Heidelberg Man from West Asia?

The last common ancestor of humans and Neanderthals was a tall, well-traveled species called Heidelberg Man, according to a new PLoS One study.
The determination is based on the remains of a single Heidelberg Man (Homo heidelbergensis) known as "Ceprano," named after the town near Rome, Italy, where his fossil — a partial cranium — was found.
Previously, this 400,000-year-old fossil was thought to represent a new species of human, Homo cepranensis. The latest study, however, identifies Ceprano as being an archaic member of Homo heidelbergensis.
The finding may shed light on what the species that gave rise to both Neanderthals and Homo sapiens looked like.
"Considering other fossils that can be lumped together with Ceprano in H. heidelbergensis, we can hypothesize that the 'Ceprano-morphotype' was tall, with a strong mandible (jaw) and small teeth," coauthor Silvana Condemi told Discovery News.
Condemi is the Director of Research at the National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS) in the laboratory of anthropology at the University of Marseille, where she directs the unit of paleoanthropology.
For the study, she and colleagues Aurelien Mounier and Giorgio Manzi compared Ceprano with 42 fossils from Africa and Eurasia ranging from 1.8 million to 12,000 years ago. The scientists also compared Ceprano to 68 modern humans. The sample set is the most extensive ever assembled in relation to the ancient Italian fossil.
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In addition to identifying Ceprano as a Heidelberg Man, the analysis found notable similarities with other human-associated fossils from Europe dating to the Middle Pleistocene 781,000 to 126,000 years ago. Connections were also made to early human fossils from Africa. The researchers therefore believe that Homo heidelbergensis was widespread, dispersing throughout Eurasia and Africa beginning around 780,000 years ago.
Good weather may have permitted Heidelberg Man's worldly lifestyle.
"We can hypothesize that particular environmental conditions during the Middle Pleistocene may have favored the expansion of H. heidelbergensis and contacts between populations," explained Condemi, who is also the co-editor of the new book Continuity and Discontinuity in the Peopling of Europe (Springer, 2011). "The gene flow was never completely stopped between Old World populations."
Paleontologist Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum, London, told Discovery News that he agrees with most of the new study's conclusions.
"I have long argued that Homo heidelbergensis represented our common ancestor with the Neanderthals about 400,000 years ago, and the Ceprano fossil, with its newly-determined late date, is well-situated chronologically to be part of this common ancestral group," Stringer said.
"However, it is quite a primitive specimen in several respects and therefore it may be that, like some other samples of heidelbergensis in Africa and Europe, it does not represent the actual last ancestral population," Stringer added.
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"In my view, we still do not know where that particular population existed," he explained, "and it may even have lived in a place from which we have very little evidence at present, such as western Asia."
Ian Tattersall, curator of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History, told Discovery News that he agrees Ceprano has been "appropriately assigned to the cosmopolitan species Homo heidelbergensis. But in Europe this species is contemporaneous with the lineage leading to Homo neanderthalensis."
If Homo heidelbergensis did arrive before modern humans, "it must thus have been via an earlier, presumably African, representative of the species," Tattersall explained.
While many eyes are on Heidelberg Man as being the likely common ancestor to Neanderthals and our species, the jury is still out as to where that pivotal evolution took place.
Anthropologist Eric Delson of Lehman College, The City University of New York, thinks the new study is "very interesting and takes a good approach," but he believes additional research is needed to elucidate exactly when, where and how Neanderthals and modern humans originated.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42899596/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/heidelberg-man-links-humans-neanderthals/#.Tvyu4DX2a3F

Heidelberg Man from West Asia?

Tooth Study Lends Support to "Out of Asia" Theory

First Europeans Came From Asia, Not Africa, Tooth Study Suggests
<< Back to Page 1 Page 2 of 2
"Teeth are like the safe-box of the genetic code," Martinón-Torres said.

That's because—compared to bones—teeth change shape very little once they are formed, and their shape is strongly influenced by genetics.



China's Earliest Modern Human Found (April 3, 2007)
Human Genetics Overview
Fossil Tooth Belonged to Earliest Western European, Experts Say (July 2, 2007)
The researchers classified each of the teeth using more than 50 indicators, such as fissure patterns, overall size, and length-to-width ratio.

"We looked at the entire landscape of the teeth—the mountains, valleys, ridges—everything," Martinón-Torres said.

What they found is that European teeth were more similar to Asian teeth than they were to African teeth.

However, the results don't rule out African influence on European genes.

"This finding does not necessarily imply that there was not genetic flow between continents," Martinón-Torres and colleagues write in their paper, "but emphasizes that this interchange could have been both ways."

The work will be published in tomorrow's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Fluid Migrations

Rather than a one-way stream of people coming from Africa, Martinón-Torres and colleagues think there must have been a more fluid pattern of migrations.

"Just because people had come out of Africa didn't mean that they couldn't turn around and go back again," she said.

The researcher also believes that climate, food, and geography were major influences on hominid migration patterns.

The Sahara, for example, presented a big barrier for movement out of Africa and directly into Europe (see photos and read a related feature about athletes who ran across the Sahara earlier this year).

Rather than struggling across the Sahara, it appears that human ancestors spread in many directions before arriving in Europe.

Erika Hagelberg, a geneticist from the University of Oslo in Norway, is impressed with the study, but cautious about how it should be interpreted.

"The study shows that the genetic impact of Asia on Europe is stronger than that of Africa. But the teeth can't tell us the direction or the time when people migrated," she said.

Nonetheless, the new study does complement direct gene studies and supports the idea that hominids evolved independently in many different parts of the world.

"The fossil teeth are a way to study the traits of past peoples," Hagelberg said, "and help balance the work being done on the genes of people alive today."Source

Tooth Study Lends Support to "Out of Asia" Theory

Georgia Mayans

Archaeologists have discovered the ruins of an ancient Mayan city in the mountains of North Georgia believed to be at least 1,100 years old. According to Richard Thornton at Examiner.com, the ruins are reportedly what remains of a city built by Mayans fleeing wars, volcanic eruptions, droughts and famine.

In 1999, University of Georgia archeologist Mark Williams led an expedition to investigate the Kenimer Mound, a large, five-sided pyramid built in approximately 900 A.D. in the foothills of Georgia’s tallest mountain, Brasstown Bald. Many local residents has assumed for years that the pyramid was just another wooded hill, but in fact it was a structure built on an existing hill in a method common to Mayans living in Central America as well as to Southeastern Native American tribes.

Speculation has abounded for years as to what could have happened to the people who lived in the great Meso-American societies of the first century. Some historians believed that they simply died out in plagues and food shortages, but others have long speculated about the possibility of mass migration to other regions....
Source

Georgia Mayans

All Homo Hominids Abandoned Africa 1.4 million years ago?

I have been trying to find some evidence of homo activity in Africa after 1.4 million years ago, when homo ergaster disappears from the fossil record. Homo fossils don't show up there again until 1 million years ago, and then only at one site in east africa, and the fossil is attributed to homo erectus (Daka).
It's another 300k years until Ternifine in North Africa, also a Homo Erectus. Another 100 k after that until Bodo man, also a homo erectus with some archaic traits.
From these facts, it looks to me like around 1.4 million years ago, homo habilis went extinct and homo ergaster either abandoned Africa or went extinct with it. Homo antecessor appears around 1.2 million years ago and is more similar to ergaster than to erectus so I would opt for the former explanation for ergaster's disappearance, and it would not be so surprising because of the Saharan pump theory. Africa was getting dry and the desert areas grw enormous, so lots of animals were leaving during this time.
Surprisingly, it's hard to find out much about this. It's just not mentioned very much, in text books and in arheological websites. It seems the mainstreamers would rather us believe that there was continuous habitation of Africa from ergaster to archaic homo sapien all throught the pleistocene.
I'm sure many people would say that it was occupied, we just haven't found fossils yet. Or that the heat made it less possible for fossils to remain preserved. The problem with that is, south east asia and India were teaming with homo erectus during these times when Africa is yielding nothing, not only evidenced by fossils but also with Acheullian remains.
If there was anyone in Africa between 1.4 million years ago and 700,000 years ago, besides that short visit from Daka man circa 1 million, Daka 1 million years ago...then where are the Acheullian tools?
I've been searching for hours, but have only found this in wikipedia:

"H. ergaster is believed to have diverged from the lineage of H. habilis between 1.9 and 1.8 million years ago; the lineage that emigrated Africa and fathered H. erectus diverged from the lineage of H. ergaster almost immediately after this. These early descendants of H. ergaster may have been discovered in Dmanisi, Georgia.[8] H. ergaster remained stable for ca. 500,000 years in Africa before disappearing from the fossil record around 1.4 million years ago. No identifiable cause has been attributed to this disappearance; the later evolution of the similar H. heidelbergensis in Africa may indicate that this is simply a hole in the record, or that some intermediate species has not yet been discovered."

This is the only place I can even find a writer pointing out or admittiong that there's a hole in the fossil record of Africa, and the possible explanation they give is laughable. Possible Paleothic hominid sites in Africa have been dug, redug, and dug again, more than those of any other continent in the world.
History writers continually glass over the anomoly when describing the Acheullian industry; virtually every texts says that Acheullian started 1.6 million years ago in afric and quickly spread all the way to India. It was formerly thought not to have been present in East and South-east Asia but new finds in China and elsewhere have disproven that. It didn't reach Europe until 400. 000 years ago...or possibly 700,000 if you count a site in Spain. It persisted in India until 120, 000 years ago.
It's like they are glossing over it...no one mentions that it disappeared in Africa 1.4 million years ago and then only re-emerged at a later date before giving way to Upper Paleo industried...but obviously that is exactly what happened.

The implications of this seem very big to me. It explains alot about the migrations of homo and the appearance of homo heidelbergensis, and gives me answers that I've been struggling with for a long time. I'm just wondering if anyone has noticed this "hole" and thinks it's significant.

All Homo Hominids Abandoned Africa 1.4 million years ago?

Is the Narmada hominid an Indian Homo erectus?

In 1982 a fossil hominid calvaria was found in a middle Pleistocene deposit in the central Narmada valley of Madhya Pradesh, India, and was assigned to the new taxon Homo erectus narmadensis. Subsequently, morphometric studies of the specimen were conducted by two separate research teams from France and the United States, both in collaboration with Indian colleagues. Results of the most recent study, which includes morphometric and comparative investigations, lead to the conclusion that "Narmada Man" is appropriately identified as Homo sapiens. While the calvaria shares some anatomical features with Asian Homo erectus specimens, it exhibits a broader suite of morphological and mensural characteristics suggesting affinities with early Homo sapiens fossils from Asia, Europe, and Africa as well as demonstrating that the Narmada calvaria possesses some unique anatomical features, perhaps because the specimen reflects the incoherent classificatory condition of the genus Homo.
Link

Is the Narmada hominid an Indian Homo erectus?

Homo Erectus in India

From here.

Generally speaking, Archeulean industry (which basically amounts to a certain kind of ancient stone tools), is associated with archaic hominins and most prominently, with Homo Erectus. It follows "the more primitive Oldowan technology some 1.8 million years ago" associated with Homo habilis, and is found in a period often called the Lower Paleolithic.


Acheulean tools were not made by fully modern humans that is, Homo sapiens although the early or non-modern (transitional) Homo sapiens idaltu did use Late Acheulean tools as did proto-Neanderthal species. Most notably however it is Homo ergaster (sometimes called early Homo erectus), whose assemblages are almost exclusively Acheulean, who used the technique. Later, the related species Homo heidelbergensis also used it extensively.


The 1.5 million years ago date suggests that Homo Erectus, or a similarly sophisticated hominin arrived in India within 300,000 years after this species of hominin evolved in Africa...



http://washparkprophet.blogspot.com/2011/03/homo-erectus-era-in-india-dated.html

Homo Erectus in India

Oldest ritual not discovered

In 2006 an associate Professor announced the remarkable discovery of
evidence for ritual in Borswana 70,000 years ago. There was a great buzz
in the press for a short while, and it was embedded in various places
including Wikipedia. I noticed it last week and did a bit of research.
Here's what I wrote
In 2006 the site known as Rhino Cave became prominent in the media when
Sheila Coulson of the University of Oslo stated that 70,000-year-old
artifacts and a rock resembling a python's head representing the first
known human rituals had been discovered. She also backed her
interpretation of the site as a place of ritual based on other animals
portrayed: "In the cave, we find only the San people's three most
important animals: the python, the elephant, and the giraffe
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/11/061130081347.htm
Since then some of the archaeologists involved in the original
investigations of the site in 1995 and 1996 have challenged these
interpretations. They point out that the indentations (known by
archaeologists as cupules) described by Coulson do not necessarily all
date to the same period and that "many of the depressions are very fresh
while others are covered by a heavy patina." Other sites nearby (over 20)
also have depressions and do not represent animals. The Middle Stone Age
Radiocarbon dating|radiocarbon and thermoluminescence dating for this site
does not support the 70,000 year figure, suggesting much more recent
dates.
Discussing the painting, the archaeologists say that the painting
described as an elephant is actually a rhino, that the red painting of a
giraffe is no older than 400 AD and that the white painting of the rhino
is more recent, and that experts in rock art believe the red and white
paintings are by different groups. They refer to Coulson's interpretation
as a projection of modern beliefs on to the past and call Coulson's
interpretation a composite story that is "flatout misleading". They
respond to Coulson's statement that these are the only paintings in the
cave by saying that she has ignored red geometric paintings found on the
cave wall.
They also discuss the burned Middle Stone Age points, saying that there is
nothing unusual in using nonlocal materials. They dismiss the claim that
no ordinary tools were found at the site, noting that the many scrapers
that are found are ordinary tools and that there is evidence of tool
making at the site. Discussing the 'secret chamber', they point to the
lack of evidence for San shamans using chambers in caves or for this one
to have been used in such a way.
World's Oldest Ritual Site? The "Python Cave" at Tsodilo Hills World
Heritage Site, Botswan NYAME AKUMA, the Bulletin of the Society of
Africanist Archaeologists2007
http://cohesion.rice.edu/CentersAndInst/SAFA/emplibrary/Robbins.pdf
--
Doug Weller --
A Director and Moderator of The Hall of Ma'at http://www.hallofmaat.com
Doug's Archaeology Site: http://www.ramtops.co.uk
Amun - co-owner/co-moderator http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Amun/

Oldest ritual not discovered

Denisovan Ancestors

A previously unknown type of human ancestor was discovered when 50,000
year old finger bones and a tooth from Denisova cave in Southern
Siberia were mtDNA tested.
The results showed that the bones were of people neither modern human
nor Neanderthal. Comparison of their DNA with modern human groups' DNA
showed that around 5% of Melanesians may be descended from the
Denisovans, as they are being called.

http://groups.google.com/group/sci.archaeology/browse_thread/thread/f970ea96cbb9ae1b?hl=en

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/23/science/23ancestor.html

Denisovan Ancestors

Java Man's First Tools

INDO-PACIFIC PREHISTORY ASSOCIATION CONGRESS, 20–26 MARCH 2006, MANILA

About 1.7 million years ago, a leggy human ancestor, Homo erectus, began prowling the steamy swamps and uplands of Java. That much is known from the bones of more than 100 individuals dug up on the Indonesian island since 1891. But the culture of early “Java Man” has been a mystery: No artifacts older than 1 million years had been found—until now.

At the meeting, archaeologist Harry Widianto of the National Research Centre of Archaeology in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, wowed colleagues with slides showing stone tools found in sediments that he says were laid down 1.2 million years ago and could be as old as 1.6 million years. The find, at a famous hominid site called Sangiran in the Solo Basin of Central Java, “opens up a whole new window into the lifeways of Java Man,” says paleoanthropologist Russell L. Ciochon of the University of Iowa in Iowa City.

Although hominids apparently evolved in Africa, Indonesia is a Garden of Eden in its own right, with a wealth of H. erectus fossils. The startling discovery 2 years ago of “hobbits”—the diminutive H. floresiensis of Flores Island—added a controversial new hominid to the Indonesian menagerie.

In 1998, Widianto found stone flakes in the 800,000-year-old Grenzbank layer at Sangiran, whose well-plumbed sediments reach back 2 million years. Then in September 2004, his team struck gold in a layer dated by extrapolation from the rocks around it to 1.2 million years ago. Over 2 months, they unearthed 220 flakes—several centimeters long, primarily made of chalcedony, and ranging in color from beige to blood red—in a 3-by-3-meter section of sand deposited by an ancient river.

The find, not yet published, could be even more spectacular than Widianto realizes, says Ciochon. His team, which also works at Sangiran, has used ultraprecise argon-argon radiometric methods to date the volcanic strata overlying the levels excavated by Widianto to 1.58 million to 1.51 million years ago—making the flakes at least 1.6 million years old. If the flakes were undisturbed, Ciochon says, they would represent “some of the earliest evidence of the human manufacture of stone artifacts outside of Africa.” Their antiquity would match that of the oldest flakes found in China, at Majuangou, dated to 1.66 million years ago and also made of chert.


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Indonesian tool kit. Homo erectus used small, finely worked tools on Java.
CREDIT: RETNO HANDINI
But not everyone is convinced. Although the chert flakes are abraded, possibly by water, a few limestone flakes are remarkably sharp. “The difference in preservation condition could indicate that we are dealing with secondary deposition,” or flakes of different ages mixed together, cautions archaeologist Susan Keates of Oxford University in the U.K., who was at the talk. Others disagree. “I feel their excavation is reliable, because the deposits are thick and undisturbed,” says Hisao Baba, curator of anthropology at Japan's National Science Museum and the University of Tokyo, whose team has also uncovered H. erectus fossils and flakes on Java.

The Sangiran flakes “are fundamentally different”—smaller—than the stone choppers made by H. erectus in Africa, says Ciochon. The evidence, he argues, suggests that Java Man had to range far for small deposits of good flint or chert and so created small, finely worked tools in contrast to the larger tools found in Africa. Considering the scarcity of raw materials on Java, Ciochon says, it's “a remarkably fine technology.”

Widianto will resume excavations in June. “I will be going deeper and deeper, older and older,” he promises.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/312/5772/361.full

Java Man's First Tools

African Arrow Origins

"'I think the finding adds to growing evidence for the great antiquity
of complex projectile weaponry in Africa,' says paleoanthropologist
John Shea of Stony Brook (N.Y.) University. 'The real startling upshot
of this finding is that it challenges longstanding archaeological
beliefs that important changes in projectile technology only occurred
very recently, less than 30,000 years ago, after humans dispersed into
Europe.'"
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/columnist/vergano/2011-06-19-bow-arrows-origin_n.htm

African Arrow Origins

25,000-year-old pendant found in Spain

A pendant some 25,000-years old has been found in northern Spain’s Basque region by archaeologists.

The piece, an oblong gray smooth stone some 10 centimeters in length, is perforated at one end and apparently was hung from a cord around a person’s neck, according to the director of the excavation, Alvaro Arrizabalaga, who added that the other end of the stone was used as a tool to retouch the edges of tools made from flint, like arrows or scrapers.

The object comes from the Cromagnon epoch.

Arrizabalaga said that the pendant is older than other such items found so far in the Praileaitz cave which are estimated to be some 15,000 years old.

In addition, he said that there have been “some 20 pieces from this same epoch” found on the Iberian peninsula to date, with the peculiar unifying element that they have always been found in caves.

“The piece is very well preserved and we’ve been lucky to be able to remove it without damaging it in any way” from the dig near the town of Zestoa, Arrizabalaga said.

The dig leader said the pendant “is not going to need any more restoration”, and after experts study it and include it in the collection of Cromagnon discoveries found at the site, it will be placed in the hands of a public museum.

“Twenty-five thousand years ago, human beings of our species came to this place that functioned as a hunting place for wandering groups” the archaeologist said, adding that the groups of humans “moved eight times per year to zones where there were specific types of resources”.

The Irikaitz deposit, where archaeologists began working in 1998, is known for being the site of discoveries of pieces up to 250,000 years old, a period when the precursors of Homo sapiens were still in existence.

http://news.bioscholar.com/2011/08/25000-year-old-pendant-found-in-spain.html

25,000-year-old pendant found in Spain

Denisova Admixture and the First Modern Human Dispersals into Southeast Asia and Oceania

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002929711003958
American Journal of Human Genetics Reich, D. et al. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 89, 1-13 (2011)
"It has recently been shown that ancestors of New Guineans and
Bougainville Islanders have inherited a proportion of their ancestry from
Denisovans, an archaic hominin group from Siberia. However, only a sparse sampling
of populations from Southeast Asia and Oceania were analyzed. Here, we
quantify Denisova admixture in 33 additional populations from Asia and
Oceania. Aboriginal Australians, Near Oceanians, Polynesians, Fijians, east
Indonesians, and Mamanwa (a “Negrito” group from the Philippines) have all
inherited genetic material from Denisovans, but mainland East Asians, western
Indonesians, Jehai (a Negrito group from Malaysia), and Onge (a Negrito group from the
Andaman Islands) have not. These results indicate that Denisova gene flow
occurred into the common ancestors of New Guineans, Australians, and Mamanwa
but not into the ancestors of the Jehai and Onge and suggest that relatives
of present-day East Asians were not in Southeast Asia when the Denisova
gene flow occurred. Our finding that descendants of the earliest inhabitants of
Southeast Asia do not all harbor Denisova admixture is inconsistent
with a history in which the Denisova interbreeding occurred in mainland Asia
and then spread over Southeast Asia, leading to all its earliest modern human
inhabitants. Instead, the data can be most parsimoniously explained if
the Denisova gene flow occurred in Southeast Asia itself. Thus, archaic
Denisovans must have lived over an extraordinarily broad geographic and
ecological range, from Siberia to tropical Asia."

Denisova Admixture and the First Modern Human Dispersals into Southeast Asia and Oceania