DOCSLIB.ORG

Papers in Honor of Antonio Gilman Guillen

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Papers in Honor of Antonio Gilman Guillen THE MATTER OF PREHISTORY: PAPERS IN HONOR / OF ANTONIO GILMAN GUILLEN Edited by Pedro Díaz-del-Río Katina Lillios Inés Sastre CONSEJO SUPERIOR DE INVESTIGACIONES CIENTíFICAS Madrid, 2020 Antonio Gilman Guillén PhotograPhed by Benedicte Gilman at the Karl Marx House museum, Trier (Germany), 5 aUffUst 2012 VI. THE MIDDLE PALEOLITHIC REVOLUTION, THE ORIGINS OF ART, AND THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF PALEOANTHROPOLOGY Joiio Zilhiio Abstraet pa hace 40000 años supusieron una «Revolución Gilman (1984) proposed that an "Upper del Paleolítico Superior», desencadenada por el Paleolithic Revolution" triggered by techno­ progreso tecnológico y el crecimiento demográ­ logical progress and demographic growth, and fico y representaron la emergencia de mecanis­ standing for the emergence of ritual reciproci­ mos de reciprocidad ritualizada. Los descubri­ ty mechanisms, explained the major behavioral mientos realizados desde entonces respaldan la innovations se en in Europe after 40,000 years validez del concepto, aunque al mismo tiempo ago. Subsequent developments have shown that han revelado que el registro arqueológico con­ the notion remains valid but that early manifes­ tiene manifestaciones precoces de tales conduc­ tations of those behaviors can be se en in the ar­ tas, distribuidas por todo el Viejo Mundo, desde cheological record since at least the beginning of por lo menos los inicios del Ultimo Intergla­ the Last Interglacial, and across the Old World. ciar. Por lo tanto, el proceso que a partir de la Thus, the process that brought a world of many, humanidad sin fronteras de épocas anteriores diverse, ethnically bounded Humanities out of engendró un mundo de muchas y diversas hu­ the womb of the unbounded single Humanity of manidades separadas por barreras étnicas tuvo earlier times was rather more gradual and longer; que ser bastante más gradual y largo; el inicio the beginning of the Middle Paleolithic/Middle del Paleolítico medio fue su etapa primera, el Stone Age was the initial stage of such a revo­ inicio del Paleolítico superior fue la final. El lution, the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic descubrimiento de que, en la Península Ibérica, was the lasto The finding that, in Neandertal Ibe­ el arte de las cuevas tiene al menos 65000 años ria, cave art dates back to >65,000 ago has been y se remonta a los neandertales, ha sido clave key to this reassessment of the Middle-to-Upper para este replanteamiento de la transición Pa­ Paleolithic transition and, not unexpectedly, un­ leolítico Medio-Superior. Como por otra parte derwent sorne questioning. The arguments used, era esperable, ese descubrimiento no dejó de devoid of empirical basis as they are, highlight cuestionarse, pero los argumentos utilizados es­ the extent to which the debate of Paleoanthro­ tán desprovistos de base empírica. Ilustran más pology's "Big Issues" is biased by often implicit, bien hasta qué punto el debate sobre las «Gran­ obsolete assumptions inherited from the origins des Cuestiones» de la paleoantropología llega a of the discipline and by the social! cultural con­ estar sesgado por supuestos obsoletos heredados text of knowledge production. de los orígenes de la disciplina, frecuentemente apenas implícitos, y por el contexto cultural y Keywords: Neandertals, modern humans, Upper social en que se da la producción del conoci­ Paleolithic Revolution, Antonio Gilman, Cave miento científico. Art, Dating, U-series, Radiocarbon. Palabras clave: Neandertales, humanos moder­ Resumen nos, Revolución del Paleolítico Superior, Antonio Gilman (1984) propuso que las grandes inno­ Gilman, arte parietal, datación, serie del Uranio, vaciones de conducta que se observan en Euro- radiocarbono. 85 6.1. INTRODUCTION Eurasia, and did so extensively, not occasionally only. Subsequent developments demonstrated Thirty-five years ago, Explaining the Upper Paleo­ that the aDNA ofhuman fossils implied gene flux lithic Revolution (Gilman 1984) succinctlyexposed between Africa and Europe and between west­ the shortcomings of the two models of the Mid­ ern Europe and central Asia during the Middle dle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition (henceforth, Pleistocene (Posth et al. 2017) - the time when the Transition) that prevailed through most of branching off a common ancestor through isola­ the second half of the 20th century: cultural de­ tion by distance and drift was supposed to have terminism and biological reductionism. brought about the speciation of Hamo neandertha­ Cultural determinism had "the merit of fo­ lensis (Hublin 2009). Meanwhile, the sequencing cusing research on subsistence techniques, de­ of parts of the Neandertal genome had already mography, and social organization, aspects of sufficed to demonstrate presence of the human the archaeological record too often neglected form of the FOXP2 gene (Krause et al. 2007), in Paleolithic studies, but the specificity which thereby eliminating the basis for speculations gives the approach its heuristic value is carried that Neandertals lacked advanced speech capa­ to the point of becoming a theoretical defect," bilities and symbolic language. because "the Upper Paleolithic Revolution is an At the same time, critical analysis of strati­ Old-World-wide event and cannot be explained graphic sequences, radiocarbon dates, and the by local ecological gimmicks;" in addition, the relevant fossils' technocomplex associations approach failed "to link technical and social showed that material culture of undeniably sym­ changes in a convincing causal sequence." bolic nature was a feature of the archeological Biological reductionism fared no better: "Be­ record left behind by European Neandertals, and cause biological changes underdetermine cultur­ this well before the time of contact with modern alones, the biological approach fails to establish humans (for revisions of the evidence, cf. Zilhao a plausible link between the assumed causes and 2001, 2007, 2013; Caron et al. 2011; Zilhao et the known manifestations ofthe Upper Paleolith­ al. 2011, 2015). In addition, re-excavation of ic Revolution." For instance, the Bouffia Bonneval at La Chapelle-aux-Saints (France) proved the presence of a pit cut into the Even if, for the sake of argument, one were to allow basal bedrock; combined with the human skel­ that Horno sapiens sapiens was biologically more eton's differential preservation (relative to the capable of cognitive representations such as langua­ site's faunal remains), this work satisfied the ar­ ge than his immediate predecessors, however, one cheological and taphonomic criteria demanded would still not be able to use his increased abilities by skeptics to ascertain intentional burial (Rendu as a sufficient explanation for the new elements in et al. 2014). The exchange that followed (Dibble his cultural repertoire. To say, for example, that Cro­ et al. 2015; Rendu et al. 2016) further exposed Magnons were capable of painting caves (and that Neanderthals were not) does not explain why they the double standards used by critics to deny the painted them. Conversely, if painting caves is part of practice among Middle Paleolithic humans, as a more effective adaptive system, then one need not Belfer-Cohen and Hovers (1992) had already appeal to the capability of painting them in order to pointed out in the context of an earlier iteration explain why the painting took place. of the intentional burial debate. The necessary implication of these develop­ Most subsequent research, however, remained ments was that Neandertals and their African oblivious to these points ofplain logic. Eventually, contemporaries were not different species but under the umbrella of the Recent Out-of-Africa geographical variants of a single Humanity - al­ (ROA) model of modern human origins (String­ beit one that, by early Upper Pleistocene times er and Andrews 1988), one of these explanations and because of population structure and low of the Transition - biological reductionism, as numbers, was significantly more internally di­ epitomized by e.g. Klein (2000, 2003), Henshil­ verse, both genetically and morphologically, than wood and Marean (2003) or Mellars (2005) - in the more recent past. Thus, to explain the became almost universally accepted. In the last transcontinental emergence of so-called "behav­ decade, however, its foundations were definitive­ ioral modernity" and its earliest manifestations' ly undermined by discoveries that falsified all of now-you-see-it-now-you-don 't pattern (D 'Errico ROA's empirically testable predictions. There is 2003; Hovers and Belfer-Cohen 2006; Lorblan­ no need to be exhaustive here, but it is none­ chet and Bahn 2017) one must resort to (a) the theless useful to briefly review what such devel­ emergence of the ritual reciprocity mechanisms opments consisted of. derived from alliance theory that Gilman had Human Paleontology (Duarte et al. 1999; envisaged, and (b) proper understanding of the Trinkaus 2007) and Genetics (Green et al. 2010) laws of uneven and combined development. showed that anatomically modern humans and Building on this conclusion and on the ob­ Neandertals interbred at the time of contact in servation that the earliest burials were at sites 86 also used for habitation - and this regardless of lithic Revolution," one that would have ignored whether Neandertals (e.g., Shanidar) or anatom­ continental barriers as much as the boundaries ically moderns (e.g. Skhul and Qafzeh) were in­ between Human Paleontology's taxonomic cat­ volved - I have suggested that the emergence of egories. Such a leap would thus represent
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Denisovans, Neanderthals Or Sapiens?
    Could There Have Been Human Families... 8(2)/2020 ISSN 2300-7648 (print) / ISSN 2353-5636 (online) Received: March 31, 2020. Accepted: September 2, 2020 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12775/SetF.2020.019 Could There Have Been Human Families Where Parents Came from Different Populations: Denisovans, Neanderthals or Sapiens? MARCIN EDWARD UHLIK Independent Scholar e-mail: [email protected] ORCID: 0000-0001-8518-0255 Abstract. No later than ~500kya the population of Homo sapiens split into three lin- eages of independently evolving human populations: Sapiens, Neanderthals and Den- isovans. After several hundred thousands years, they met several times and interbred with low frequency. Evidence of coupling between them is found in fossil records of Neanderthal – Sapiens offspring (Oase 1) and Neanderthal – Denisovans (Denisova 11) offspring. Moreover, the analysis of ancient and present-day population DNA shows that there were several significant gene flows between populations. Many introgressed sequences from Denisovans and Neanderthals were identified in genomes of currently living populations. All these data, according to biological species definition, may in- dicate that populations of H. sapiens sapiens and two extinct populations H. sapiens neanderthalensis and H. sapiens denisovensis are one species. Ontological transitions from pre-human beings to humans might have happened before the initial splitting of the Homo sapiens population or after the splitting during evolution of H. sapiens sapiens lineage in Africa. If the ensoulment of the first homo occurred in the evolving populations of H. sapiens sapiens, then occasionally mixed couples (Neanderthals – Sa- piens or Denisovans – Sapiens) created relations that functioned as a family, in which children could have matured.
    [Show full text]
  • Palaeoneurology and the Emergence of Language Aurélien Mounier, Camille Noûs, Antoine Balzeau
    Palaeoneurology and the Emergence of Language Aurélien Mounier, Camille Noûs, Antoine Balzeau To cite this version: Aurélien Mounier, Camille Noûs, Antoine Balzeau. Palaeoneurology and the Emergence of Language. Bulletins et Mémoires de la Société d’anthropologie de Paris, Springer Verlag, 2020, 32 (3-4), pp.147- 157. 10.3166/bmsap-2020-0098. hal-03007732 HAL Id: hal-03007732 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03007732 Submitted on 23 Nov 2020 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. 1 Palaeoneurology and the emergence of language 2 Paléoneurologie et origine du langage 3 4 Aurélien Mounier1,2, *, Camille Noûs3, Antoine Balzeau1,4 5 6 1 Histoire Naturelle de l’Homme Préhistorique (HNHP, UMR 7194), MNHN/CNRS/UPVD, Musée de 7 l’Homme, 17 place du Trocadéro et du 11 Novembre, 75016 Paris, France. 8 2Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies, Department of Archaeology, University of 9 Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Street, Cambridge CB2 1QH, United Kingdom. 10 3Laboratoire Cogitamus, Musée de l’Homme, 17 place du Trocadéro et du 11 Novembre, 75016 Paris, 11 France. 12 4Department of African Zoology, Royal Museum for Central Africa, B-3080 Tervuren, Belgium.
    [Show full text]
  • Artistes De La Prehistòria ART PRIMER Art Primer
    MAC Museu d’Arqueologia de Catalunya Artistes de la prehistòria ART PRIMER Art Primer. Artistes de la Prehistòria MAC - Museu d’Arqueologia de Catalunya Del 6 de febrer al 28 de juny de 2020 Passeig de Santa Madrona 39-41 Parc de Montjuïc 08038 Barcelona | 93 423 21 49 www.mac.cat Edita Traducció Museu d’Arqueologia de Catalunya TRADUCCIONES Y TRATAMIENTO DE LA DOCUMENTACIÓN Departament de Cultura Generalitat de Catalunya Impressió Editors Inés Domingo (ICREA, UB) ISBN Antoni Palomo (Museu d’Arqueologia de Catalunya) 978-84-393-9997-1 Dipòsit legal Coordinació editorial B 3009-2020 Joan Muñoz (Museu d’Arqueologia de Catalunya) Agraïments Òscar Ros i Patrícia Bassa Enrique Cabello, Anna M. Garrido, Carme Rovira, Àngels Casanovas (Gabinet Tècnic del Departament de Cultura) Coordinació textos Antoni Palomo L’obra Art primer. Artistes de la prehistòria està subjecta a una Inés Domingo llicència de Reconeixement - No Comercial 4.0 Internacional de Creative Commons. Se’n permet la còpia, la distribució i la comunicació pública sense ús comercial, sempre que se’n citi la Textos font. Inés Domingo, Antoni Palomo, Susana Alonso, Jusèp Boya i Busquet, Àngels Casanovas i Romeu, Josep M. Fullola, Pilar García-Argüelles, Marcos García Diez, Maria Teresa Miró i Alaix, Jordi Nadal, Margarita Sánchez Romero, Ramon Viñas Vallverdú, BIBLIOTECA DE CATALUNYA - DADES CIP Mariàngela Vilallonga i Vives, Valentín Villaverde, Manuel Vaquero, João Zilhão. Art primer : artistes de la prehistòria Marta Carreté ISBN 9788439399971 I. Domingo, Inés, editor literari Quan no s’indica el contrari les imatges són de la institució que II. Palomo Pérez, Antoni, editor literari ha cedit l’objecte/ Cuando no se indica lo contrario las imágenes III.
    [Show full text]
  • Guidelines for Handouts JM
    INSTITUTE OF ARCHAEOLOGY BA/BSc MODULE (15 credit): ARCL0029 EMERGENCE AND SPREAD OF MODERN HUMANS MODULE HANDBOOK 2019-2020 Upper Palaeolithic Cave Art from Peche Merle, France (Lewis-Williams 2002) Co-ordinator: Dr. Andrew Garrard E-mail: [email protected] Room 408. Telephone 020-7679-4764 Deadlines for coursework for this module are Monday 2 March and Monday 6 April AIMS The module will examine the evolution and spread of modern human hunter-gatherers from their first appearance in Africa until their successful colonization of Europe, Asia, Australasia and the Americas. It will examine the archaeological evidence for the emergence of cognitively modern humans, and the technological, economic and social adaptations which enabled the colonization of the late glacial and early post-glacial world. Case studies will be taken from each of the continents, but with a special emphasis on Europe and the Near East. OBJECTIVES On successful completion of the module, students will be well informed on: - the key research issues relating to the emergence, spread and adaptations of modern human hunter-gatherers - the methodological and theoretical approaches which have been taken to understand these issues - and on the archaeology of the late Pleistocene and early Holocene periods in selected study areas from Africa, Eurasia, Australasia and the Americas. LEARNING OUTCOMES The module is multi-disciplinary in coverage and will help student’s develop their skills in: - the critical evaluation of research from a range of academic fields - and in the presentation of complex ideas in essays and discussion. TEACHING METHODS This 15 credit module will be taught weekly though the spring term in 10 two hour sessions.
    [Show full text]
  • The Evidence of Shamanism Rituals in Early Prehistoric Periods of Europe and Anatolia
    CollAn XIII 2014 185-204 The Evidence of Shamanism Rituals in Early Prehistoric Periods of Europe and Anatolia Neyir KOLANKAYA-BOSTANCI Keywords: Shamanism, Rituals, Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic Anahtar Kelimeler: Şamanizm, Ritüeller, Paleolitik, Mezolitik, Neolitik Introduction Archaeological evidence about shamanism which is an extremely ancient and once widespread religion dating back to the hunting-gathering cultures of the Palaeolithic period (Dioszegi 1960: 8; Eliade 1964: xv, 504; Furst 1977: 21; Maringer 1977; Walsh 1990: 13, 141-150, 161; Ripinsky-Naxon 1993: 70; D’Aquili – Newberg 1999; Whitley 2000; Winkelman 2000; Lewis-Williams 2002; Pearson 2002; Emerson 2003; Aldhouse-Green – Aldhouse-Green 2005; McCall 2007; van Pool – van Pool 2007; Yakar 2009) are becoming increas- ingly common. The term shaman derives especially from the Tungus people of Siberia, meaning “one who is excited or raised or simply to know (Campbell 1983: 157). Shaman is a religious leader of the community whose principal role is to act as a mediator between the three worlds, such as upper (sky), middle (earth) and underworld (underground), aided by his or her ritual equipment and spirit helpers. Ritual equipment almost always includes a drum or other musical instruments, dress, bag, horned mask and models of spirit helpers (Zvelebil 2010: 43-44). Besides shamans are presumed capable of directly interacting or com- municating with humans, animals and spirits and sometimes it is necessary for a shaman to transform into spirits themselves (Eliade 1964; Nicholson 1987; Vitebsky 1995; Hayden 2003: 179; Yakar 2009: 293). During this stage, shamanism often report travelling to the supernatural real to gain help or 186 Colloquium Anatolicum XIII 2014 knowledge for healing, manipulating weather, divinations, ensuring success- ful hunts or other important activities such as ensuring fertility (Eliade 1964; Furst 1972; Grim 1983; Atkinson 1987; Wilbert 1987; Whitley 2000, 156; Narby – Huxley 2001; Van Pool 2003).
    [Show full text]
  • The Significance of Air Circulation and Hearth Location at Paleolithic Cave Sites
    Kedar, Y and Barkai, R. 2019. The Significance of Air Circulation and Hearth Location at Paleolithic Cave Sites. Open Quaternary, 5: 4, pp. 1–12. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/oq.52 METHOD The Significance of Air Circulation and Hearth Location at Paleolithic Cave Sites Yafit Kedar and Ran Barkai Hearths were constructed and used at Paleolithic cave and rockshelter sites in Africa, Europe and Asia as early as the late Lower Paleolithic period. The advantages of the use of fire have been widely researched for the last decades. However, only a few studies have focused on the possible negative impact of the use of fire within closed spaces, such as caves. One of the major negative fire products is smoke, which has an immediate, as well as long-term, effect on humans and may even prevent cave occupation after a short period. In this study we propose a basic air circulation model based on thermodynamics to represent smoke ventilation in caves. We employ this model to shed light on the relationship between smoke disper- sal and cave structure, opening dimensions, hearth characteristics, and seasonal temperature fluctuations. We further show that hearth location was crucial in allowing humans to occupy prehistoric caves while using fire on a regular basis. We present preliminary insights from specific case studies, demonstrating the potential of understanding smoke ventilation in reconstructing the hearth season of use and location within the cave. Keywords: Paleolithic; fire; cave; hearth; smoke; air circulation Introduction Archaeological research has focused on fire’s advan- Human use of fire in the Paleolithic period has been tages: heat, protection, cooking, and light, as major factors widely researched in recent decades due to its major in early human adaptation (Gowlett & Wrangham 2013; implications for the understanding of human adaptation Kaplan et al.
    [Show full text]
  • PRODUCTION PACEA 2017 ___Articles Dans Des Revues
    PRODUCTION PACEA 2017 _______ Articles dans des revues internationales ou nationales avec comité de lecture répertoriées par l’AERES ou dans des bases de données internationales (ACL) ACL - Baker O., Chamel B., Coqueugniot E., Khawam R., Stordeur D., Perrin P., Palfi G., Gourichon L., Coqueugniot H., Led Mort F., Dutour O. (2017) - Prehistory of human tuberculosis : earliest evidence from the onset of animal husbandry in the Near East. Paléorient, vol. 43, n° 2, p. 35-51. ACL - Banks W. E. (2017) - The application of ecological niche modeling methods to archaeological data in order to examine culture-environment relationships and cultural trajectories In : Landais A., Sanchez-Goni M. F. (coord.), Q10 : paléoclimats et environnements quaternaires, quoi de neuf sous le soleil ? Un panorama de la recherche actuelle sur le Quaternaire. Quaternaire, vol. 28, n° 2, p. 271-276. ACL - Bauduer F. (2017) - La medicine évolutionniste : un nouveau regard sur la santé et les maladies. La Revue de medicine interne, vol. 38, n° 3, p. 195-200. ACL - Bauduer F. (2017) - C282Y/H63D hemochromatosis mutations and microevolution : speculations concerning the Basque population”, HOMO, vol. 68, p.38-41. ACL - Bauduer F., Poumier-Chabanier C. (2017) - Preeclampsia in a factor XI deficient woman : discussion about one case. Blood Coagulation and Fibrinolysis, vol. 28, p. 423-424. ACL - Beau A., Rivollat M., Réveillas H., Pemonge M.-H., Mendisco F., Thomas Y., Lefranc P., Deguilloux M.F. (2017) - Multi-scale ancient DNA analyses confirm the western origin of Michelsberg farmers and document probable practices of human sacrifice. PLos ONE 12 (7):e179742, 16 p. ACL - Bertran P., Andrieux E., Antoine P., Deschodt L., Font M., Sicilia D.
    [Show full text]
  • Biology and Philosophy. Part I. the Paleolithic
    World Journal of Research and Review (WJRR) ISSN:2455-3956, Volume-4, Issue-1, January 2017 Pages 21-28 Biology and Philosophy. Part I. The Paleolithic Juan S. Gómez-Jeria killed more easily (this selection mechanism also selected Abstract— An analysis of the Neanderthal Bruniquel cave is right-handed individuals later). For these primary activities presented with an entirely new proposal of how the there is no a need of any conscious knowledge about animal-human relationship was born. The Venus figurines and periodicities (for example, rhinos use trails to travel between the European and Sulawesi cave paintings are briefly analyzed and explained in terms of a simultaneous qualitative change in feeding areas and salt-licks, but the unanswered question is the brain of some anatomically modern humans. Composite who built the first trail). With the passing of time the archaic creatures are explained in terms of the new idea and without Homo sapiens sapiens and Homo sapiens Neanderthalensis assuming an initial need of to consume psychoactive plants or acquired new knowledge, conscious or not: where the routes mushrooms. for specific migrating animals to hunt them were, the places and times where edible animals usually drank and/or ate, Index Terms— Bruniquel Cave, Evolution, Modern Homo advanced ways to hunt (a conscious use of cliffs or dead ends sapiens, Neanderthal, Paleolithic. for hunting). A warning. When I use the term conscious the I. INTRODUCTION reader should not think that our ancestors and related members of the genus Homo had the same way to be After reading the books of Erwin Schrödinger (Nature conscious as us.
    [Show full text]
  • Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens Had Similar Auditory and Speech Capacities
    ARTICLES https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-021-01391-6 Neanderthals and Homo sapiens had similar auditory and speech capacities Mercedes Conde-Valverde 1 ✉ , Ignacio Martínez 1,2, Rolf M. Quam 1,2,3,4, Manuel Rosa1,5, Alex D. Velez3, Carlos Lorenzo6,7, Pilar Jarabo5, José María Bermúdez de Castro8,9, Eudald Carbonell6,7,10 and Juan Luis Arsuaga 2,11 The study of audition in fossil hominins is of great interest given its relationship with intraspecific vocal communication. While the auditory capacities have been studied in early hominins and in the Middle Pleistocene Sima de los Huesos hominins, less is known about the hearing abilities of the Neanderthals. Here, we provide a detailed approach to their auditory capacities. Relying on computerized tomography scans and a comprehensive model from the field of auditory bioengineering, we have established sound power transmission through the outer and middle ear and calculated the occupied bandwidth in Neanderthals. The occu- pied bandwidth is directly related to the efficiency of the vocal communication system of a species. Our results show that the occupied bandwidth of Neanderthals was greater than the Sima de los Huesos hominins and similar to extant humans, implying that Neanderthals evolved the auditory capacities to support a vocal communication system as efficient as modern human speech. he linguistic capacities in Neanderthals have long been an The study of brain endocasts has been one of the classic area of active research and debate among palaeoanthropolo- approaches to interpreting the cognitive and linguistic capacities in gists, albeit with little resolution1–3. The last two decades have Neanderthals.
    [Show full text]
  • Pre Test Excerpt
    Cognitive and Cultural Diversity in Human Evolution Larissa Mendoza Straffon ([email protected]) Centre for Early Sapiens Behaviour, SapienCE University of Bergen, Norway Abstract sociality. Accordingly, their emergence has been assigned a late evolutionary date, with or after the appearance of H. Most well-accepted models of cognitive evolution define the modern human mind in terms of an amalgamation of species- sapiens, between 200 and 100,000 years ago (McBrearty & specific cognitive mechanisms, many of which are described as Brooks, 2000). adaptive. Likewise, these models often use the rich archaeological The timing of the origin of such adaptations is sometimes record of Homo sapiens to illustrate how ‘uniquely human’ mental estimated on the basis of indirect archaeological evidence, abilities gave our species an evolutionary advantage over extinct for example by using art or personal ornaments as proxies hominins. Recent evidence from various fields, however, indicates for language and symbolic thought (d’Errico et al., 2005), that closely related species, particularly Neanderthals and and other times just by inferring that due to their current Denisovans, likely had cognitive capacities very similar to ours, universality these traits must have been in place by the time and that several key aspects of ‘modern’ cognition are not H. sapiens migrated out of Africa, minimally 100,000 years exclusive to our lineage. The sum of these data therefore requires a timely revision of human cognitive evolution models. On the one ago (Mellars, 2006). This in turn has fuelled ongoing hand, claims of species-specific cognitive mechanisms have been discussions of whether the modern human mind and body weakened.
    [Show full text]
  • Axlor; Barandiaran Excavations; Dima, Biscay
    www.nature.com/scientificreports OPEN First data of Neandertal bird and carnivore exploitation in the Cantabrian Region (Axlor; Received: 14 March 2018 Accepted: 18 June 2018 Barandiaran excavations; Dima, Published: xx xx xxxx Biscay, Northern Iberian Peninsula) Asier Gómez-Olivencia1,2,3, Nohemi Sala3, Carmen Núñez-Lahuerta4, Alfred Sanchis5, Mikel Arlegi1,6 & Joseba Rios-Garaizar7 Neandertals were top predators who basically relied on middle- to large-sized ungulates for dietary purposes, but there is growing evidence that supports their consumption of plants, leporids, tortoises, marine resources, carnivores and birds. The Iberian Peninsula has provided the most abundant record of bird exploitation for meat in Europe, starting in the Middle Pleistocene. However, the bird and carnivore exploitation record was hitherto limited to the Mediterranean area of the Iberian Peninsula. Here we present the frst evidence of bird and carnivore exploitation by Neandertals in the Cantabrian region. We have found cut-marks in two golden eagles, one raven, one wolf and one lynx remain from the Mousterian levels of Axlor. The obtaining of meat was likely the primary purpose of the cut-marks on the golden eagle and lynx remains. Corvids, raptors, felids and canids in Axlor could have likely acted as commensals of the Neandertals, scavenging upon the carcasses left behind by these hunter-gatherers. This could have brought them closer to Neandertal groups who could have preyed upon them. These new results provide additional information on their dietary scope and indicate a more complex interaction between Neandertals and their environment. Neandertal behavioral complexity and whether their cognitive capacities parallel those present in modern humans is currently a topic of debate among archaeologists and paleontologists, and it relies on direct and indi- rect evidence.
    [Show full text]
  • Mosaic Evolution in Hominin Phylogeny: Meanings, Implications, and Explanations
    doi 10.4436/jass.97001 JASs Invited Reviews Journal of Anthropological Sciences Vol. 97 (2019), pp. 45-68 Mosaic evolution in hominin phylogeny: meanings, implications, and explanations Andrea Parravicini1 & Telmo Pievani2 1) Department of Philosophy, State University of Milan and Department of Biology, University of Padua, Italy e-mail: [email protected] 2) Department of Biology, University of Padua, Italy e-mail: [email protected] Summary - In paleoanthropological literature, the use of the term “mosaic” (mosaic evolution, mosaic trait, mosaic species, and so on) is becoming more and more frequent. In order to promote a clarification of the use of the concept in literature, we propose here a classification in three different meanings of the notion of mosaic in human evolution: 1) morphological (inter-specific and intra-specific) instability in a certain phase of a branched phylogeny; 2) multiple trajectories and versions of the same adaptive trait in a branched phylogeny; 3) the trait itself as a complex mosaic of sub-traits with different phylogenetic stories (as is the case in language). We argue that the relevance of such mosaic patterns needs a macro-evolutionary interpretation, which takes into consideration the interaction between general selective pressures (promoting different versions of the same adaptation) and a cladogenetic approach in which speciation played a crucial role, due to ecological instability, habitat fragmentation, and geographical dispersals in human evolution. Keywords - Mosaic evolution, Macro-evolutionary approach, Bipedalism, Encephalization, Symbolic behavior, Stone-tools, Human language evolution. The term “mosaic” in human old linear anagenetic model of human phylog- evolution eny with the cladogenetic Darwinian model of a knotty and irregularly branched tree.
    [Show full text]