strategies were employed. The tool assemblage also reveals the combination of the Middle and Upper Paleolithic elements. Archaeological evidence from layer 9, whose deposits were accumulated during the Last Glacial Maximum, reflects the ​further development of blade technology.

Objectives: A detailed assessment of intentional incisor ablation among the Late Upper Paleolithic people of Tam Hang (northern Laos) was undertaken to understand how this cultural practice, in addition to age and sex, influenced an individual's inclusion in the mortuary context. The covariation of ablation status with occlusal variation and anterior dental pathology was addressed to study the implications of this cultural practice on oral health. Materials and Methods: Sex, age, caries, antemortem tooth loss, and occlusal variation were assessed through standard osteological methods for 12 individuals. An observational protocol to identify intentional ablation was developed specifically for this sample. Results: Four ablation states were identified that range from no ablation to the removal of two, three, or four lateral (I2) incisors. The timing of ablation was attributed to ritual extractions during early adolescence. Adult age-at-death was the strongest indicator of inclusion in the main burial context and a child burial was isolated from those of adults. Ablation status does not strongly influence inclusion in the mortuary context. Individuals lacking ablation tended to have a higher incidence of anterior caries, pathological tooth loss, incisor crowding, and canine rotation. Conclusions: This study identifies the oldest case of intentional incisor ablation in Late Pleistocene Mainland Southeast Asia. We conclude that ablation does not always " compromise " the dentition; instead, it may have unintentional oral health benefits in some contexts. Am J Phys Anthropol 000:000–000, 2016. V C 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

A new core reduction index is presented, calculated as the ratio of flake scar number to 3D surface area (SDI). The index is tested experimentally on five types of core (blade, discoid, Levallois, biface and multiplatform cores) and then applied to the core assemblages from five sub-stages of the Middle Stone Age at Klasies River Mouth, South Africa. Preliminary results indicate that the SDI possesses the desirable attributes of a successful reduction index and is a significant improvement on traditional proxy measures of core reduction. The results of the archaeological case study confirm previous untested observations that cores from the Howiesons Poort and MSAIII sub-stages are more heavily reduced than preceding and following stages, and that local and exotic raw materials as well as different types of cores are all more heavily reduced during these periods. The SDI fills a significant lacuna in available core reduction measures.

Data for the dating of the earliest human art from cave sites at Maros in Sulawesi, Indonesia; Lascaux, Pech Merle, and Chauvet in southern France, and Altamira and El Castillo in Spain are reviewed. Arguments that western Europe was the locus for the development of artistic expression are evaluated and challenged in the light of the dates obtained for Maros cave. The weight of evidence now points to the widespread presence of parietal art across the Eurasian continent from c.40,000 BP, the ultimate origin of which may lie in the African continent c.60,000 BP. This contradicts the Eurocentric notion that a creative explosion took place uniquely in western Europe c.40,000, leading to the establishment of human culture. A further consequence of the dating evidence from Maros cave is to undermine the theory that Neanderthals were the creator of the earliest cave art. As the distribution of Neanderthals was limited to Europe they cannot be relied upon to explain paintings in Asia, which either predate or are contemporary with those found in Europe.

KEYWORDS
PLEISTOCENE, UPPER PALAEOLITHIC, ORIGINS OF ART, PARIETAL ART, CAVE ART, MAROS CAVE, LASCAUX CAVE, PECH MERLE CAVE, CHAUVET CAVE, ALTAMIRA CAVE, EL CASTILLO CAVE, NEANDERTHAL, CREATIVE EXPLOSION, COGNITION

The Omo 1 fossils, discovered in the late 1960's by a team led by the now late Richard Leakey, have been known to be the oldest anatomically modern human remains thus found anywhere in the world.

New research and dating techniques have now led to more information pertaining to a more accurate date.

African and Western Asian contemporaries of Neanderthals, generally considered to be the earliest Homo sapiens, are not particularly 'modern' looking in their cranial anatomy. Here we test whether the dental morphological signal agrees with this assessment. We used a Bayesian statistical approach to classifying individuals into 'modern' and 'non-modern' groups based on dental non-metric traits. The classification was based on dental trait frequencies for two 'known' samples of 109 Upper Paleolithic H. sapiens and 129 Neanderthal individuals. A cross-validation test of these individuals correctly classified them 95% of the time. Our early H. sapiens sample included 41 individuals from Southern Africa, Northern Africa and Western Asia. We treated our early H. sapiens individuals as 'unknown' and calculated the probability that each belonged to either the Upper Paleolithic or Neanderthal sample. We hypothesized that if the earliest H. sapiens were already dentally modern, then they would be assigned to the Upper Paleolithic H. sapiens group. We also hypothesized that if there had been significant admixture in Western Asia during the initial dispersal out of Africa, these samples would have the largest proportion of individuals classified as Neanderthal. Our results indicated that the latter was not the case. The smallest proportion of misclassified individuals came from Western Asia (7%) and the highest proportion of misclassified individuals came from Northern Africa (38%). In most cases it appears to be the predominance of primitive features, rather than derived Neanderthal traits that drove the classification. We conclude (1) by the time the earliest H. sapiens dispersed from Africa they had already attained a more-or-less modern dental pattern; (2) in the past, as is the case today, Late Pleistocene Africans were not a homogeneous group, some retained primitive dental traits in higher proportions than others. Furthermore, we acknowledge that while our method is an excellent tool for discriminating between Upper Paleolithic H. sapiens and Neanderthals, it may not be appropriate for testing Neanderthal – H. sapiens admixture because all traits (primitive and derived) are weighed equally. Moreover, to best assess admixture it is likely necessary to incorporate a model for how the traits track population history and/or gene flow.

This paper re-examines current arguments concerning the evidence for Neandertal-modern human interaction and admixture. While most researchers now agree that the ancestry of all present day humans can be traced back to African late Middle Pleistocene populations, at a time when the remainder of Eurasia was inhabited by ‘archaic humans’, most notably the Neandertals, issues that remain to be resolved are the tempo and mode of early modern human dispersal and interaction with archaic humans.This paper focuses on what happened at the time of contact in Europe, and assesses the level of admixture that may have occurred, as well as the extent to which such level may have varied in both time and space. It explains how the available mtDNA evidence does not preclude admixture at the time of contact, and is in fact consistent, depending on a number of parameters, with a possibly substantial Neandertal contribution to the initial modern human population of Europe. It is argued that the absenc...

Coastal South Africa draws interdisciplinary interests due to the co-occurrence of a rich record for early human behavioral modernity, hyper-diverse vegetation with very high endemism (the Cape Floral Region), and globally influential oceanic and climate systems. High resolution and continuous climate and environmental records are needed to provide the context for the evolution of behavioral modernity and this diverse flora. Here we present the first such record for climate and environmental change from
90 000 to 53 000 years ago from the southern Cape coast. This important time span covers a burst of expression of several indicators of human behavioral modernity, as well as several key cycles in global climate change. Our research location is ideally placed near the location of several critical archaeological sites, near the boundary of the winter and summer rainfall regimes, and close to isotopically distinct
floral zones. We used isotopic analysis of precisely dated speleothems to document shifting vegetation and rainfall, and show that the presence of winter rain and C3 grasses waxes and wanes in response to Southern Hemisphere shifts in SSTs and global temperature. When proxies of global temperatures indicate warmer conditions, d18O and d13C indicate more winter rain and more C3 grasses, respectively, and vice versa. This record displays abrupt and short-term changes previously undocumented. It is often
argued that the Cape Floral Region partially owes its high diversity to relative climatic stability. Our record shows isotopic variability that at least matches that displayed in the Levantine Mediterranean system, so climatic stability may not have characterized the south coast. One short-lived phase of human technological innovation (the Still Bay) associated with early evidence for behavioral modernity occurs synchronous with an abrupt environmental perturbation. Early modern humans in this region confronted a variable climate and adapted quickly in a manner similar to behaviorally modern humans.