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Pleistocene Background. The archaic world of Homo ergaster and its successors was one of unpredictable climatic change, which began about 2.5 million years ago and intensified with the beginning of the Pleistocene (the Great Ice Age) about 1.6 mya.
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Pleistocene Background • The archaic world of Homo ergaster and its successors was one of unpredictable climatic change, which began about 2.5 million years ago and intensified with the beginning of the Pleistocene (the Great Ice Age) about 1.6 mya. • Lower Pleistocene (1.6 Million to c. 780,000 Years Ago) • Middle Pleistocene (c. 780,000 to 128,000 Years Ago)
Homo ergaster in Africa • Homo ergaster appeared in tropical Africa at a time of increasing aridity. • Ergaster operated over much larger ranges, tamed fire, was more versatile, and soon migrated in steps and starts over long distances. • By a million years ago, the only known species were Homo ergaster and its Asian relative Homo erectus, both larger humans with overall skeletal proportions much more like those of modern humans.
Homo ergaster in Africa • Richard Leakey and anatomist Alan Walker discovered the virtually complete skeleton of an 11-year-old H. ergaster boy at Nariokotome on the western shores of Lake Turkana dating to about 1.6 million years ago. • Homo ergaster’s brain size was only some 130 cc larger than that of H. habilis, and smaller than that of modern humans. • Homo ergaster may have been the common ancestor not only of later Africans but of Europeans as well.
The Radiation of Homo ergaster • Around 2 mya, as the Ice Age began, H. ergaster was adjusting to cyclic alterations among savanna, forest, and desert. • Very likely, H. ergaster adapted to changed circumstances, radiating out of Africa by way of the Sahara, when the desert was capable of supporting human life.
The Radiation of Homo ergaster • During the long history of H. ergaster and its successors, humanity adapted to many different environments, from tropical savannas in East Africa to forested Indonesian valleys, temperate climates in North Africa and Europe, and the harsh winters of China and northern Europe. • With such a wide distribution, it is hardly surprising that some physical variations in populations also appeared.
Out of Africa: Homo erectus in Asia • Despite many years of searching, no one has yet discovered an australopithecine or Homo habilis in any part of Asia. • Most experts date the first settlement of Southeast Asia to about 1.7 million years ago, a date that hints at a relatively rapid expansion of humans out of Africa, perhaps within a time span of a mere 200,000 years or so.
Out of Africa: Homo erectus in Asia • Southeast Asia - The earliest dated humans in Asia are the Modjokerto and Sangiran fossils in Indonesia’s Solo River valley, which are dated to about 1.66 mya. • China - The most famous, and the largest Middle Pleistocene, site in China is the Zhoukoudian Cave, 46 km (28.5 miles) west of Beijing. • At least 40 H. erectus individuals have been found at Zhoukoudian.
Out of Africa: Homo erectus in Asia • Early Asian Technology - The early Asians took full advantage of the forest resources available to them. Instead of stone, they turned to wood, fiber, and bamboo. • ~ 800,000 years ago, Homo erectus of southern China produced chipped cobbles and bifacial tools, but no Acheulian hand axes.
Moving to the North: The Settlementof Temperate Latitudes • Homo ergaster dispersed out of Africa, not only eastward, but also northward into Southwest Asia. • Most evidence for Middle Pleistocene settlement, between about 500,000 and 130,000 years ago, falls in periods when the climate was colder than today but not fully glacial, as it has been for most of the past 700,000 years.
Moving to the North: The Settlementof Temperate Latitudes • Europe - The earliest settlement of temperate Europe itself currently dates to about 1.2 to 1.1 mya (Sima del Elefante at Atapuerca , Spain). • Permanent Settlement: Homo heidelbergensis- The first permanent European residents arrived in what may have been an uninhabited continent between 600,000 and 500,000 years ago.
Archaic Human Technology • The Oldowan technology used by the earliest forms of Homo remained in use for as long as a million years. • The earliest known wooden artifacts are some long spears and a throwing stick dated to 400,000 years ago. • Hand Axes and Other Tools • Acheulian - bifacially flaked hand axes.
Archaic Human Technology • Hand Axes and Other Tools • The hand ax occurs over a vast area of the Old World in all shapes and sizes, from crude, teardrop-shaped forms to ovals and from tongue-shaped to occasional finely pointed specimens. • Unlike the crude scrapers and choppers of the Oldowan, the Acheulian hand ax was an artifact with converging edges that met at a point.
Archaic Human Technology • Hand Axes and the Evolution of the Human Mind • The hand axes from Kilombe, Kenya, date to more than 700,000 years ago. • They display a very high statistical correlation among length, breadth, and thickness, standardization within a length of 8 to 24 cm (3.14 to 9.40 inches). • Such a correlation implies a well-defined mental image of the ideal end product, shared by more than one person.
Evidence for Behavior: Boxgrove,Schöningen, and Torralba • The Schöningen sites leave no doubt that people of the day were sophisticated, expert big-game hunter with a precise knowledge of raw materials and the mental abilities to create highly effective throwing weapons. • Boxgrove site - At the foot of the cliff, people killed and butchered large mammals, among them rhinoceros, bison, deer, horse, and bear.
Evidence for Behavior: Boxgrove,Schöningen, and Torralba • Torralba and Ambrona - Torralba yielded most of the left side of a large elephant that had been cut into small pieces, and Ambrona contained the remains of 30 to 35 dismembered elephants. • Concentrations of broken food bones were found all over the site, and the skulls of the elephants had been broken open to expose the brains. • Both kill sites were littered with crude hand axes, cleavers, scrapers, and cutting tools.
Language • Homo erectus and Homo heidelbergensis had a large brain with a well-developed Broca’s area, the zone associated with speaking ability. Their vocal tracts were more modern than those of Homo habilis, which suggests considerable potential for articulate speech.
The Neanderthals • Much of what we know about early Homo sapiens, the descendant of Homo heidelbergensis, comes from the Neanderthals, long-term inhabitants of Europe and Eurasia, whose anatomical features appear in archaic European populations such as those from Atapuerca, Spain, at least 200,000 years ago.
The Neanderthals • There are, of course, striking anatomical differences between Neanderthals and modern humans, both in the robust postcranial skeleton of the Neanderthal and in its more bun-shaped skull, sometimes with heavy brow ridges and a forward-projecting face. • These features are the reason that this extinct hominin form is classified as Homo neanderthalensis, a subspecies of Homo sapiens, and not as Homo sapiens, a fully modern human.
A More Complex Technology • Neanderthal - Mousterian technology • Far more complex and sophisticated than its Acheulian predecessor • The stone technology used by the Neanderthals and other early Homo sapiens forms has often been subsumed under the label Middle Paleolithic
A More Complex Technology • Levallois and Disk-Core-Reduction Strategies • Levallois technique - produces broad, flat flakes, large blades, and triangular points. • Disk core technique - used to produce as many flakes of varying size as possible and resulted in residual cores with an approximately round shape.
A More Complex Technology • Tool Forms and Variability • Mousterian and other Middle Paleolithic tools were made of flakes although toolkits varied widely. • In spite of their technical proficiency, Neanderthals made only a narrow range of artifacts compared with, say, modern Inuit of the Canadian Arctic.
The Origins of Burial and Religious Belief • Single burials (Neanderthal) are the most common, normally accompanied by flint tools, food offerings, or even cooked game meat. • There is no question that the Neanderthals buried some of their dead, but whether such burial was mere corpse disposal or was associated with beliefs in an afterlife is a matter for debate.
Neanderthal Speech? • Did the Neanderthals have language and the ability to pass complex information from one generation to the next? • There are very strong reasons to believe that they did not possess fluent speech. • Firstly, the Neanderthals lived in small intimate groups. • Secondly, no one has yet found a convincing art object or artifacts modified for symbolic reasons in a Neanderthal site. • There were no innovations, just a narrow repertoire of ancient technologies that sustained them for thousands of years.
The Denisovans • All we have of them are a broken finger bone and a wisdom tooth of a woman, found in Denisova Cave in southern Siberia. • Date to between 30,000 and 50,000 years ago. • The genome sequence recovered from the bones and mitochondria from the tooth shows that its owner shared common ancestry with the Neanderthals, but was not one of them. • The Denisovans are genetically distinct from the Neanderthals, but traces of their DNA survive in the genes of some modern-day Papuans and Pacific Islanders.
