Dispersal and colonisation, long and short chronologies: how continuous is the Early Pleistocene record for hominids outside East Africa?

Hominins without fellow travellers? First appearances and inferred dispersals of Afro-Eurasian large-mammals in the Plio-Pleistocene

“…This may indicate that it was easier for some species to get into Asia than directly into Europe. Furthermore, dispersal models of Theropithecus found a similar pattern, and both seem to fall in line with the suggestion that an area of savannah grasslands ('Savannastan'), stretching from Africa into southwestern Asia, united areas that are traditionally placed in separate biogeographic compartments (Dennell 2003;Dennell and Roebroeks 2005).…”

“…Various waves of PlioPleistocene Afro-Eurasian mammalian dispersal have previously been identified in the palaeontological literature, the best known of which are the dispersal of Proboscidea out of Africa 2.5-1.5 Ma (Tchernov and Shoshani, 1996), of bovids out of Africa ~2.7-2.5 Ma (Vrba, 1995a) and the Elephant-Equus and Wolf events in Europe at 2.6-2.5 Ma and ~1.7 Ma respectively (Azzaroli et al, 1988). Other dispersals of interest include the appearance of cold-tolerant faunas in Europe and of larger-bodied cervids and bovids in western parts of Eurasia during the Pleistocene (Azzaroli et al, 1988), and of course the pattern and timing of earliest hominin movements (Dennell, 2003;Roebroeks, 2001;Turner, 1992. Our results, in combination with those of several other recent studies, suggest that a number of these previous interpretations require reconsideration.…”

The human colonisation of Europe: where are we?

“…The third issue deals with the problems of differential preservation and differences in research intensity between areas, already mentioned above. As discussed by Dennell (2003Dennell ( , 2004 we not only need first appearance dates but also good data concerning the latest probable absence of hominins in a given area (see Fig. 1 and below) in order to be reasonably sure that distribution patterns do reflect occupation histories rather than differences in research history and intensity.…”

“…During much of the Palaeolithic, the British Isles indeed formed 'the edge of the world' (Lang and Keen, 2005), which makes this northwestern tip of the Eurasian landmass a good laboratory for monitoring the ebb and flow of human occupation and hence hominin adaptations-indeed, this was an important rationale behind the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain (AHOB) project. Europe itself serves this purpose for the larger picture of expansion and contraction, situated as it is at the edge of the vast distributions of the Old World's Pleistocene hominins, of which more than a century of Quaternary research has only examined a very small part, as Robin Dennell keeps reminding us (Dennell, 2001(Dennell, , 2003(Dennell, , 2004. Within Europe many surprises still turn up in areas where little fieldwork has been done, for instance in the northernmost parts of northeastern Russia, where recent fieldwork has demonstrated a surprisingly early Upper Palaeolithic presence (Pavlov et al, 2004).…”

Evidence for the Blake Event recorded at the Eemian archaeological site of Caours, France

“…The geographic and environmental limits to the spatial distribution of specific hominins are of major interest, as they provide important information about hominin social and/or technological abilities to adapt to a specific ecosystem, or to find new ways of exploiting or competing for resources (e.g. Roebroeks, 2001;Dennell, 2003;Potts, 2012). Thus, improving the chronological and environmental framework of the pattern of hominin presence in a given region can provide us with data to infer changes in their behaviour as well as to assess the emergence of corridors or barriers that may have influenced their dispersal (e.g.…”