Home Erectus Crosses The Open Ocean

Pics at the cite, I can't tell how serious the author is but it does
offer some pretty pics and an interesting tale. References at the
cite.

Home Erectus Crosses The Open Ocean


Wed, May 6, 2009


H. erectus / Stegodon (Indonesia - Late/Middle Pleistocene elephant
Sculpture Photo - Gerbil / Museum Tautavel
Artist - Al Prandi / Two Guys Fossils


Imagine a group of Home erectus, the earliest members of our family
genus, living near a coastline on an Indonesia island and well aware
of a lush island that is visible only a few miles offshore. One day
while on the coast, a herd of elephants emerges from the nearby forest
and crosses the beach. They enter the ocean and swim successfully to
the offshore island. Could this be the experience that triggers a
creative process in our ancestors who are watching nearby? Does their
imagination and thinking include not only a desire to reach that
island, but ideas about how to do so? Could this period of creative
thought conclude with the invention of a raft large enough to hold
several people, food and water? If we can find evidence of this
situation in the dim past, in the early days of Homo erectus, then
archeologists are fixing the time and place for one of the
extraordinary events in all human history, a major advance in the
evolution of the human mind.


Elephants swimming / Africa
Photo tomas2002 / Web Shots


Elephants are by far the strongest large mammal, marine colonizers.
They are long distant swimmers and have been observed crossing large
bodies of both fresh and salt water. Herds of contemporary elephants
have swum for 48 hours across large African lakes. Elephants have swum
in the ocean to a distance of 48 km, sometimes reaching a speed of 2.7
km/h. Elephants frequently swim to offshore islands in India. When
swimming long distances, individuals sometimes tow others who need to
rest. Trunks are very well designed for the breathing challenge, and a
herd can provide a founding population with breeding potential.
Several elephant species crossed to the Indonesia islands east of
Java, and the Philippines, where they continued to evolve and dwarf
species evolved.


Tangaroa to Wallacea


Tangaroa on the Pacific
Photo – tangaroa.nettblogg


In 1947, the Norwegian adventurer Thor Hyerdahl’s Kon Tiki Expedition
sailed a large balsa raft of Andean or South American design westward
across the Pacific for 101 days. The raft was designed and built by
indigenous ship builders whose people still live around Lake Titicaca,
high in the Andes. Thor Hyderdahl’s theory about ancient South
American journeys to Polynesia was initially controversial, but the
book about the expedition was an immediate best seller and the
documentary film won an Academy Award. The world was now aware that
indigenous peoples and ancient civilizations could build large rafts
that could undertake long, purposeful, open ocean voyages. In 2006,
Thor Heyerdahl’s grandson, Olav Heyerdahl, was on the crew of the
Tangaroa (named after the great Maori God of the Sea), whose journey
across the Pacific honored the great Thor Heyerdahl.


First Mariners Project / Bamboo Raft – Flores to Timor
Photo - First Mariner’s Project / National Geographic Project 2008


Millennia before the earliest dated remains of watercraft, Homo
erectus was on the move, traveling vast distances north to the
Mediterranean region and then thousands of miles to the east and Asia.
There is no direct archeological evidence that H. erectus ventured out
upon the ocean, but the circumstantial argument that they did so with
log rafts is very strong and the implications are very important. If
you wanted to reach an offshore island, then either you built a large
raft or boat, or indulged in extreme long distance swimming. Maybe
this premise is simplistic and uncontroversial, but discussing it in
detail has only recently been possible. The majority of H. erectus
sites are very difficult to date with precision, and evidence for H.
erectus in localities that have always been islands has only recently
been discovered. The capacity to cross water to the opposite shore
represents a major milestone in human history.


Wallace Line
Sahul – Sunda / Wallace Line
Map - Alberto Salguero / Wikipedia


Robert G. Bednarik and the First Mariners Project of the International
Institute of Replicative Archaeology in Australia have conducted
exceptional research to find the earliest mariners. Bednarik studies
H.erectus in Indonesia and the origins of marine navigation. He has
published widely in both peer reviewed academic journals and venues
aimed at the general public.


H.erectus has long been known in Indonesia on the island of Java, with
earliest fossils dating to 1.51-1.10 million years ago. H. erectus
could walk to Java on the Sunda Shelf, that now submerged continental
land mass that connected the Malay Peninsula, Kalimantan, Borneo,
Sumatra and Java with broad valleys. Sundaland, which is an extension
of continental Asia, and the Sunda Continental Shelf did not extend
further east than Java. When lower sea levels allowed Sunda to be dry
land over a vast area, Australia and New Guinea were also joined by a
large shallow land bridge to form the continental land mass known as
Sahul.


Wallacea / Lesser Sunda Islands
Satellite photo - NASA


Nonetheless, areas of open ocean remained between the eastern edge of
Sunda and the western edge of Australasia throughout the late Pliocene
and Pleistocene. Typical Southeast Asian wildlife does not extend
beyond the Wallace Line. The Lesser Sunda Islands had distinctive
animals that included both full size and dwarf elephants. In these
waters there are islands that were always surrounded by ocean during
the time period of H. erectus. If there is evidence for H. erectus on
these ocean islands more than 500,000 years ago, then we have found
history’s earliest mariners.


The Wallace Line marks the edge of the Asian and Sunda continental
shelf. It lies between the islands of Nusa Tenggara (Lesser Sunda
Islands) such as Borneo, Sulawesi (Celebes), Bali and Lombok. This
natural boundary was first noticed by Alfred Russel Wallace, a British
Naturalist who conceived a Theory of Evolution coincident with that of
Charles Darwin. Considering that the water distance between Bali and
Lombok is only 35 km, the ‘hardness’ of the Wallace Line is
impressive.


Wallace Line / Weber’s Line / Lydekker’s Line
The Wallace Line
Map - Teresa Zubi Karte / Dive Sites in Indonesia


Wallacea encompasses the islands between Sundaland (the Malay
Peninsula, Sumatra, Borneo, Java, and Bali) and Near Oceania
(Australia and New Guinea). These islands were always surrounded by
deep water and could never be reached via a land route even when sea
levels lowered during cold/glacial periods. These are the islands that
required H. erectus to build rafts or boats in order to explore and
settle them. The line dividing Wallacea from Australia–New Guinea is
called Lydekker’s Line. Near Oceania is comprised of Australia,
Tasmania, the Aru Islands, New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. At
times during the Pleistocene, sea level in this region was 130 meters
lower than at present and the component islands of New Oceania were
joined as dry land to form the continent known as Sahul.


The islands of Wallacea, however, were never joined during these
coldest intervals in the Pleistocene. Therein lies their important bio-
geographical distinctiveness and the challenge to H. erectus. The
animal life of these islands was, and still is, less diverse than
those to their west. The islands of Wallacea have few land mammals,
land birds, or freshwater fish from continental Asia because of the
barrier presented by an open ocean journey. Almost half of the
terrestrial vertebrates of Wallacea were endemic (i.e found nowhere
else). And Wallacea was originally almost completely covered in a
moist, broad leaf forest with great numbers of endemic plant species.


On the islands of Wallacea is evidence that confirmed H. erectus as
the First Mariners, a milestone in human history. We can assume that
the first potential seafarers were fascinated by islands easily
visible and just offshore. Curiosity is always present in human
consciousness. What is out there? Food? Danger? (Contact with an
island out of sight cannot be documented until the Upper Pleistocene
and human migration to Australasia.)


First Mariners Project / Bamboo Raft Construction 2008
Photo - First Mariner’s Project / National Geographic Project 2008


H. erectus builds the first raft and travels to the island of Flores
in Wallacea


Long before the breakthrough event of travel to an island, H. erectus
not only watched the occasional elephant herd swim to an offshore
island, but was likely exploring offshore fishing from small rafts.
The archeological record strongly implies that the ‘invention’ of a
larger, seaworthy raft would be an almost routine extension of the
intellectual capacities of H.erectus already in daily use.


It is very unlikely that the earliest watercraft to venture upon the
sea were dugout canoes. There is no solid evidence for domesticated
fire during the time period of earliest archeological evidence for H.
erectus on the islands of Wallacea. It is near impossible to hollow
out a tree trunk for a dugout canoe without the use of fire. The
oldest known dugout canoe comes from the Netherlands, and dates to
8,600 B.C. By Mesolithic times, modern H.sapiens had dominated the
planet for tens of thousands of years. H. erectus had evolved into our
immediate ancestors, and thereby to extinction, before the Upper
Pleistocene and the last ice age began about 110,000 BP.


We can conclude that the earliest ocean watercraft were rafts built
from logs lashed together with rope made from tough plant fibers and/
or palm fronds. Bamboo was plentiful in Wallacea at this time, and
perhaps some driftwood logs washing up on the beach were straight and
not badly rotted or cracked enough to be useful as supplemental
timbers. Well then, what is the evidence that H.erectus was the first
hominid to travel upon the sea? We do not have remnants of their ocean
craft. Rafts built from logs lashed together would be near impossible
to identify in the archeological record. Abandoned when repair is no
longer possible, or wrecked upon the sea, a raft will come apart and
soon cannot be identified as a human mediated ‘construction’. Perhaps
a finally made paddle could be so identified but none have been found
from this remote epoch.


Islands of Wallacea
Map - Teresa Zubi Karte / Dive Sites in Indonesia


The Sunda Shelf was not continuously exposed and easy-to-traverse
forested land throughout the Middle Pleistocene (0.78-0.13 mya). That
situation existed only when sea levels were at their lowest. Sumatra,
Java, Bali and Kalimantan were periodically reachable by land bridges,
and ocean voyaging was not required to settle them. Earliest H.
erectus in Indonesia was first on Java and has been dated to 1.51-1.02
million years ago. Offshore fishing stocks must have been quickly
discovered and valued, and we can surmise that brief fishing trips
were a priority.


Evolving maritime navigation ability led to the crossing of 30 km of
water and the colonization of the Island of Flores by 840,000 BP (late
Lower Pleistocene). This settlement voyage implies the earlier
colonization of Lombok and Sumbawa, the two major islands between Bali
and Flores. Even at times when the sea level was at its lowest, two
sea crossings were required to reach the island of Flores. First, the
channel between Bali and Lombok had to be crossed, then the 9 km
distance between Sumbawa and Flores had to be traversed. The crossing
of the Lombok Strait may have been the first journey in history to
cross ocean water with the objective to settle a new island or
territory.


Flores_Moni Kelimutu
Photo – Serenade / Wikipedia


The island of Flores is midway between Sunda and Sahul and it was the
first target for settlement by early H. erectus in the region. The Soa
Basin occupies a large interior region on the island of Flores. It is
about 20 km x 10 km and surrounded by mountains and active volcanoes.
Throughout much of its history it was a large lake. At times, river
outlets would form, the lake would drain and the Soa Basin became a
grassland savannah. There is one river outlet still present.
Archeologists find fossils and stone tools in tuffaceous sediments
that formed in the Soa Basin during ‘dry’ periods.


Fossil deposits in the volcanic strata of the Soa Basin of Flores have
many remains of the Stegdon elephant and there are typical Lower
Paleolithic, human made tools in the Ola Bula Formation, central
Flores. At the Mata Menge site, 19 paleomagnetic samples produced age
estimates for the sediment bearing tools of 780,000 BP. Fission track
analysis of the same sediments produced an age of ~800,000-720,000 BP.
Earlier deposits dated to 850,000 to 920,000 BP did not contain any
artifacts (Period 1). Period 3 refers to fossils and stone tools
deposited at Mata Menge and five other localities between 800,000 BP
and 700,000 BP. Case is closed! H. erectus as the First Mariner,
rafted to the Wallacea island of Flores more than 3/4 million years
ago!


Middle Pleistocene tools from Java
Photo – Retno Handini / Science Magazine


Stone tools similar to those on Flores have been found on other deep
water islands in Wallacea: central Timor, western Timor, Roti and
Sulawesi. The finds from Timor and Roti have been identified in Middle
Pleistocene deposits. Stegadons have been identified at Atambua, West
Timor in six sites of the Weaiwe Formation. A Stegodont bone fragment
found at To’os had been smashed and also had been laying in a fire,
perhaps deliberately placed there. (But then, who or what started that
fire?).


Stegodonts and H. erectus were living side by side on Timor. Although,
there is no solid evidence that humans hunted Stegadonts, they could
scavenge the occasional carcass. Stone tools have been found at at
least six Stegodont sites, but this could indicate the preparation of
carcasses, and not active hunting. Indonesian H. erectus eventually
journeyed from Alor to Timor, a distance of 60 to 100 km of open
water.


Humankind had launched itself upon the sea, long before we - ‘modern
humans’ - had appeared on Earth. The implications for the evolution of
our brain and intellectual capacity are staggering! The second article
in this series will explore the extraordinary cognitive and behavioral
capacities of the human mind that the first mariner journeys reveal to
us.


Chile to Micronesia /Mata Rangi III / Spanish Expedition 1999
Photo - Historic Tall Ship Replicas


Note about Rocks, Geological Time and Culture


‘Pleistocene’ refers to geology and age. ‘Paleolithic’ refers to
culture. There are Lower (1.8-0.78 mya), Middle (0.78-0.13 mya) and
Upper Pleistocene (0.12-0.01 mya) periods and they do not exactly
overlap with Lower, Middle and Upper Paleolithic culture periods.
Furthermore, each culture had a different time span on different
continents. For example, Lower Paleolithic tools, which are usually
viewed as somewhat crude and basic in design, persisted in some parts
of Asia throughout the last ice age (Upper Pleistocene geological
era). In Europe, the Lower Paleolithic approach to stone tool making
disappeared everywhere as the last ice age (Upper Pleistocene) began.
Furthermore, the persistence of Lower Paleolithic tool making into the
Upper Pleistocene in some areas does not imply the persistence of our
ancestor Homo erectus, history’s first seafarer.


Sources -
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

More and Pics at Site

Home Erectus Crosses The Open Ocean

Who Were the First Homo Sapiens Sapients in North Africa?

Who Were the First Homo Sapiens Sapients in North Africa?

It depends on where you draw the line between HSS and surving lineages of HSS, but the short answer is Afro-Asians, probably from Mesopotamia or the Levant.

There are several MtDNA studies which show that the first members of the species homo sapiens sapient to inhabit North Africa and to produce lineages which carry on in the region (and/or in the adjacent Canary Islands) until the present entered some 30-65,000 years ago and contained within their population the original portion of the haplogroup M which would later lead to the M1 subclades.
M is one of only two haplogroups which made it out of Africa in the original Homo Sapien Sapient expansion some 65-75,000 years ago and is generally associated with Asian peoples. The other of the two haplogroups is N which is generally associated with Eurasian peoples.

This expansion coincides with the region's Aterian culture, which began over 85,000 ybp and ended some 22,000 to 10,000 ybp, but which may have continued in some remote areas of northwest Africa and it's adjacent islands until historic times. Some of the earliest sites of the Aterian can be attributed to homo erectus, who inhabited the coasts from 200,000 ybp or earlier. There are differences in the eastern and western branches of the industry, and up until about 45,000 years ago some of the Aterian lithics can be attributed to Neanderthal man, whose fossils have been found in the far eastern portion of the region. Man is thought to have entered North Africa 85,000 ybp or later, and haplogroup M came with it at that time or up to 55,000 years later. however, only those peoples carrying the strand of haplogroup M, which would later mutate into M1 while in still in Africa, have continued living in the area until today. Ancestral "African M" also spread into (or was originally from) east Africa at about the same time as North Africa.

Haplogroup M was accompanied into North Africa, either at the original time of habitation or shortly thereafter, by peoples carrying haplogroup U6, a descendent of the Eurasian N lineage. We can't at present discern what male, or Y chromosomes, went into Africa with "hereditary" M1 and U6.

Common suspects for the Y culprit include E1b1b, which is still dominant among Ethiopians, Somalis, Eritreans and North African Berbers and Arabs, and E1a , which has been detected among samples obtained from Moroccan Berbers, Sahrawis, Burkina Faso, northern Cameroon, Senegal, Sudan, Egypt, and Calabria (including both Italian and Albanian inhabitants of the region), although E1a has only a small presence in North Africa.

Haplogroup E, the ancestor of both E1b1b and E1a, is thought to have originated in East Africa, but there are many who argue that it's dispersal points to a back migration into Africa from Asia. It's sister clade, D, is only found in Asia, though it's mother clade ED belongs to an "African" lineage.
E1a is found almost exclusively in Africa, while most non-african peoples who belong to haplogroup E belong to the E1b1b subclade.

The question partly comes down to whether the Guanches of the Canary Islands, generally agreed as the closests descendents of the Paleolithic North Africans, have or have ever had the y-Chromosome E1b1b in their population, and if so, whether they got it before or after the hostile takeover of their culture by subsequent waves of later peoples.
While E1b1b has been reported in the Guanches, the results have been questioned, and it may be attributed to Pheonician, Berber, Arab, and even Spanish influence during historical times. E1a has not been reported from indigenous Canarians, but that can likewise be attributed to hostile takeover and erradication of all original male gene lineages.

There are studies which show that at some time in the distant past the early original "M1 people" were subject to a violent takeover by peoples containing haplogroup R1*, which is a very rare subclade of R1.
With R1b1 and R1b1*(which might actually be R1*) this haplogroup is one of the only two or three subclades of R1 that seem to never have made it into Europe, at least until the common era.

R1* has two sister clades, R1a and R1b, which are the so-called "Cro-Magnon" haplogroups, and these or their common ancestor accompanied the first homo sapien sapient men into Europe somewhere between 45,000 to 25,000 years ago. The two groups make up 70% of the European male lineages, with specific countries, areas, and peoples often reaching over 90%.

At present, we can't tell if the takeover performed by R1* in this early North African population came before or after U6 and M1 spread into North Africa, but we do know that R1* was, in turn, nearly erraticated in the population at a later date....either by those very E1s who still exist in the descendent populations of Berber, Arab, and possibly Guanches today or by members of the later Capsian and Arab cultures that followed, and who carried their signature Haplogroup J along with their own E1 haplogroups.

We also don't know if R1* was already with U6 when he killed off M1's men and took the females for his own, or if, instead, M1 and U6 were already together in the original population and R1* brought no females when he came to call. But R1* is a good guess for the earliest match for U6, being that sister clades U5 and U8 are thought to have been the first into Europe, just like the brother clades of R1*.

In any case, R1* took over the clans that contained U6 and M1 either before or after they spread into North Africa 30-35,000 years ago. If it was after, it can only have been in the accompaniment of the Ibero-Maurusian culture some 18-22,000 ybp, because there is no real change in the Aterian culture from 35,000 ybp until that time.
The Ibero-Maurusians, also known as Oranians and Maghreb or Afoulu man, were a seemingly violent peoples, who knocked out two to four teeth of every male and female in the tribe as a rite of adolescence around the age of 16. They are described as "hyper-robust" and often equated with "Cro-Magnon" man in the old texts (when the term was still in wider use). The main differences between the "Afoulu" or "Oranian" group and the so called "Cro-Magnon" group were said to be that the Ibero-Maurusians were slightly shorter (but still nearly 6 feet tall, being that the two skelotons found in Dordogne at the time had suggested an average height of 6'5 for Cro-Magnon) and had a slightly more primitive skull shape, with a nasal cavity more similar to non-Cro-Magnon specimens from the Paleolithic found in Africa and eastern Europe.

But the Ibero-Maurusian clans don't seem to have been influencial enough on North Africa to have slaughtered every man in the entire region, for at that time the Aterian spread over all of North Africa and even into central and east Africa as well . In fact the Ibero-Maurusians don't seem to have traversed North Africa's entire width, barely extending the culture from the Atlas Mountains and Morrocco to Tunisia. the culture was influenced and eventually succeeded by the Capsian culture, which entered the region from the east around 12,000 ybp.

Another problem with R1* being equated with the Ibero-Maurusians is that the clade is also found all the way over in Turkey and India associated with a very ancient date, and it's "twin" sister clade R1b1* is found among the Bantu and the Cameroon. It is thought to have spread into Africa from the east shortly after it's seperation from all the other R1 clades that went into Europe, some 25,000 to 45,000 years ago. This date and locale squarely places R1*, U6, and M1 together with the Aterian culture somewhere around 35,000 ybp or more. This means that R1* must have performed it's hostile takeover of the "M1" clan before or immediately after it's spread into North Africa, and a very long time before the Ibero-Maurusian.

The best assumption is that from at least 30,000 ybp until at least 22,000 ybp, all of North Africa was near completely dominated by the Aterian culture along with haplogroups M1,U6, and R1*.

It is possible that the Ibero-Maurusians contained most of the E1b1b now found in Berbers, Arabs, and possibly Guanches, entering North Africa from the east and/or south of North Africa 8,000 years before the Capsian. But it is also possible that the Capsian and Arab cultures brought these lineages later, along with haplogroup J.
The Cro-Magnon robustness of the Ibero-Maurusians, as well as supposed lithic similarities, has been attributed by some scientists to an origin in the Iberian Penninsula, from which the culture gets it's name, and from where Cro-Magnon could have conceivably arrived at such a remote date. If this is so, then the R1b they undoubtedly carried has been wrongly attributed (in Guanches and Berbers) to colonization in historic times by Europeans, or else the Ibero-Maurusian R1b lineage was wiped out by the invading Capsians and the later Berbers themselves.

We know from a recent study on Guanches that the Basques in Iberia obtained at least one matriarchal lineage from the Aterians (or Aterian/Ibero-Maurusians) sometime around 20,000 ybp. Since the Canary Islands are thought to have been uninhabited at the time, they can only have gotten the haplogroup from North Africa. This implies one of four possibilities; that there was either a human trade or matrimonial connection between the Ibero-Maurusians and Basques at the time, that the Ibero-Maurusians represent an extinct African branch of the ancestral Basque populations which maintained trade and communication across the Straight of Gibralter with it's mother population, that the Basques raided North Africa for women independent of the Ibero-Maurusians at roughly the same time as the latter's appearance in the region, or that Aterian/Ibero-Maurusian tribes entered Iberia and were there absorbed by the Basque population alone.

As there is no evidence of a distinctly Ibero-Maurusian or Aterian presence in Iberia itself at this time, the invasion from North Africa into Iberia seems unlikely.

The fact that the "robustness"comparisons of Cro-Magnon to Ibero-Maurusians were made before modern dating techniques and assumed that the North African samples were of the same age as the early "Cro-Magnon," which was comparably robust but is actually over 10,000 years older, is problematic at best for the Iberian "Cro-Magnon" origin model; by 20,000 years ago most Europeans had scaled down their hyper-robustness, even the ones that descended from the original Rb1.

If the Ubero-Maurusians were part of an ancestral Iberian population, then that Population could only have descended from the anomolous cro-magnoid "hybrids" found in the caves of northern Portugal and dated to 24,500 ybp, who were the only known Iberians robust enough at the time to fit the Ibero-Maurusian bill.

But the date of 20,000 for the Basque/Guanches shared lineage marker coinciding with the beginning of the Ibero-Maurusian in North Africa makes an independent voyage to the region by Basques coincidental, if possible.

Of course, not all of these possibilities explain who the Ibero-Maurusians actually were. A hyper-robust people arriving mysteriously out of some other part of Africa is not impossible, and could explain the E1b1b and E1a in Berbers quite nicely. And since other cultures in Africa practice tooth-knocking it would provide a cultural context.

If the neanderthal hybrids became the Ibero-Maurusians, then their culture changed between 24,500 and 21,500 while crossing to Africa, which is not surprising when two cultures collide. Their robustness and primitive features can be attributed to the so-called Portuguese "hybrids" and full blooded neanderthals around the Rock of Gibralter which were evident in the area only a few thousand years earlier. It is not surprising that there is a gap between the Neanderthals and hybrids of 24,500 years ago and the Ibero-Maurusians of 21,500 years ago if they are indeed a continuation of the same race, as the shorelines between them have shrunk and only a small portion of artifacts and fossils deposited at such a remote date survive. Furthermore, the absense of the Gravettian lithic and cave painting in southern Iberia during this period lends strength to the idea of neanderthal/hybrid occupation throughout. And 3000 years is plenty of time for the Ibero-Maurusians to have developed the practice of "tooth-knocking," which is otherwise unknown in Europe.

Turning back to haplogroup U6, we can see that it's subcalde u6a is the most common, whereas U6b is only (or mostly) found in Basques(where it has the most diversity) and Guanches, whereas subclade U6c is only found in Berbers and Guanches. A variation of U6b called U6b1 is found in guanches, but not in Basques. This shows that U6b and U6c had to have been seperate populations when the Basques and Berbers aquired them, and sometime afterwards rejoined.

Despite the coincidence in dates, it seems most probable that the Ibero-Maurusian lineage was U6c, and the Aterian U6b, because the Ibero-Maurusians would have been more adjacent to the invading Capsians and Berbers (who obtained only the U6c lineage) whereas the last bastion of Aterian culture was by that time pushed south of the Atlas mountains, or elsewise already heading to the Canaries (although the latter is unlikely since first signs of habitation are dated to no more than 5000 ybp).

If this is the case, then either the Ibero-Maurusians delivered only females to the Basques from Aterian clans that they did not yet fully control, or the Basques sailed around the lands held by Ibero-Maurusians when they came to collect their ladies. This is not to absolutely rule out the possibility that they brought some men back too, but the small amount of E1b1b in Basques is generally agreed to be from the much later Moorish invasions of the Iberian Penninsula, and R1* and/or R1b1* is unknown. R1b makes up around 90% of the Basques lineages, and the remaining 10% is diverse.


The Aterian Culture

From Wikipedia:

The Aterian industry is a name given by archaeologists to a type of stone tool manufacturing dating to the Middle Stone Age (or Middle Palaeolithic) in the region around the Atlas Mountains and the northern Sahara.
The industry was probably created by modern humans (Homo sapiens), albeit of an early type, as shown by the few skeletal remains known so far from sites on the Moroccan Atlantic coast.
Bifacially-worked leaf shaped and tanged projectile points are a common artefact type and so are racloirs and Levallois flakes. Items of personal adornment (pierced and ochred Nassarius shell beads) are known from at least one Aterian site, with an age of 82,000 years.

The Aterian culture gets a bad rap because it is seen as being comtemporaneous with the Aurignacion Culture, which didn't begin until about 45,000 ybp and only happened in Europe proper. The Homo Sapiens in the Levant of 82,000 years ago had not yet gotten an upper hand on the neanderthals of the region, who had experienced both overlapping campsites and cultures there since 95,000 ybp, and who would continue doing so for the next 7,000 years or so. The Aterian tradition was the first to have used Bows and Arrows, pushing that date from a mere 15,000 ybp to 75,000 ybp or more. The neighboring Levant was slow to take on Aurignacion culture when it form in Europe 45,000 years ago, and always received the innovations from Europe last over the next 25,000 years. But the Aterian culture did not participate in the Aurignacion or succeeding cultures at all, and instead continued with the Mousterian traditions. The use of the Levalloise technique sometimes seperates Upper Paleolithic from Middle Paleolithic for researches, so North Africa is often not given an Upper paleolithic date until 15,000 ybp. This is unfortunate because here the Mousterian techniques are taken to their final fruition, resulting in thousands of beautiful arrowheads, spearheads, and other weapons and tools. The Aterians were the first to use desert glass, and have early cave paintings that rival similar dates in Europe. They are the guys on the Discovery Channel storing water in austritch eggs for later trips across the 800 miles of Sahara desert to and from Tunisia, though I doubt they looked anything like they were portrayed. One of the earliest, if not THE earliest, mines is attributed to the Aterian Culture, from where chert was transported to the Tunisian coasts 20,000 years ago. Through much of the Aterian era, the Sahara was greatly diminished, and North Africa was covered with forest and savannah along the coasts, with abundant game to boot, and even the first true fishhooks are claimed for the culture.
But. many archies don't assign Upper Paleolithic staus to North Africa until the Capsian period starting 10-12,000 ybp because of the blade techniques, which mistakenly implies that both the Aterian and Ibero-Maurusian were both "Old Stone Age" cultures.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WJS-45F4X3...


http://mathildasanthropologyblog.wordpress.com/2008/07/16/berber-and-...


http://www.springerlink.com/content/5677p31651255155/fulltext.pdf


http://mathildasanthropologyblog.wordpress.com/2008/05/02/the-asian-o...


http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~donegalstrongs/u6b....


http://carnby.altervista.org/troe/02-08.htm


http://www.oldstoneage.com/smugglers/aterian.htm

Who Were the First Homo Sapiens Sapients in North Africa?

Living Neanderthal Descendents Debate

A Question from Santa Claus



Question:

I wanted to ask about the possibility that Stonehenge (and many other Neolithic sites) were constructed by the Neanderthals.


Among the reasons I think this should be viewed as a possibility is that the Neanderthal culture has been seen as being just as advanced as that of the other humans of the time period.


Furthermore the tools found at the sites do not strictly speaking lend support to any specific tools construction methods. The muscularity of the Neanderthals would have made it possible to erect the megalithic constructions using alternative processes.


As part of this I wanted to suggest about the possibility that these Neolithic sites were constructed at the end of Holocene time period, just before the last ice age.


I know that the age calculations may not support these but the age calculations are not an absolute truth anyway but more like an estimate derived from different factors.

Answer:

Sure... in the sense that the people who built Stonehenge may have carried within them a DNA inheritance from the Neanderthals.

But the last of the Neanderthals died out about 30 thousand years ago, and theyoungest modern-Neanderthal hybrid remains are about 25 thousand years old.


Stonehenge just plain isn't old enough.
-JTEM

Reply:
Actually, they've got full-blooded trolls in Gibraltar now until 25,000 ybp, still rockin' out Mousterian style. Seems the hybrids were up in Portugal at the same time, playin' that Aurignacio-Gravettian noise.

Still a long way in distance and time from megalithic England though, heh.
-Joe


Reply:
Yeah....but the last neanderthal was 25,000 ybp in Gibraltar...last hybrid 25,000 in Portugal. Genetic studies and cultural studies show that indeed the "Celts" do have a relationship to the Portugese of around 10,000 ybp and to the Basques, who are still right near there.

But nor the portugese of 10,000 ybp or the Basques are neanderthals, or even neanderthal hybrids. The neanderthals had been gone 10,000 years at least by the time the celts built stone henge, regardless of whether or not celts have a dash of neanderthal in their family tree.
_Joe

Reply:

Basque is linguistically so different from any other language that it has been postulated (see e.g. Cavalli-Sforza*) that it is a relict language of the original Cro-Magnon Europeans preceding the Indo- European speakers .

By the way "hybrid" is a long way from being a universally accepted explanation of the Lagar Velho child. The skeleton was badly crushed by a bulldozer prior to its discovery in a quarry, making its reconstruction problematic and controversial. Also it is dated a couple of millenia younger than the last known neanderthal (about 28
KYA in southern Iberia...)


Ross Macfarlane



Reply:

Studies of Neandertal DNA shows that there is no trace of Neandertal DNA in modern humans. It may have existed at one point in time. We can be sure there was more than one woman alive at the time of Mitochondrial Eve, yet the mtDNA from those women no longer exists. Those lines are all extinct. Likewise, there might have been Neandertal/Human hybrids at one time, but no such individual exists today as far as anyone knows.
-Imipak
Reply:

Reply:
But it allows for the possibility of up to 5% admixture from archaic populations.
Neanderthals are Type O negative blood type....meaning they would have trouble bearing human children (at least the second time) whereas modern humans would have no trouble bearing neanderthal offspring. In other words, there would have been alot more neanderthal fathers of hybrids than neanderthal mothers of hybrids, and fathers don't pass on their mtdna, just their y chromosome and blood type. Incidentally, Basque have the highest rate of Type O negative blood in the world at 37%, way higher than anyone else. Now, the highest rate of haplogroup R1B, which is one of the "Cro- Magnon" Haplogroups along with Haplogroup N, is in Basques (90%) and Celts (87%), but the rest of europe isn't far behind...most populations being at 60% to 75%. Basques might be the closests to so - called "Cro-Magnons," but they also may be the only population left with a significant neanderthal legacy.

Note: Basques is actually 89%, European Atlantic coast population 90-91%, and Irish93%.

-Joe

Reply:

imipak wrote:
> Studies of Neandertal DNA shows that there is no trace
> of Neandertal DNA in modern humans.


This is simply not true. For starters, if they came across a modern sequence while studying Neanderthal DNA they wouldn't even look at it. What they would do -- what they have been doing -- is throwing it away, assuming that any match has to be contamination.

Secondly, all the studies performed are not capable of making the determinations claimed.


I'll give you a simple way of seeing this yourself...


Giving a best-case scenario, what kind of testing would YOU want to perform, in order to determine if moderns and Neanderthals interbred?


Me? I'd want to start with one of these so-called "Moderns" before they made contact with Neanderthals. Next, I'd want a sample from the Neanderthals before they came into contact with the moderns. And, finally, I'd like to compare both of those sample with people today.


Instead, we look at Neanderthal DNA tens of thousands of years AFTER they started crossing paths with moderns, and then compare those results with us today.


What they're doing as far as testing goes is NOTHING like what wee need to do to answer the question.



> We can be sure there was more than one woman alive
> at the time of Mitochondrial Eve, yet the mtDNA from
> those women no longer exists.


Damn. The mtDNA evidence is even worse... MUCH worse.

-JTEM

Reply:

According to numerous documentaries of the lives of Neanderthals, I don't think they had the time nor the resources to erect anything nearly as large as Stonehenge.
They were mostly cave dwelling nomads, armed with primitive spears (no bows and arrows), in competition for food with 4-legged carnivores, who sometimes had Neanderthals for lunch. Since they had no agriculture and their prey was seasonal, they were forced to re-locate several times during the year.
-Hagar

Reply:
AFAIK, you are correct on everything but the spears. Neandertals had better wood and stone technology than Cro Magnon or other early humans. Far from being the most primitive, they were surprisingly advanced. However, "advanced" is relative. The ability to make a stone knife or axe is a VERY different problem to cutting down 100' oak trees and then placing them in the ground upside-down. (Archaeologists
studying post holes claim that this is the size of tree being seated in the ground in neolithic Salisbury, based on width and effects of compression.)

It is highly surprising even the humans of 10,000 years ago had the capability to do something like that. But it's more the mental capacity. By that time (8,000 BCE), they certainly had all the technology the needed.

One of the things that really eliminates the Neanderthal hypothesis - beyond the dates and the technology - is the design. Stonehenge isn't the only stone circle in the world. In my opinion, it's not even the most interesting. Similar stone circles exist throughout Britain and mainland Europe. Many show considerable skill. The two links above to the stones in the Orkneys show stone circles of almost wafer-thin rocks that stand up to 19' tall in the Stenness case. This is not a tale of brute-force - you'd break the stones if you tried applying force at one single point - but one of strategy and long-term planning

Although Avebury has been badly damaged by people purposely destroying the stones to get rocks or to fight against ancient paganism, the above photograph gives you an idea of the scale of this giant. Three- quarters of a mile across, I believe it to be the largest stone circle anywhere in the world. This was no short-term hobby.

Last, but not least, the construction workers' village was found. This clinches it. The buildings were indisputably made for a neolithic homo sapien, not neandertal.



-Imipak

Reply:

No that date is 24,500 to 28,000 at the rock of Gibralter, the same as the hybrids in Portugal....who had a different culture than the rest of Europe. There are more caves in Iberia proper, but none with cave paintings as articulate as those in the Franco-Cantabrian region during that time. And this is interesting because there WERE comparable Cave Paintings in Italy and Sicily from the Paleolithic.

Despite the traditioonal view that the Basques have always inhabited Basque Country, their DNA and skull type fon't show up there until 5000 BC at the earliest in that area. Their DNA is different from other Atlantic HSS descendents in that Haplogroup V comes from a mother gene that had seperated from the rest of them at least 45,000 years ago, but only diverged from it's mother gene 12,000 to 17,000 years ago, and is only found in descendents of basque mothers. Also,
they sailed out from wherever they lived on the coast of europe sometime between 24,500 years ago and 5000 years ago and stole a bunch of women from either the Canary Islands or North Africa. At this time, the Guanches were seperated into two groups in North africa, one with U6b and another with U6c haplogroup. The Basques got women from the U6b clan. Later, the berbers got some women from the U6c clan. I am not sure if U6b (not present in berbers) and U6c(not present in Basque except in association with Berber/Moorish influence) ever got back together among the Guanches, because some islands may be culturally isolate, but they both still exist in the Canaries, along with a new gene U6b1 which is not present in Basques or Berbers.


This doesn't rule out the possibility that Basques absorbed some neanderthals or hybrids into their gene pool, as JTEM has shown, but it does explain most of their gene divurgence. Their women stayed isolated from the rest of Cro-Magnon from 45,000 bce to at least 17,500 bce, and they borrowed other women from an asian peoples who
had also been isolated from the rest of their kin for at least 25,000 years.
I believe these guys were the Aterians, as their sister genes have a backtrack schemes across Africa, as if absorbed into the North African Maghreb man ( formerly known as a North African strain of Cro-Magnon) expansion into Tunisia and further.


However, these things don't explain the Basques' high rate of O negative, unless pure Rb1 and Pure U6b has a tendency to create this anomoly, or in the case that Haplogroup V has been shown to be linked with this). It also doesn't explain why the Basques have a language isolate, seperate from all other Rb1 predominate races in Europe, especially when we consider that the Basques are closest to the Irish in DNA tests among other predominantly Rb Europeans, along witht he fact that all predominantly Rb haplogroups share a language of Gaelic/ Celtic Origin. The situation gets worse when we see that the Irish are the highest Rb population in Europe at 93% and have one of the oldest Celtic/Gaelic languages in Europe(basques at 89% and English, Welch, Scottish, Dutch, etc at 90%-91%).


The Irish and Basques had to have split AFTER they split with all the other Cro-magnon Rbs. And yet Celtic is akin is very close to the language of all the other Rbs, and Basque is a language Isolate. If the Irish learned celtic after the Ice age and discarded Euskara, then why is it so old and what race did it come from? And why would the least genically influenced Cro-Magnons change their language when no other Cro-Magnons did?
-Joe
Reply:

Living Neanderthal Descendents Debate

First Humans Out of Africa?

Persian Gulf (UAE) emirates a focus for the migration from Africa of
the first humans.

Archaeologists discover 85,000 yr old villages in Sharjah
April 23rd, 2009 - 2:24 pm ICT


Sharjah, April 23 (ANI): Archaeologists have discovered villages
dating back to 85,000 years in Sharjah’s Jebel Fayah, which show that
human settlements existed in the area during that time.


Excavation work was carried out as part of a joint programme between
the Directorate of Antiquities at the Culture and Information
Department in Sharjah and the Institute of Prehistoric Studies and
Research at the German University of Tubengin.


The two-month excavation showed the existence of a deeper layer at the
depth of four meters below the surface, which dates back to at least
100,000 years.


This coincides with the time when man left Africa and reached
Australia around 50,000 years ago.


It had been assumed for hereditary reasons that man moved from East
Africa to the south of the Arabian Peninsula and then to the northern
coasts of the Indian ocean and South Asia.


During times when the sea level was low, people crossed to the islands
now known as Indonesia, which proves that they had some knowledge of
navigation that allowed them to sail to Australia.


It can be assumed that some of the ancestors of Australia’s first
residents stayed in the rocky shelters on the foot of Jebel Fayah
mountain.


The latest discoveries prove that the UAE has a long and rich history.


Considering the international significance of the new discoveries, the
international science community put the site under the spotlight, with
many scientists and specialists flocking the area to find out more
about the archeological discoveries. (ANI)
Sphere: Related Content


Related Stories


* Early mans hunting tools in Qatar challenges existing history of
the country - Sep 09, 2008
* Chandigarh was part of Harappan civilisation 5,000 years ago -
Nov 14, 2008


* First Persians made their way through the Persian Gulf on foot -
Jul 20, 2008
Source

First Humans Out of Africa?

All Hail the American King!

I'm not sure what took me so long to begin reading "Song of Ice and Fire."
I had been looking for something to satiate my lust for great literary fantasy since "The Lord of the Rings" was read to me as a child, to little avail.
Oh, Robert E. Howard became a love and addiction for a while, and still is. Stephen R. Donaldson captured my attention for a spell with his brilliance and originality, despite the ridiculous names. (I might add that his lesser series, beginning with The Mirror of Her Dreams, is devoid of the stupid names and is a great choice for those waiting on Martin's next book, as it is very much like these books for it's non-quest plot, mystery, and political intrigue).
Jordan, the three Terrys, and a slew of others could only serve as a fantasy fix for a book or two. Though they are all good, imaginative writers, their worlds seemed only almost complete, and usually heavilly dependent on Tolkien.
I heard from many fans that Martin was different, and some even had the gall to put him above Tolkien. This was probably one reason why I neglected these books- the sacrilege seemed disrespectful. Another reason might have been the fact that I'd heard the series was based on The War of the Roses, and that seemed un-unique to me, and a little too much like Alternative History. Too, the series was by a new author, not an elder sage....and it wasn't even finished. I don't like to start reading books (or longer books that some call "series") that aren't finished, and what's more I have never been able to see the point in taking more than a trilogy to get through a single plot. It always seemed to me that most long fantasies are just a means of riding the gravy train for far too long. I put Martin on the backburner despite the recommendations, and only after a decade finally picked up the books.
I was entirely surprised to find out that Martin deserves the title of "The American Tolkien" hands down. This is a new king of fantasy, and one book of only a handful in the genre who actually makes it rise above mediocrity in the literary world.
Here is a world that may be as well thought out as even Middle Earth. It isn't based on the War of the Roses, but rather inspired by it, as the myths of the Celts and the Norse inspired Tolkien. It is as black and dark as Howard(or in some cases even darker) and as realistic and witty as Dickens. What's more, Martin is able to speak from many a character's perspective in a convincing and engaging way, be it child, man, cripple, or knave. His dialogue is true to human nature, and his heroes and villians change and evolve as people do only in the real world. What's more, he doesn't pull any punches; no one survives just because Martin has grown attached to them, or fears that his audience has. Events happen that WOULD happen in reality, rather than portraying only events that will get the reader from point A to point B. There are no ex-machinas, and despite Sansa's protests this is no fairy tale.
All and all, this is definitely the best author of fantasy since Tolkien.
Besides a handful like the aforementioned Donaldson and Howard, there are none others who even come close.
It has been years since valor and sacrifice in a book have welled tears in my eyes like they did during the reading of LOTR, and the returning emotions are much welcomed. I thank you, Mr. Martin....and will be beginning the second in this series the moment I'm finished writing this review. Let's hope I can break free of it long enough to get some work done in the next week.

All Hail the American King!

Lost Tools Reveal Early Humans' Route Out of Africa

March 2, 2009
Lost Tools Reveal Early Humans' Route Out of Africa


The peripatetic human ancestor, Homo erectus, has been in the news lately as researchers have uncovered new clues about how it walked, what tools it used, and what its hips looked like. But one mystery has persisted—how did it leave Africa, where it probably arose about 1.8 million years ago? Researchers have found fossil bones from Georgia to Java in Asia, but no bones or undisputed stone tools along the routes this early human should have trekked on its migrations out of Africa. Anyone who could draw a line on a map between east Africa and the two oldest fossil sites in western Asia could guess that H. erectus passed through Turkey, for example, but in the absence of evidence, they couldn't be sure. [...]


Now some long-awaited evidence has emerged in the form of a short trail of stone tools left behind by H. erectus as it passed through Turkey. In the current issue of Antiquity, a team of Turkish and American researchers reports about "unambiguous" stone tools and butchered animal bones dating to almost 1 million years ago. The stone tools, made mostly of milky white quartz, were found in a former lignite quarry near the village of Dursunlu in south-central Turkey. The site is relatively close to both Ubeidiya, Israel, where stone tools were left about 1.4 million years ago, and to Dmanisi, Georgia, where H. erectus bones date to 1.75 million years ago.


A team led by paleontologist Erksin Gulec of Ankara University in Turkey found 135 stone tools, including some retouched flakes and choppers. They have also found the bones of rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, and horses with cut marks. These tools "are the first clear material traces of hominin occupation in the region," the authors write. [...]
Source Article

Lost Tools Reveal Early Humans' Route Out of Africa

Races of Neanderthals

Science News


Three Neanderthal Sub-groups Confirmed


ScienceDaily (Apr. 15, 2009) — The Neanderthals inhabited a vast geographical area extending from Europe to western Asia and the Middle East 30,000 to 100,000 years ago. Now, a group of researchers are questioning whether or not the Neanderthals constituted a homogenous group or separate sub-groups (between which slight differences could be observed).


Paleoanthropological studies based on morphological skeletal evidence have offered some support for the existence of three different sub- groups: one in Western Europe, one in southern Europe and another in the Levant.


Researchers Virginie Fabre, Silvana Condemi and Anna Degioanni from the CNRS Laboratory of Anthropology (UMR 6578) at the University of Marseille, France, have given further consideration to the question of diversity of Neanderthals by studying the genetic structure of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and by analyzing the genetic variability, modeling different scenarios. The study was possible thanks to the
publication, since 1997, of 15 mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences (the mtDNa is maternally transmitted) that originated from 12 Neanderthals.


The new study confirms the presence of three separate sub-groups and suggests the existence of a fourth group in western Asia. According to the authors, the size of the Neanderthal population was not constant over time and a certain amount of migration occurred among the sub- groups. The variability among the Neanderthal population is interpreted to be an indirect consequence of the particular climatic
conditions on their territorial extension during the entire middle Pleistocene time period.


Degioanni and colleagues obtained this result by using a new methodology derived from different biocomputational models based on data from genetics, demography and paleoanthropology. The adequacy of each model was measured by comparing the simulated results obtained using BayesianSSC software with those predicted based on nucleotide sequences.


The researchers hope that one day this methodology might be applied to questions concerning Neanderthal cultural diversity (for example the lithic industry) and to the availability of natural resources in the territory. This could provide new insights into the history and extinction of the Neanderthals.





Source

Races of Neanderthals

Bloody Stone Age: war in the Neolithic

Bloody Stone Age: war in the Neolithic


Skull from Rodmarton, Gloucestershire, with a linear fracture caused
by a severe blowThe perception that much of prehistory was relatively
peaceful is changing. New research has identified evidence of violent
assault in the Neolithic. What does this tell us about Stone Age life
as a whole? Forensic archaeologist Martin Smith explains.
Whilst many Neolithic burials have been excavated during the last 150
years, they have received only limited study. Modern analysis of these
remains by osteo-archaeologists is revealing shocking evidence for
violent assaults involving clubs, axes, and arrowshot about 5,500
years ago.Arrowheads.
Recent years have seen growing interest in conflict archaeology.
Warfare has gone from being a subject rarely mentioned by
archaeologists to one that is widely debated. Current world events
may have something to do with this, but it is also linked to advances
in our ability to recognise evidence of violence, and a drive towards
new theoretical approaches for making sense of it.


Most research of this kind has usually been concerned with more recent
periods, but lately consideration is also being given to prehistory.
In particular, we now have a growing body of evidence for aggression
between groups and individuals during the Neolithic, most of which
comes in the form of skeletal injuries. The fact that acts of violence
sometimes occurred in this period now seems indisputable. However,
assessing what this tells us about Neolithic life as a whole is
harder.


Injury probably caused by arrowshot, in a skull recovered at Littleton
Drew, Gloucestershire.Old wounds: new evidence
Many injuries to the skeleton are difficult to interpret, as there may
be a number of ways in which a particular injury could be incurred.
Fractured ribs, for example, can be sustained in various ways, mostly
through accidents such as falls. It is generally impossible to be
specific about the origin of these kinds of fractures in
archaeological bone.
Some types of injury, however, may be more consistent with a
particular cause. Fractures of the skull are a good example. Head
injuries inflicted with weapons often produce patterns of fracture
that are more easily recognised as such than wounds to other parts of
the skeleton. Improved understanding of the properties of bone
fracture has led to our recognition of a growing number of Neolithic
head injuries consistent with violence, many of which might previously
have been interpreted as damage after burial.
Such signs of violent assault are apparent throughout much of Europe,
and not least in Britain. These include a number of healed head
injuries apparently inflicted with blunt, club-like implements, as
well as unhealed fractures inflicted very close to (if not actually
at) the time of death. The latter include a mixture of sharp-force and
blunt-force trauma, possibly inflicted with stone axes.


Tip of an arrowhead embedded in part of a human vertebra from Tulloch
of Assery, Caithness. Then there are projectile wounds. This category
is particularly unequivocal where fragments of arrowheads remain
embedded in bone, although recent experimental research has revealed
that it is sometimes possible to recognise such injuries even where
the ‘murder weapon’ is no longer present. In a recent research project
examining evidence of cranial trauma, Mick Wysocki, Senior Lecturer in
Forensic Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Central
Lancashire, and Rick Schulting, Lecturer in Scientific and Prehistoric
Archaeology from Oxford University, produced a conservative estimate
(based on the view that some examples might be misdiagnosed) that 26
out of 350 crania examined (7.4%) displayed traumatic injuries.
Pictures at Site

Bloody Stone Age: war in the Neolithic

Neanderthal

First of all I'd like to say that John Darton is a damn good writer, which is most important because this is a work of fiction. His prose flows smoothly, he's great at matching sentence structure to the emotions he's conveying, and each chapter ends with a question that keeps you reading on to the next instead of using the ol' bookmark for a break.

Having said that, if you're a real anthropology or archeology buff like I am, you may be disappointed. I myself, despite my historic bent, was only slightly disappointed, and would have given this book three and a half stars if Amazon would let me (many books I've given four stars to only deserve three and a half, and I rounded down; unfortunately for Darnton this review comes as I'm realizing how overstocked my four star reviews have become).

But, obviously from many of the reviews I see of the book on this page, most of my fellow history buffs do not agree.

The problem is that if you know alot about Neanderthals, your suspension of disbelief is seriously threatened about half-way through the book when the main characters start interacting with the neanderthals.
However, I am not altogether sure that this is a result of poor research. For most of the first half, Darnton does show a dated but still relevent knowledge of Neanderthal man as known to the educated layman, who has taken modern college level anthropology and history and who watches the occasional current PBS or Discovery Channel special on the subject (which, I might add, is the knowledge a writer needs to have and cling to when he's writing for the general public, as opposed to when he's writing for scientists). He mixes fictinional finds with actual finds well enough that he'll have you Googling them to find out which are the real.

But when the Neanderthals are actually met, the good research seems to go out the window. I suspect, however, that this is not entirely the case; Darnton seems to be using wild theories and speculations as a devise to convey an ideal and to perpetuate the myth of the noble savage. Unfortunately, his anything but mainstream theories are left unexplained and unsupported, creating either the evidence or the illusion of ignorance.

Is this the editors or the author's fault?

It's disarming to suggest agriculture before hunting and gathering. Got to explain it if you wanna have it in your book. The Neanderthals were NOT vegetarians and NOT pacifistic; got to explain why yours are if you wanna have it in your book. And if a group of neanderthals break off from the main population RECENTLY and become cannibalistic again, reverting to the VERY ritualistic practices supposedly left behind 30,000 years ago, then you gotta tell us why and how they rediscovered those. He could have at least hinted that the Neanderthals brains were able to remember their ancestor's memories to explain himself, like Aule did, if he's not going to have them find something that clues them in to their former violent selves, but the writer fails to even do that. These are only a few of the problems which irk those who know alot about neanderthals.

I realize that alot of readers get bored when the writer goes on too much about the history of characters, or explains in detail why some aspect of the thinking or philosophy in a novel is present. That's why I'm giving the author the benefit of the doubt; the editor may have dumbed it down for the "I don't want to know" public, and if he did so he should have realized that this book appeals to a diffenent niche made up of those who "have to know" in order to suspend disbelief.

To most people, it looks like the author really believes that Neanderthals could survive all this time in the mountains without being able to defend themselves in the least. Like he really believes that the killing machine that is Neanderthal could become a super-wuss despite his instinct (whether trained or experienced in fighting or not, a Neanderthal would not be clumsy and would not have the least bit of problem destroying even the greatest UFC Fighter in the world with his bare hands, unlike Darnton's unbeleivably pacifistic Neanderthals). Like he believes that agriculture really came before hunting, etc. etc.
I caution that this might not be the case, and that Darnton may have known that these things weren't true, and either originally had an explanation or purposely kept the explanation shrouded in mystery.



Did Darnton expand upon these ideas only to have an editor dumb it down for us? I really hope so, cuz other than leaving us in the dark with a broken suspension of disbelief on these topics, the guy rocks as a writer. Comment | Permalink

Neanderthal

Beyond the Gap

This book was right up my prehistoric interest alley and I've thoroughly enjoyed Turtledove's Bronze age short stories and editing, so it's no wonder I picked it up. It was a good enough read, and I got to the last page, but it took me longer than usual because the interest level just wasn't where I expected it to be.

The premise seems to be of taking a Medieval European city and placing it in North America at the end of the last Ice Age and flanking it with Cro-Magnon-like Bizogots to the north, just as the massive glacier the blocks the Berring land bridge begins to melt through. However, Turtledove and his editors and marketers never state this on the cover, flap, Preface or Introduction. To add to the confusion, Turtledove adds fantasy magic (not "Eastern" or "shamanistic" or "illusion" but downright unexplainable Dungeons and Dragons type magic) to the mix about two-thirds of the way through the book.

There's alot of walking. And alot of dialogue. And alot of pitiful mooning by an otherwise stalwart warrior about the depravity of an ex-wife he should have forgotten long ago. The idea of an enterprising nobleman who is also a formidable warrior also having the emotional fortitude of a female teenager is off-putting, and would almost make one think that Turtledove himself must not have much experience in romance. Furthermore, often the dialogue is disjointed or sophomoric, containing jokes that are either not funny or of a strange humor that's lost on this reader. Often subjects or statements presented by characters just don't ring with the truth of living dialogue.

Otherwise Turtledove's writing is excellent, and the topic interesting. I just don't see why he wanted to put it in the Ice Age if all he wanted from that era was a herd of mammoth and a small cave bear.

As other writers have said, the book finally gets going about the time it ends, and I suspect that the second installment will be better. I rarely read a sequel to a book I've only given 3 stars to, but this one might be the exception. I still believe in Turtledove, and I'm a big fan of prehistoric fiction...even if it is alternative. Besides, he never told us about the Shrine....perhaps a marketing ploy that I'll most likely fall for. But if I give this series a second chance and all that character development is proven to be for not, the second book will be lucky to get 2 stars.

Beyond the Gap

Shells Offer New Take on Human Evolution

Shells Offer New Take on Human Evolution
Anna Salleh, ABC Science Online






Prevalent Tool Material | Discovery News Video March 30, 2009 -- Analysis of complex shell tools is rewriting the history of human development.

To understand human development, archaeologists tend to analyze either fossilized human bones or stone tools. In Africa and Europe stone tools are seen to increase in complexity over the last few million years.

But in East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Guinea, stone tools don't appear to develop until the last 4000 years.

Katherine Szabo of the University of Wollongong in Australia has just taken up this issue, saying it "bears on questions of our history as a species."

Szabo explained the lack of stone tools found in these regions has led some researchers to conclude that this region was "static," with some dubbing it "culturally retarded."

Others argue that, like the hunter gatherers of today, humans in East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Guinea relied on plants, such as bamboo, rather than stone, and these aren't preserved in archaeological record.




"That may very well be true but we can't prove it," said Szabo.

She said researching shells is exciting because it can be preserved for just as long as stone in the archaeological record.

"It's not a material that anyone's looked at or that anyone particularly understands very well," said Szabo.

In published research to date, Szabo reports having excavated shell tools dating back 32,000 years from a cave site in eastern Indonesia, and comparing them with stone tools from the same cave.

"It transpired that the shell tools were in fact much more complex to produce than the stone tools," she said.

The stone tools were randomly chipped, but the shell tools had been carefully chosen and shaped.

In one case, a "cats eye" or operculum shell was flaked systematically with five blows, each one slightly overlapping with the last in a clockwise direction.


More on Page 2

Shells Offer New Take on Human Evolution

Shamans and Archaeology Options

Craft---religious--specialists marks on archaeological sites like any
other.

Shamans and Archaeology
Monday April 6, 2009


What are the archaeological signatures of shamans? An interesting paper by Christine VanPool appearing in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology in the nearish future gives us a framework for answering that question.


Bronze Age Tanum Rock Art (Sweden), images enhanced with chalk water
Photo by JelleS


First VanPool provides a useful delineation of the cultural traits of shamans and priests, which I've used to build a couple of detailed definitions (here: Priest and Shaman). In brief, though, the way VanPool sees it, shamans and priests are two ends of a continuum of religious specialists.


What are Religious Specialists?


Religious specialists are those people in a given society who have a connection to the deities who control things humans cannot. Religious specialists are classed by dry-as-dust archaeologists as "craft specialists", and the presence of craft specialists—people with assigned part time or full time jobs including crop tending and child care and pot making and flint knapping and tending to the religious
needs of a society—is one of those characteristics of complex societies that anthropologists (and archaeologists) use to discuss how people organize themselves.


Shamans, associated with hunter-gatherer societies, may be part-time specialists, with a practice that primarily focuses on the problems of the individual. Shamans use private spaces for connecting with the underworld and actually become spiritual creatures themselves, using altered states of consciousness to connect to the other world.


Priests, on the other hand, are generally associated with agricultural societies. They have a more formalized role, and work full time at their craft; they work for the goals of the entire society. Priests follow a liturgical text and calendar, and use public spaces for publicly-attended communication with the underworld. Priests are representatives of the gods, not the gods themselves, and they don't typically use altered states of consciousness to speak to them.


VanPool points out that the two categories are created by archaeologists and anthropologists, and are not mutually exclusive in real-life applications—you can have both types of specialists in a given society. Some societies have shaman-priests who combine traits of both. Further, many native religions were greatly impacted by colonization and missionaries, creating a great loss of diversity; but
colonization, agricultural complexity and even urbanization does not necessarily entail a complete shift away from shamanism.


Identifying Religious Specialists


The Oneota Birdman or Hawkman is a half-man, half-bird image that appears in Oneota iconography, and is variously interpreted.
Image Credit: redrafted by Kris Hirst


Typically, archaeologists have used the presence of a ritual-specific artifact or a rock art drawing of an anthropomorphic creature with animal characteristics to tentatively suggest the presence of a shaman within a given society. VanPool makes a cogent argument that by now anthropologists have identified a suite of cross-cultural traits that can be identified archaeologically and thus used to confidently argue for shamanism as a practice at an archaeological site or set of sites.


These traits include evidence of the use of hallucinogens (seeds, plant residues, or identifying the specific chemicals) to achieve altered states of consciousness and entopic imagery—grids, stars, spirals—on rock art or on ceramic vessels; evidence of pilgrimages or pilgrimage routes; anthropomorphic images; animal fetishes; crystals;
drums and rattles; incense; temporary altars; effigy pipes, and the like. It is only with a combination of traits, says VanPool, that we can confidently hypothesize a shamanistic element in our archaeological past.


Further Reading


VanPool, Christine. in press. The signs of the sacred: Identifying
shamans using archaeological evidence. Journal of Anthropological
Archaeology. In press.SOURCE

Shamans and Archaeology Options