The extent to which the earliest anatomically modern humans in Africa exhibited behavioral and cognitive traits typical of Homo sapiens sapiens is controversial. In eastern Zaire, archaeological sites with bone points have yielded dates older than 89(-15)+22 thousand years ago by several techniques. These include electron spin resonance, thermoluminescence, optically stimulated luminescence, uranium series, and amino acid racemization. Faunal and stratigraphic data are consistent with this age.

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The bleaching of thermoluminescence (TL) yield to a residual value by light is explained, at least in some cases, to be due to an equilibrium between excitation and de-excitation by the illuminating light. Kinetic differential equations are given governing the process for the simple case of a single trapping state for electrons and a single variety of hole recombination centre. The equations are solved numerically for chosen sets of the relevant parameters starting either from empty traps and centres or from highly populated ones. In agreement with experimental results, the numerical computation predicts that after a long enough illumination the process of filling of the traps converges to the same equilibrium value as that produced by bleaching. It is also found that the equilibrium value is independent of the light intensity, though, of course, this equilibrium is approached faster with more intense light. The computed dependencies of the filling of trapping states as a function of illumination time are shown. The final equilibrium value for the filling of trapping states can also be evaluated analytically for any set of given parameters; these compare very favourably with the calculated results. The change of the results with the variation of the relevant parameters is discussed.

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