Paleolithic Papers #29

Genus Homo:

Rock art from Croatia from circa 34,000 years ago is figurative in nature.

Stone tools were recycled to new uses at a cave in Israel during the late Lower Paleolithic.

Hunter gatherers don't live in 'small' societies.

H. sapiens (Modern Humans):

Brain sizes have shrunk 10% in the last 40,000 years.

There is evidence of starchy food cooked in South Africa during the Mesolithic.

Is this the earliest known footprint from a human in the Americas?

H. neanderthalensis (Neandertals):

The Sima de los Huesas hominins get their age bracketed.

The first Neandertal fossil from Serbia has been found.

Could have aridification helped wipe out the neandertals?

Denisovans:

The Denisovans were two populations, at least, and may have actually been two different species.

A Denisovan jaw bone found in Tibet shows Denisovans colonized the 'roof of the world' long before modern humans did.  The jaw bone also starts to show what the Denisovans looked like.

H. antecessor:

H. antecessor was, at least once, a cannibal.

H. heidelbergensis:

Evidence from reexamining bovid remains from South Africa suggest active hunting was import for H. heidelbergensis.

H. luzonensis:

H. luzonensis, a new hominin from Luzon island of the Philippines, has been discovered. This hominin was another miniature standing at about an estimated 1.2m (5 ft). It may have suffered from island dwarfing like H. floresiensis, the so-called Hobbit.  John Hawks comments.

Hualongdong Hominin:

A hominin from China has a mosaic of primitive and modern features.  Some are claiming this is proof of the multiregional hypothesis.

H. erectus:

Evidence of what mammals H. erectus ate in Italy prior to 1.3 million years ago.

The dispersal routes out of Africa for hominins are explored in Sudan looking for stone tools.  John Hawks comments.

H. naledi:

Cranial remains from the Lesedi Chamber of the Rising Star Cave show some variation from the other fossils, but by and large appear to be more of H. naledi.

H. habilis:

The KNM-ER 64060 fossil mandible appears to be from H. habilis rather than H. erectus.

Genus Australopithecus:

A. sediba:

A sediba does not appear to be ancestral to modern humans.

META:

Man the Runner hypothesis is back again.

A troop of chimps deprived a leopard of its kill: how does that help model early hominins?

The history of human evolution can be seen in your face.

How important was the east african coastal forest for human evolution?

Basal ancestors of Humanity were upright apes.

Plovers Lake paleogenetics data might have been contaminated by modern people.

Paleolithic Papers #23

Genus Homo:

The modern human hand was almost certainly around by 500,000 years ago, predating modern humans by 300,000 years.

The deactivation of the Cmah gene two to three million years ago appears to have given hominins a leg up by increasing endurance and improving running speeds.

H. sapiens:

When DID modern humans reach southeast asia and sahul?

The revised timeline of data from the Liang Bua cave may suggest modern humans made it to Flores by 46 kya.

The Levant had a humid period between 44kya and 55 kya.  That may be what helped modern humans disperse out of Africa.

An abstract piece of art appears to have been found in a cave in South Africa dating from 73,000 years ago.

Using ZooMS to understand the bone tools of the twilight of the Pleistocene in North Africa.

Humans actually share better than other primates.

Beer before agriculture.  Maybe.  However, beer dates from the twilight of the Pleistocene in Israel.  If not older.

Neandertals:

The early dates for the Neandertal Art might be wrong.  Some are disputing them.

Could cooking and fire be how modern humans outcompeted Neandertals?

How much did the climate cycles impact the replacement of Neandertals by modern humans in Europe?

Neandertal brains were bigger than modern humans, but not necessarily better.

Denisovans:

Meet Denny.  She is a 13 year old girl who had a Neandertal mother and a Denisovan father.

The cave where Denny came from has given up 4 more bones (not hers).  Dr. John Hawks comments.

Aroeria Hominin:

The bony labyrinth of this hominin appears to be more primitive than in Neandertals.  This could be a new hominin or an example of Homo heidelbergensis.

META:

Evolution of the hominin foot and how it relates to bipedalism.

How DID humans evolve their 'smarts?'

Two to three million years ago, human ancestors had genetic change that improved their running capability.

50,000 Year Old Cave Paintings Found From Pleistocene Quaternary Sulawesi, Indonesia

Pleistocene cave art from Sulawesi, Indonesia

Authors:

Aubert et al

Abstract:

Archaeologists have long been puzzled by the appearance in Europe ~40–35 thousand years (kyr) ago of a rich corpus of sophisticated artworks, including parietal art (that is, paintings, drawings and engravings on immobile rock surfaces) and portable art (for example, carved figurines) and the absence or scarcity of equivalent, well-dated evidence elsewhere, especially along early human migration routes in South Asia and the Far East, including Wallacea and Australia where modern humans (Homo sapiens) were established by 50 kyr ago. Here, using uranium-series dating of coralloid speleothems directly associated with 12 human hand stencils and two figurative animal depictions from seven cave sites in the Maros karsts of Sulawesi, we show that rock art traditions on this Indonesian island are at least compatible in age with the oldest European art11. The earliest dated image from Maros, with a minimum age of 39.9 kyr, is now the oldest known hand stencil in the world. In addition, a painting of a babirusa (‘pig-deer’) made at least 35.4 kyr ago is among the earliest dated figurative depictions worldwide, if not the earliest one. Among the implications, it can now be demonstrated that humans were producing rock art by ~40 kyr ago at opposite ends of the Pleistocene Eurasian world.

Cave Painting of Volcanic Eruption Tied to Real Event

A 9,000-year-old painting of an exploding volcano, the oldest ever found, can now be linked to a real-life eruption in Turkey.

link.