Journal ArticleDOI
Early human use of marine resources and pigment in South Africa during the Middle Pleistocene
Curtis W. Marean,Miryam Bar-Matthews,Jocelyn Bernatchez,Erich C. Fisher,Paul Goldberg,Andy I.R. Herries,Zenobia Jacobs,Antonieta Jerardino,Panagiotis Karkanas,Tom Minichillo,Peter J. Nilssen,Erin Thompson,Ian Watts,Hope M. Williams +13 more
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TLDR
It is shown that by ∼164’kyr ago (±12 kyr) at Pinnacle Point (on the south coast of South Africa) humans expanded their diet to include marine resources, perhaps as a response to these harsh environmental conditions.Abstract:
Genetic and anatomical evidence suggests that Homo sapiens arose in Africa between 200 and 100 thousand years (kyr) ago, and recent evidence indicates symbolic behaviour may have appeared approximately 135-75 kyr ago. From 195-130 kyr ago, the world was in a fluctuating but predominantly glacial stage (marine isotope stage MIS6); much of Africa was cooler and drier, and dated archaeological sites are rare. Here we show that by approximately 164 kyr ago (+/-12 kyr) at Pinnacle Point (on the south coast of South Africa) humans expanded their diet to include marine resources, perhaps as a response to these harsh environmental conditions. The earliest previous evidence for human use of marine resources and coastal habitats was dated to approximately 125 kyr ago. Coincident with this diet and habitat expansion is an early use and modification of pigment, probably for symbolic behaviour, as well as the production of bladelet stone tool technology, previously dated to post-70 kyr ago. Shellfish may have been crucial to the survival of these early humans as they expanded their home ranges to include coastlines and followed the shifting position of the coast when sea level fluctuated over the length of MIS6.read more
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Late Pleistocene Demography and the Appearance of Modern Human Behavior
TL;DR: A population model shows that demography is a major determinant in the maintenance of cultural complexity and that variation in regional subpopulation density and/or migratory activity results in spatial structuring of cultural skill accumulation.
Journal ArticleDOI
A robust feldspar luminescence dating method for Middle and Late Pleistocene sediments
Jan-Pieter Buylaert,Jan-Pieter Buylaert,Mayank Jain,Andrew S. Murray,Kristina Jørkov Thomsen,Christine Thiel,Christine Thiel,Reza Sohbati +7 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors proposed a post-IR IRSL (IRSL) method for the dating of Middle and Late Pleistocene sediments, which appears to avoid signal instability.
Journal ArticleDOI
Fire As an Engineering Tool of Early Modern Humans
Kyle S. Brown,Kyle S. Brown,Curtis W. Marean,Andy I.R. Herries,Andy I.R. Herries,Zenobia Jacobs,Chantal Tribolo,David R. Braun,David Roberts,Michael C. Meyer,Jocelyn Bernatchez +10 more
TL;DR: Replication experiments and analysis of artifacts suggest that humans in South Africa at this time, and perhaps earlier, systematically heated stone materials, including silcrete to improve its flaking properties in making tools.
Journal ArticleDOI
Engraved ochres from the Middle Stone Age levels at Blombos Cave, South Africa
TL;DR: Thirteen additional pieces of incised ochre recovered from c.
Journal ArticleDOI
Phonemic diversity supports a serial founder effect model of language expansion from Africa.
TL;DR: It is shown that the number of phonemes used in a global sample of 504 languages is also clinal and fits a serial founder–effect model of expansion from an inferred origin in Africa, pointing to parallel mechanisms shaping genetic and linguistic diversity and supports an African origin of modern human languages.
References
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Climate and atmospheric history of the past 420,000 years from the Vostok ice core, Antarctica
J. R. Petit,Jean Jouzel,Dominique Raynaud,J. M. Barnola,I. Basile,Michael L. Bender,Jérôme Chappellaz,Michael Davis,Gilles Delaygue,Marc Delmotte,V. M. Kotlyakov,Michel Legrand,Vladimir Ya. Lipenkov,C. Lorius,L. Pepin,Catherine Ritz,Eric S. Saltzman,Michel Stievenard +17 more
TL;DR: The recent completion of drilling at Vostok station in East Antarctica has allowed the extension of the ice record of atmospheric composition and climate to the past four glacial-interglacial cycles.
Journal ArticleDOI
Climate and atmospheric history of the past 420,000 years from the Vostok ice core, Antarctica
J. R. Petit,Jean Jouzel,Dominique Raynaud,Nartsiss I. Barkov,I. Basile,Michael L. Bender,Jérôme Chappellaz,M. Davisk,G. Delaygue,Marc Delmotte,V. M. Kotlyakov,Michel Legrand,Vladimir Ya. Lipenkov,C. Lorius,Catherine Ritz,E. Saltzmank,Michel Stievenard +16 more
TL;DR: The recent completion of drilling at Vostok station in East Antarctica has allowed the extension of the ice record of atmospheric composition and climate to the past four glacial-interglacial cycles as discussed by the authors.
Journal ArticleDOI
The revolution that wasn't: a new interpretation of the origin of modern human behavior.
Sally McBrearty,Alison S. Brooks +1 more
TL;DR: The African Middle and early Late Pleistocene hominid fossil record is fairly continuous and in it can be recognized a number of probably distinct species that provide plausible ancestors for H. sapiens, and suggests a gradual assembling of the package of modern human behaviors in Africa, and its later export to other regions of the Old World.
Journal ArticleDOI
Sea-level and deep water temperature changes derived from benthic foraminifera isotopic records
Claire Waelbroeck,Laurent Labeyrie,Laurent Labeyrie,Elisabeth Michel,Jean-Claude Duplessy,Jerry F. McManus,Kurt Lambeck,Estelle Balbon,Monique Labracherie +8 more
TL;DR: In this paper, robust regressions were established between relative sea-level (RSL) data and benthic foraminifera oxygen isotopic ratios from the North Atlantic and Equatorial Pacific Ocean over the last climatic cycle.
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Mitochondrial genome variation and the origin of modern humans
TL;DR: The global mtDNA diversity in humans is described based on analyses of the complete mtDNA sequence of 53 humans of diverse origins, providing a concurrent view on human evolution with respect to the age of modern humans.
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