Transcript Slide 1

Archaeology 100-D200
Ancient Peoples and Places
Archaeology and the Study
of Prehistory…
Week 3: HUMAN EVOLUTION
January 23 & 25 2012
Dr. Alvaro Higueras
Simon Fraser University, Spring 2012
1. Lyell & Stratigraphy
2. The Three Age System
3. Division of the Lithic age : Paleo, Meso and Neo
4. Childe & The Neolithic Revolution
5. Childe & The Urban Revolution
> permanent settlement before agriculture
6. Radiocarbon dating
7. HR 1 : “the human animal”
8. The New Archaeology
9. Predatory R : food-gatherers to food-collectors
10. Broad Spectrum R: climate improves
11. HR 2 : HG improve tech and master their
landscape; “the original affluent society”
12. Secondary Products R : renewable…
13. Upper Paleolithic R : explosion of
technological changes
14. The HR 3: geneculture interaction among
anatomically modern
15. The “Quiet revolution”
The evolution of the human species
and the first evidence for “culture”
Hunter-gathering populations:
societies at the start of the path of an everincreasing path towards complexity.
Early start: Lucy (3.2 ma, Australopithecus
afarensis) is considered an important example in
the start of the trend of cultural behavior
> Recent claims of butchery and meat eating.
> Behavior that is directed by rationality,
intentionality, sociability and logic of survival
Ardipithecus
Early hominin, discovered 1992
Lived approximately 4.5 m.y.a
Partial female skeleton found
Had combined ability to walk and
climbing in trees
Forces paleoanthropologists to
reconsider the adaptations of the
earliest members of the hominin
lineage
Were Early Hominins Hunters?
Early views held that australopithecines were
intensive hunters
Archaeologists began to question this view in the
1970s
It is difficult to prove archaeologically whether
early hominins were hunters or scavengers
 Hominin tools are found in association with
many bones
 These bones exhibit cut marks from tools and
bite marks from carnivores
 The question is which came first to the kills:
the carnivores or the hominins?
Lucy
http://anthro.palomar.edu/hominid/table_of_species.htm
dimorphism
http://anthro.palomar.edu/hominid/table_of_species.htm
The Origin of Tool Use: Archaeological Evidence
The oldest known stone tools date to 2.5 million
years ago
 Hadar region of Ethiopia (approx 3000 stone
tools were recovered)
 The major types of tools are sharp-edged
flakes and cores, including choppers
 Stone tools from Lokalalei, Kenya date to 2.3
million years ago (approx 2000 stone flakes
and cores were recovered
 These tools indicate that early tool
manufacture followed a consistent strategy
Lower Paleolithic industries
 The Oldowan : 3.5 – 1.5 mya
 The chopper
 Make a chopper by taking a rounded stone and
striking flakes off one edge
• The Acheulian : 1.7 mya – 400/200 kya
 Acheulian sites found throughout Africa and
in Europe, the Middle East, and India
 Acheulian appears at the same time as the
emergence of Homo erectus and extinction of
Homo habilis …. But overlap is for sure.
 Characteristic stone tool is the bifacial hand
axe (symmetrical!)
What is a hominin?
The group consisting of modern humans, extinct
human species and all our immediate ancestors
Homo species (Homo sapiens, Habilis, H.
ergaster, H. rudolfensis), all of the
Australopithecines (Australopithicus africanus,
A. boisei, etc.) and other ancient forms like
Paranthropus and Ardipithecus
What is a hominid?
The group consisting of all modern and extinct
Great Apes (that is, modern humans,
chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans plus all
their immediate ancestors).
Hominin Living Floors and Base Camps
The home-base/food-sharing model (Isaac) sees
sharing of meat at base camps as a fundamental
part of early hominin life
 According to this model, hominins created places
on the landscape to which meat was brought for
sharing among members of a community
 The stone circle at DK site in Olduvai Gorge may
be evidence of a structure build on a home-base
site
 “Palimpsest”
On terminology
Palimpsest : an archaeological site produced by a
series of distinct, brief occupations
A manuscript from a scroll or book (usually written
on papyrus or parchment) on which more than one
text has been written, with the earlier writing
incompletely erased and still visible; it may have
been scraped off and used again.
French prehistorians use the “delayering”
(décapage) technique to be able to document such
precise changes in occupation.
The use of Fire
 Very little evidence for controlled use of fire
from Oldowan and Acheulian sites in Africa.
 Tentative evidence for the use of fire by early
hominins dates to 1.4 million years ago in Kenya
at the site of Chesowanja.
 The burnt clay at the site may be from a hearth
or the result of natural fires.
 Hard evidence that early hominins used fire has
not been found to date.
Laetoli (Tanzania, ca. 3.5 mya)
• Footprints preserved in powdery volcanic ash
• Demonstrate that hominids walked upright
(bipedalism). They show an arch (the bending
of the sole of the foot) typical of modern
humans.
• Other prints show the presence of twenty other
animal species, among them elephants, hyenas,
wild cats, baboons.
• No artefacts have been found in the vicinity.
• http://www.care2.com/go/z/e/Ag0wm/zL7b/
B7bm1
• http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/304
• http://g.co/maps/fkj3y
Human populations: Migrations out of
Africa
• DNA analysis suggests that entire population of
the world can be traced to a single African
lineage (Africa has greatest genetic diversity)
• Two phases of migrations:
• 1. Homo erectus goes for a stroll through Sinai
ca. 1 mya.
• 2. A modern Homo (sapiens) strolls out of Africa
ca, 100 kya.
• Molecular clock (measures the degree of genetic
similarity) places “Eve” at ca. 200-100 kya in the
2nd wave.
• First, hominins populate the world (E&A). Later,
modern human species replaces all hominins of
the 1st wave (without significant interbreeding?)
•
•
•
•
Multi-regional Model
Modern humans evolved independently from
archaic H. sapiens in Asia, Europe and Africa.
Supported by the fossil evidence from several
regions which show physical characteristics
distinct to each area from H. erectus to modern
populations.
No speciation - Interbreeding possible, between
existing pre-modern humans with anatomically
modern humans – if they ever happened to meet.
Evidence from Java casts doubt on this model: H.
erectus dating to 53-27 kya suggesting they
overlapped with modern humans.
Second wave
Homo Erectus
First wave
First wave
Ubeidiya,
1.4-1 mya
Oldowan
Dmanisi, stone tools,
mostly simple flakes.
No evidence of
Acheulian technology
African Replacement (Out of Africa theory, OoA)
• Anatomically modern humans evolved in Africa
relatively recently (100 kya to 200 kya,
Molecular clock )
• Then migrated out of Africa about 60 to 80 kya
years ago and replaced all pre-existing
populations of humans, including the favorite
"cave man" the Neanderthal (Europe & Near East)
• Modern humans evolved from the population
which never left Africa when the earlier versions
of humans did (Erectus in the 1st wave) and only
left Africa later
• Speciation? (ramification of species?)
Second wave
First wave
Second wave
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/science/index.html
Modern humans did not expand
beyond the Middle East before 80 – 60
kya
> Modern humans evolved in Africa (100-200 kya)
> Migrated out of Africa about 60-80 kya (2nd wave)
> Replaced all pre-existing populations of humans
(of the 1st wave…including the Neanderthal that
evolved from that wave)
> Including Neanderthal, but N remains in
“pockets” & has episodes of inbreeding with new
arrivals
Hib
MH
N
N
MH
60k 80k BP
N
Inb
N
&
MH
The Neanderthals
H. sapiens neandertalensis
(Amud 2)
• Europe and Near East
• 130,000 – 35,000 BP
• Enjoy the benefits of the
Wurm Glacial retreat
• Kafzeh, Israel: modern
humans at 90 kya,
Neanderthals at 60 kya
• Modern humans in Africa 200
kya, Asia 100 kya
• Are Neanderthals a direct
ancestor to modern humans?
Mousterian
Tools
• advanced flake tools
(scrapers, hand-axes,
bifacial points, borers,
burins)
• prepared, disc-shaped
cores
• caves and fire
• pendants – symbolic
thought?
Neanderthal burial
• La Ferrassie, France,
60,000 BP
• Shanidar, Iraq
• Krapina, Croatia
• Qafzeh, 90000 BP
• Flowers and grave
offerings
• Cranial deformation?
(Eric Trinkhaus Shanidar cave)
• Bear cults? Animism,
Totemism?
• Ritual cannibalism?
Cannibalism
> Stone flint knife cut marks on the back of skulls.
> Scattered and fragmented skulls found at this site were
victims of cannibalism.
> Bone assemblages with high degrees of fragmentation,
cut marks and bone splitting.
> To others these marks were ceremonial having to do with
mortuary practices: defleshed and then buried.
> Where the braincases were shattered the brains were
supposedly extracted and separately buried.
> Eating? Good protein source.
http://archaeologynews.multiply.com/journal/item/550
> Modern bias to insist that cannibalism isn't part of human
nature. “Good" reasons—whether to terrorize subject
peoples, limit their neighbors' offspring, or for religious
or medicinal purposes…Cannibalism could have been an
adaptive strategy.
Fate of Neanderthals
•
•
•
•
Disappear “abruptly” 40-35 kya
But coexistence with HS
Or in “refugia”, inbreeding
Have little similarities to
modern morphology
• DNA supports OoA model, N
were in Europe and Asia before
100 kya, evolving from Homo
Erectus
• (Chazan 3 scenarios table, p.155)
• Transitional industries
• Chatelperronian tools, contact
with HS?
St. Cesaire, France,
35,000 BP
No modern human traits in late Neanderthal
populations in Europe — N not a precursor —
supports the Out of Africa position
Neanderthals have been found dating to as recent
as 36,000 years ago with no modern features —
problematic for the Multiregional position
Persistence of Neanderthal traits until the arrival
of modern humans — predicted by the
Hybridization position – so OoA models kicks
Video
Our Neanderthal ancestors - FRANCE 24
LA Times - Another source: http://tinyurl.com/3ygqauq
Small amounts of Homo erectus DNA in modern human?
Just like Neanderthal DNA? Debate.
The Homo erectus as a species was present for over 1.2
million years. Most evidence from Asia. In this region,
population affected some 70 to 50 kya during the Toba
catastrophe: a volcano mega-eruption that generated a
6 to 10-year volcanic winter that dramatically changed
the living conditions on earth for a millennium.
The intermixing of Homo erectus and very early Homo
sapiens could have only occurred in Asia before this
event took place.
2003 Homo floresiensis, a
possible species, now
extinct, in the genus Homo.
Partial skeletons and skull of
nine individuals. A small
body and brain. In a context
with stone tools from
industries from 94-12 kya.
The species is thought to
have survived on Flores at
least until 12,000 years
before present, making it
the longest lasting nonmodern human, surviving
long past the Neanderthals.
2010 Denisov
France 24
The Middle East at the crossroads
Where Neanderthals and Modern Humans coexisted
evolved in parallel with modern humans…with
some interbreeding
Physical differences were maintained…bones of
both clearly different in caves and successive
occupations
They were for a long time neighbors… warring…
mating…
The Mediterranean basin, ca. 60k-40k © NGS
The two groups evolved, they developed similar
skills and behavioral characteristics: they
hunted a variety of game with sophisticated
tools, used fire for multiple purposes, organized
living quarters, buried their dead, created art,
and worshiped symbolic objects.
Neanderthals became extinct in the Middle East
around 40,000 years ago (a bit later in Europe in
some pockets, SW France).
Número 14
The Human Revolution III (ca. 100,000-50,000 B.P.)
Dramatic social change not simply to the
proliferation of innovations or ideas, but to the
spread of genetically and anatomically modern
human populations.
We love the Upper Paleolithic
Are biological and genetic changes revolutionary
in the same way that social, political, and
technological ones are? (how fast?)
Are archaeological revolutions abrupt and
irreversible breaks with the past, or the
culminations of long-term processes?
The Magdalenian in the UP
> The big leap in extra
technological achievements
> Underlined in HR 2 & HR 3
> Lithic technologies evolve
radically, at the hands of Modern
humans in SW France – very
specialized tools & microliths
> Exactly in the same region with a strong
presence, yet already extinct, of Neanderthals
> Interpreting art & views of the world
The Magdalenian in the UP
> Their world
in
motion,
celebrating
their
landscape
> Fertility cults, “Venus” figurines
Representing/the
faunaand strategy
magic and>premonitions
hunting
Mock Quiz
Q1
As we deal with the evolution of human societies,
a few sequences for its stages have been
proposed, beyond the old Savagery-BarbarismCivilization by Morgan.
a. Bands – Tribes – Chiefdom – Empire - State.
b. Bands – Tribes – Chiefdom - State.
c. Tribes – Bands – Chiefdom – Empire - State.
d. Bands – Tribes – State – Chiefdom.
e. None of the above.
Variations to this question > combine attributes
(e.g. Bands>Hunting…. State>Agriculture).
Mock Quiz
Q2
The goal of postprocessual archaeology is to
a. Formulate general laws governing human
behavior.
b. Offer interpretations based on contextual
data.
c. Write culture history.
d. Test hypotheses.
e. All of the above.
Mock Quiz
Q3
The importance of the actions of the individual
living in past society is stressed in
a. Lewis Binford's writings.
b. A gendered approach.
c. A scientific approach.
d. Processual archaeology.
e. Agency theory.
Mock Quiz
Q4
For archaeology to be considered a science it
must work by ________ from general laws and
models.
a. drawing
b. inference
c. inspiration
d. deduction
e. induction
Mock Quiz
Q5
The law of superposition states that
A) sediments will be deposited in horizontal
layers.
B) in any undisturbed sedimentary deposits, each
layer is younger than the layer beneath it.
C) in any undisturbed sedimentary deposits, each
layer is older than the layer beneath it.
D) sediments are deposited in continuous layers.
E) the uppermost sediments are the most
important for archaeological analysis.