Early human occupation of the Red Sea coast of Eritrea during the last interglacial

Abstract

The geographical origin of modern humans is the subject of ongoing scientific debate. The 'multiregional evolution' hypothesis argues that modern humans evolved semi-independently in Europe, Asia and Africa between 100,000 and 40,000 years ago, whereas the 'out of Africa' hypothesis contends that modern humans evolved in Africa between 200 and 100 kyr ago, migrating to Eurasia at some later time. Direct palaeontological, archaeological and biological evidence is necessary to resolve this debate. Here we report the discovery of early Middle Stone Age artefacts in an emerged reef terrace on the Red Sea coast of Eritrea, which we date to the last interglacial (about 125 kyr ago) using U-Th mass spectrometry techniques on fossil corals. The geological setting of these artefacts shows that early humans occupied coastal areas and exploited near-shore marine food resources in East Africa by this time. Together with similar, tentatively dated discoveries from South Africa this is the earliest well-dated evidence for human adaptation to a coastal marine environment, heralding an expansion in the range and complexity of human behaviour from one end of Africa to the other. This new, wide-spread adaptive strategy may, in part, signal the onset of modern human behaviour, which supports an African origin for modern humans by 125 kyr ago.

The Red Sea, Coastal Landscapes, and Hominin Dispersals

“…Bailey et al, 1994;Stiner, 1994, p, 177, 182). This is evidently a problem with the Abdur site, where the oyster shells originally claimed as evidence of food remains (Walter et al, 2000) later turned out to be a natural death assemblage (Bruggemann et al, 2004).…”

“…The popularity of this route has been further strengthened by genetic studies based on comparisons of DNA characteristics in modern populations, which seem to suggest a single rapid dispersal of modern humans out of Africa at about 70,000 years ago (Oppenheimer, 2003;Forster and Matsumura, 2005;Macaulay et al, 2005;Thangaraj et al, 2005), an idea that has been coupled with a supposedly new emphasis on marine resources that attracted modern human populations to productive coastlines and propelled them eastwards around the rim of the Indian Ocean (Stringer, 2000;Walter et al, 2000;Mellars, 2006;Bulbeck, 2007). Similarities of early stone-tool industries between East Africa, Arabia and the Indian subcontinent have been discussed in relation to this hypothesis (e.g.…”

“…Zarins et al (1979) and McClure (1978, cited in Zarins et al 1979), refer to a late Pleistocene fauna in central Arabia and the Rub' al Khali of Bos primigenius, Bubalus (water buffalo), hippopotamus, Equus hemionus, camel and gazelle. From the MIS 5e deposits of Abdur in Eritrea, indeterminate species of elephant, hippo, rhino and bovid have been recorded, but without further detail (Walter et al, 2000).…”

“…Walter et al, 2000;Mannino and Thomas, 2002;Oppenheimer, 2003;Bulbeck, 2007;Marean et al, 2007;Turner and O'Regan, 2007), but the evidence in its support is at best weak (Bailey et al 2007a;Bailey in press), and raises a number of unresolved questions. Examination of potential routes between Northeast Africa and the Indian subcontinent (Field and Lahr 2005;Field et al 2006) suggests that there are a number of significant barriers along the coastal corridor that would have required long diversions inland, although the question of what constitutes a barrier, especially under paleogeographic and environmental conditions unlike those of today, remains to be explored in more detail.…”

“…Acheulean and Middle Stone Age material has been recovered, often in association with elevated coral terraces formed at previous periods of high sea level, notably in the north (Plaziat et al, 1998), in Djibouti (Faure and Roubet, 1968), and in Eritrea, where there is an important concentration of sites (Beyin and Shea, 2007) including the important find of Abdur dated at ca. 130 kya and associated with faunal remains and claims for the exploitation of marine resources (Walter et al, 2000). Sondheim in the hinterland of the Egyptian coastal sector represents a rare cave site with a late Pleistocene archeological sequence (Van Peer, 1998).…”