North Africa is quickly emerging as one of the more important regions yielding information on the origins of modern Homo sapiens. Associated with significant fossil hominin remains are two stone tool ...industries, the Aterian and Mousterian, which have been differentiated, respectively, primarily on the basis of the presence and absence of tanged, or stemmed, stone tools. Largely because of historical reasons, these two industries have been attributed to the western Eurasian Middle Paleolithic rather than the African Middle Stone Age. In this paper, drawing on our recent excavation of Contrebandiers Cave and other published data, we show that, aside from the presence or absence of tanged pieces, there are no other distinctions between these two industries in terms of either lithic attributes or chronology. Together, these results demonstrate that these two ‘industries’ are instead variants of the same entity. Moreover, several additional characteristics of these assemblages, such as distinctive stone implements and the manufacture and use of bone tools and possible shell ornaments, suggest a closer affinity to other Late Pleistocene African Middle Stone Age industries rather than to the Middle Paleolithic of western Eurasia.
The plant component of Neanderthal subsistence and technology is not well documented, partially due to the preservation constraints of macrobotanical components. Phytoliths, however, are preserved ...even when other plant remains have decayed and so provide evidence for Neanderthal plant use and the environmental context of archaeological sites. Phytolith assemblages from Roc de Marsal, a Middle Paleolithic cave site in SW France, provide new insight into the relationship between Neanderthals and plant resources. Ninety-seven samples from all archaeological units and 18 control samples are analyzed. Phytoliths from the wood and bark of dicotyledonous plants are the most prevalent, but there is also a significant proportion of grass phytoliths in many samples. Phytolith densities are much greater in earlier layers, which is likely related to the presence of combustion features in those layers. These phytoliths indicate a warmer, wetter climate, whereas phytoliths from upper layers indicate a cooler, drier environment. Phytoliths recovered from combustion features indicate that wood was the primary plant fuel source, while grasses may have been used as surface preparations.
The East African Rift System (EARS) has played a central role in our understanding of human origins and vertebrate evolution in the late Cenozoic of Africa. However, the distribution of fossil sites ...along the rift is highly biased towards its northern extent, and the types of paleoenvironments are primarily restricted to fluvial and lacustrine settings. Here we report the discovery of the first fossil sites from the Urema Rift at Gorongosa National Park (central Mozambique) at the southern end of the EARS, and reconstruct environmental contexts of the fossils. In situ and surface fossils from the lower member of the Mazamba Formation, estimated to be of Miocene age, comprise mammals, reptiles, fishes, invertebrates, palms, and dicot trees. Fossil and geological evidence indicates a coastal-plain paleoenvironmental mosaic of riverine forest/woodland and estuarine habitats that represent the first coastal biomes identified in the Neogene EARS context. Receiving continental sediment from source terranes west of today's Urema Graben, estuarine sequences accumulated prior to rifting as compound incised-valley fills on a low-gradient coastal plain following transgression. Modern environmental analogues are extremely productive habitats for marine and terrestrial fauna, including primates. Thus, our discoveries raise the possibility that the Miocene coastal landscapes of Gorongosa were ecologically-favorable habitats for primates, providing relatively stable maritime climate and ecosystem conditions, year-round freshwater availability, and food both from terrestrial and marine sources. The emerging fossil record from Gorongosa is beginning to fill an important gap in the paleobiogeography of Africa as no fossil sites of Neogene age have previously been reported from the southernmost part of the EARS. Furthermore, this unique window into past continental-margin ecosystems of central Mozambique may allow us to test key paleobiogeographic hypotheses during critical periods of primate evolution.
•We report the first fossil sites from the southern EARS in central Mozambique.•We reconstruct coastal woodland/forest and estuarine environmental contexts.•The sites represent the first Miocene marine coastal systems identified in the EARS.•The emerging fossil record fills an important paleobiogeographic gap in Africa.
Most authors recognize six baboon species: hamadryas (Papio hamadryas), Guinea (Papio papio), olive (Papio anubis), yellow (Papio cynocephalus), chacma (Papio ursinus), and Kinda (Papio kindae). ...However, there is still debate regarding the taxonomic status, phylogenetic relationships, and the amount of gene flow occurring between species. Here, we present ongoing research on baboon morphological diversity in Gorongosa National Park (GNP), located in central Mozambique, south of the Zambezi River, at the southern end of the East African Rift System. The park exhibits outstanding ecological diversity and hosts more than 200 baboon troops. Gorongosa National Park baboons have previously been classified as chacma baboons (P. ursinus). In accordance with this, two mtDNA samples from the park have been placed in the same mtDNA clade as the northern chacma baboons. However, GNP baboons exhibit morphological features common in yellow baboons (e.g., yellow fur color), suggesting that parapatric gene flow between chacma and yellow baboons might have occurred in the past or could be ongoing. We investigated the phenostructure of the Gorongosa baboons using two approaches: 1) description of external phenotypic features, such as coloration and body size, and 2) 3D geometric morphometric analysis of 43 craniofacial landmarks on 11 specimens from Gorongosa compared to a pan-African sample of 352 baboons. The results show that Gorongosa baboons exhibit a mosaic of features shared with southern P. cynocephalus and P. ursinus griseipes. The GNP baboon phenotype fits within a geographic clinal pattern of replacing allotaxa. We put forward the hypothesis of either past and/or ongoing hybridization between the gray-footed chacma and southern yellow baboons in Gorongosa or an isolation-by-distance scenario in which the GNP baboons are geographically and morphologically intermediate. These two scenarios are not mutually exclusive. We highlight the potential of baboons as a useful model to understand speciation and hybridization in early human evolution.
Understanding Palaeolithic hominin subsistence strategies requires the comprehensive taxonomic identification of faunal remains. The high fragmentation of Late Pleistocene faunal assemblages often ...prevents proper taxonomic identification based on bone morphology. It has been assumed that the morphologically unidentifiable component of the faunal assemblage would reflect the taxonomic abundances of the morphologically identified portion. In this study, we analyse three faunal datasets covering the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition (MUPT) at Bacho Kiro Cave (Bulgaria) and Les Cottés and La Ferrassie (France) with the application of collagen type I peptide mass fingerprinting (ZooMS). Our results emphasise that the fragmented component of Palaeolithic bone assemblages can differ significantly from the morphologically identifiable component. We obtain contrasting identification rates between taxa resulting in an overrepresentation of morphologically identified reindeer (
Rangifer tarandus
) and an underrepresentation of aurochs/bison (
Bos/Bison)
and horse/European ass (
Equus
) at Les Cottés and La Ferrassie. Together with an increase in the relative diversity of the faunal composition, these results have implications for the interpretation of subsistence strategies during a period of possible interaction between Neanderthals and
Homo sapiens
in Europe. Furthermore, shifts in faunal community composition and in carnivore activity suggest a change in the interaction between humans and carnivores across the MUPT and indicate a possible difference in site use between Neanderthals and
Homo sapiens
. The combined use of traditional and biomolecular methods allows (zoo)archaeologists to tackle some of the methodological limits commonly faced during the morphological assessment of Palaeolithic bone assemblages.
REPLY TO SAHLE AND GOSSA Braun, David R.; Aldeias, Vera; Archer, Will ...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS,
10/2019, Letnik:
116, Številka:
41
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Sahle and Gossa (1) identify 2 components of our paper with which they disagree. Their concerns are based on misunderstandings of our paleomagnetic data and the published details of the Bokol Dora 1 ...(BD 1) artifact assemblage.
Located between modern-day South Africa and Tanzania, both of which have well-known and extensive Stone Age records, Mozambique's Stone Age sequence remains largely unknown in the broader context of ...African Pleistocene prehistory. Such lack of data occurs despite the key geographical location of the country, in southern Africa at the southeastern tip of the Great Rift Valley. As such, Mozambique is an area of interest to evaluate the origins and dispersion of Homo sapiens within Africa, particularly in relation to Middle Stone Age contexts and associated early modern human ecology and cognition.
This paper focuses on preliminary survey results from the Niassa District, near Lake Niassa (also known as Lake Malawi) in northern Mozambique. The results include the discovery and location of more than 80 new surface lithic concentration localities, as well as data from two new sites, the open air surface site of Ncuala and the rock shelter of Chicaza. For Chicaza we provide a series of new radiocarbon dates for the Iron Age and Late Stone Age occupations based on preliminary testing carried out at the site.
The Palaeolithic site of La Ferrassie (SW France) has been extensively studied since its discovery during the 19th century. In addition to a large sequence including Middle and Upper Paleolithic ...layers, the site has yielded two very complete adult Neanderthal skeletons, five partial immature Neanderthal skeletons as well as a few isolated human remains. Currently, much of the site sequence has been dated by radiocarbon and OSL but the dating of the human skeletal remains is still a matter of debate. Here, we present the OSL dating of a still consolidated sediment sample associated with the Neanderthal skeleton La Ferrassie 1 (LF1), unearthed by Peyrony and Capitan in 1909 and preserved at the Musée de l’Homme (Paris, France). This block of sediment is crucial as it constitutes the first possibility to date a sample in close association with the specimen. This sample is included in a chronological model at the scale of the site, with the aim to estimate the ages of three Neanderthal individuals: La Ferrassie 1, 2 and 8 (LF1, LF2 and LF8). Two chronological modelling tools (OxCal and BayLum/ArchaeoPhases) are first applied to previously published radiocarbon ages and compared. Chronological inferences show that the BayLum/ArchaeoPhases model provides posterior probability densities, or statistical inferences, that are more consistent with the measured data. When including OSL ages in the BayLum model, we can conclude that all three studied individuals date from the late Middle Palaeolithic (<52 ka at the 95% credibility level) and could have been contemporaries in the range 44.9 to 44.1 ka.
In this study we compare different infrared stimulated luminescence (IRSL) signals for dating archaeological deposits. The IRSL and the more recently developed post-IR IRSL (pIR-IR) methods were ...investigated using polymineral fine grains extracted from the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic western excavation area in the site of La Ferrassie (Dordogne, SW France). The IRSL data measured at 50 °C (IR50) are compared to those obtained with the elevated pIR-IR signals measured for two stimulation temperatures, 225 °C (pIR-IR225) and 290 °C (pIR-IR290). The signals are documented in terms of bleaching and fading rates. In addition, comparisons of the IR50 ages corrected either with the H + L method (Huntley and Lamothe, 2001) or with the dose rate correction method (DRC, Lamothe et al., 2003) are presented. Results show that the polymineral fine grains give a reasonable estimate of the burial age of the samples. The IR50 and pIR-IR225 provide the most reliable ages when they are corrected using the DRC method (because of saturation effects). The polymineral ages are then compared with the previously obtained ages on K-feldspar coarse grains, quartz OSL (Guerin et al., 2015) and radiocarbon ages with the aim of accessing information on the depositional processes. It appears that further comparison of polymineral fine grains to coarse grains is beneficial to evaluate bleaching. Moreover, the polymineral results either confirm or refine the chronology of the La Ferrassie sequence proposed by Guérin et al. (2015), that is, the Mousterian layers range from marine isotope stage (MIS) 5 to the middle of MIS 3. In particular, i) the base of Layer 3 is pushed back to the end of MIS 4 or beginning MIS 3 and ii) the chronological attribution of Layers 4 and 5 is confirmed as MIS 3. Finally, the chronology of the Aurignacian layer (Layer 7) is strengthened by all the feldspars results.
The stratigraphy at Bacho Kiro Cave, Bulgaria, spans the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition, including an Initial Upper Palaeolithic (IUP) assemblage argued to represent the earliest arrival of ...Upper Palaeolithic Homo sapiens in Europe. We applied the latest techniques in
C dating to an extensive dataset of newly excavated animal and human bones to produce a robust, high-precision radiocarbon chronology for the site. At the base of the stratigraphy, the Middle Palaeolithic (MP) occupation dates to >51,000 yr BP. A chronological gap of over 3,000 years separates the MP occupation from the occupation of the cave by H. sapiens, which extends to 34,000 cal BP. The extensive IUP assemblage, now associated with directly dated H. sapiens fossils at this site, securely dates to 45,820-43,650 cal BP (95.4% probability), probably beginning from 46,940 cal BP (95.4% probability). The results provide chronological context for the early occupation of Europe by Upper Palaeolithic H. sapiens.
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