Over the last two decades, red ochre has played a pivotal role in discussions about the cognitive and cultural evolution of early modern humans during the African Middle Stone Age. Given the importance of ochre for the scholarly debate about the emergence of ‘behavioral modernity’, the lack of long-term spatio-temporal analyses spanning large geographical areas represents a significant gap in knowledge. Here we take a continent-wide approach, rather than focusing on specific sites, regions or technocomplexes. We report the most comprehensive meta-analysis of ochre use to date, spanning Africa between 500 and 40 thousand years ago, to examine data from more than a hundred archaeological sites. Using methods based on time averaging, we identified three distinct phases of ochre use: the initial phase occurred from 500,000 to 330,000; the emergent phase from 330,000 to 160,000; and the habitual phase from 160,000 to 40,000 years ago. The number of sites with ochre increased with each subsequent phase. More importantly, the ratio of sites with ochre compared to those with only stone artifacts also followed this trend, indicating the increasing intensity of ochre use during the Middle Stone Age. While the geographical distribution expanded with time, the absolute number of ochre finds grew significantly as well, underlining the intensification of ochre use. We determine that ochre use established itself as a habitual cultural practice in southern, eastern and northern Africa starting about 160,000 years ago, when a third of archaeological sites contain ochre. We argue that this pattern is a likely material manifestation of intensifying ritual activity in early populations of Homo sapiens. Such ritual behavior may have facilitated the demographic expansion of early modern humans, first within and eventually beyond the African continent. We discuss the implications of our findings on two models of ritual evolution, the Female Cosmetic Coalitions Hypothesis and the Ecological Stress Hypothesis, as well as a model about the emergence of complex cultural capacities, the Eight-Grade Model for the Evolution and Expansion of Cultural Capacities.

The time period between 560 and 360 ka (MIS14 to MIS11) was critical for the evolution of the Neanderthal lineage and the appearance of Levallois technology in Europe. The shifts in the distribution of the human populations, driven by cyclical climate changes, are generally accepted to have played major roles in both processes. We used a dataset of palaeoclimate maps and a species distribution model to reconstruct the changes in the area of Western Europe with suitable environmental conditions for humans during 11 time intervals of the MIS14 to MIS 11 period. Eventually, the maximum sustainable human population within the suitable area during each time interval was estimated by extrapolating the relationship observed between recent hunter-gatherer population density and net primary productivity and applying it to the past. Contrary to common assumptions, our results showed the three Mediterranean Peninsulas were not the only region suitable for humans during the glacial periods. The estimated total sustainable population of Western Europe from MIS14 to MIS11 oscillated between 13,000 and 25,000 individuals. These results offer a new theoretical scenario to develop models and hypotheses to explain cultural and biological evolution during the Middle Pleistocene in Western Europe.

The landscape of the surroundings of the Melka Kunture prehistoric site, Upper Awash Basin, Ethiopia, were studied intensively in the last decades. Nonetheless, the area was mainly characterized under a stratigraphic/geological and archaeological point of view. However, a detailed geomorphological map is still lacking. Hence, in this study, we identify, map and visualize geomorphological forms and processes. The morphology of the forms, as well as the related processes, were remotely sensed with available high-resolution airborne and satellite sources and calibrated and validated through extensive field work conducted in 2013 and 2014. Furthermore, we integrated multispectral satellite imagery to classify areas affected by intensive erosion processes and/or anthropic activities. The Main Map at 1:15,000 scale reveals structural landforms as well as intensive water-related degradation processes in the Upper Awash Basin. Moreover, the map is available as an interactive WebGIS application providing further information and detail (www.roceeh.net/ethiopia_ geomorphological_map/).