Successes and failures of human dispersals from North Africa

Garcea, Elena Antonella Alda

doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2011.06.034

Cited by 58 publications

(39 citation statements)

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“…These two events are not only chronologically distinct, but underwent different environmental conditions and displayed different technological solutions, which alternately affected the Outof-Africa movement. Given their substantial differences, I have suggested to name the former 'Out of Africa 2a' and the latter 'Out of Africa 2b' (Garcea 2010a(Garcea , 2012. While modern humans in the Out-of-Africa 2a only reached the southern Levant, their Out-of-Africa2b successors spread into Europe and the Middle East and eventually replaced the local previous inhabitants, Neandertals (Garcea 2010b;Shea 2010).…”

Section: Elena Garcea Department Of Letters and Philosophy Universimentioning

confidence: 99%

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2013

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Orrorin tugenensis (Kenya, ca. 6 Ma) is one of the earliest putative hominins in the fossil record. The Orrorin hypodigm includes three partial femora, with one of them-BAR 1002'00-preserving most of its proximal morphology and exhibiting inferred adaptations for terrestrial bipedalism. This specimen was originally described as being very human-like, even more so than later hominins, although subsequent multivariate analyses showed that it actually shares a distinctive shape with australopiths. However, some traits of this femur (e.g., greater and lesser trochanteric form) recall the morphology seen in earlier Miocene apes. Here we reassess the morphological affinities of BAR 1002'00 using three-dimensional geometric morphometrics (13 coordinates covering functionally meaningful landmarks of the proximal femur), within an extensive sample of modern humans, great apes, and hylobatids, as well as with fossil hominins, and-for the first time-Miocene apes. Since Miocene apes have been described by some as monkey-like for certain features, we also included a broad sample of cercopithecoid and platyrrhine monkeys (N of total sample=448). Our multivariate results (based on between-group principal components analysis [bgPCA] and phylogenetic methods) indicate that platyrrhines, cercopithecoids, and hominoids can be reliably distinguished from each other, thereby indicating a strong phylogenetic signal in the shape data (p<0.0001). Our results also demonstrate that Miocene apes are more similar to extant apes than to any extant monkey. A bgPCA focused on hominoids only reveals that BAR 1002'00 displays strong shape affinities with the earlier Miocene apes, being intermediate between them and some australopiths. Extant great apes, and especially chimpanzees and bonobos, display a distinct and probably derived morphology. These results suggest that some Miocene apes could closely approximate the proximal femoral anatomy of the last common ancestor of hominins and African apes. Orrorin apparently preserves aspects of this ancestral shape. The appearance of engraved ostrich eggshell (OES) canteens around 65 ka in southern Africa, and beads by 50-45 ka in eastern and southern Africa, represent significant milestones in the evolution of modern human technology and symbolic behavior. Methods for describing OES artifacts, thermal alteration, and criteria for identifying natural damage and use-wear on canteens are not systematically applied, hindering comparative analyses. We present a preliminary descriptive analysis system for OES using >40 ka and mid-Holocene Later Stone Age (LSA) OES assemblages from Enkapune Ya Muto Rockshelter, Kenya. Comparison to the >40 ka bead assemblage from Border Cave, South Africa, shows that the earliest LSA beads in both regions have irregular faceted perimeters from chipping and grinding on flat surfaces. Mid-Holocene beads have more symmetric rounded perimeters, indicating grinding in grooved stones. Kalahari foragers often recycled OES canteen fragments for bead manufacture. Beaded artifacts we...

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Section: Elena Garcea Department Of Letters and Philosophy Universimentioning

confidence: 99%

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2013

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“…The archaeological record of the Saharo-Arabian belt was formed by hominin populations dispersing within and out of Africa and is therefore the key to understanding such dispersals (Foley & Lahr, 1997;Rose, 2007;van Peer & Vermeersch, 2007;Barham & Mitchell, 2008;Drake, Blench, Armitage, Bristow, & White, 2011;Drake, Breeze & Parker, 2013;Garcea, 2012Garcea, , 2016Groucutt et al, 2015). The arid and semi-arid regions of Arabia contain an abundance of surface artefacts that might be typologically assigned to dispersing groups of Homo erectus and later H. sapiens populations (Potts, Mughannum, Frye, & Sanders, 1978;Zarins, Ibrahim, Potts & Edens, 1979;Zarins, Whalen, Ibrahim, Morad & Khan 1980;Ingraham, Johnson, Rihani, & Shatla, 1981;Zarins, Murad & Al-Yaish, 1981;Zarins, Rahbini & Kamal, 1982;Petraglia, 2003;Petraglia & Alsharekh, 2003;Rose & Petraglia, 2009;Petraglia, Haslam, Fuller, Boivin, & Clarkson, 2010;Armitage et al, 2011;Rose et al, 2011;Delagnes et al, 2012;Bailey et al, 2013;Inglis et al, 2014;Groucutt et al, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Palaeolithic artefact deposits at Wadi Dabsa, Saudi Arabia; a multi-scalar geoarchaeological approach to building an interpretative framework

Inglis¹,

Fanning²,

Stone³

et al. 2018

Preprint

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Surface artefacts dominate the archaeological record of arid landscapes, particularly the Saharo-Arabian belt, a pivotal region in dispersals out of Africa. Discarded by hominins, these artefacts are key to understanding past landscape use and dispersals, yet behavioural interpretation of present-day artefact distributions cannot be carried out without understanding how geomorphological processes have controlled, and continue to control, artefact preservation, exposure and visibility at multiple scales.We employ a geoarchaeological approach to unravelling the formation of a surface assemblage of 2,970 Early and Middle Stone Age lithic artefacts at Wadi Dabsa, Saudi Arabia, the richest locality recorded to date in the southwestern Red Sea coastal region. Wadi Dabsa basin, within the volcanic Harrat Al Birk, contains extensive tufa deposits formed during wetter conditions. We employ regional landscape mapping and automatic classification of surface conditions using satellite imagery, field observations, local landform mapping, archaeological survey, excavation, and sedimentological analyses to develop a multi-scalar model of landscape evolution and geomorphological controls acting on artefact distributions in the basin. The main artefact assemblage is identified as a palimpsest of activity, actively forming on a deflating surface, a model with significant implications for future study and interpretation of this, and other, artefact surface assemblages.

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“…The research agenda on North African prehistory is dominated by three major debates: (1) the timing and dispersal routes of modern humans into the region, and whether particular types of lithic assemblage are reliable indicators of their presence (Cremaschi et al, 1998;Mercier et al, 2007;Smith et al, 2007;Garcea, 2010aGarcea, , 2011Pereira et al, 2010;Wengler, 2010;Hublin and McPherron, 2011;Dibble et al, 2012); (2) how successfully, once established, modern human populations were able to adapt to the major climatic and environmental changes of the Late Pleistocene (Barton et al, 2005Bouzouggar et al, 2008;Garcea, 2010b); and (3) the timing and routes of dispersal of plant and animal domesticates in the Early Holocene and the contexts of their use (i.e., by the existing populations of hunteregatherers and/or by immigrant agricultural populations) (Barker, 2006;Linstädter, 2008;Dunne et al, 2012). The deep (w14 m) sequence excavated by Charles McBurney in the 1950s in the Haua Fteah cave in Cyrenaica, northeast Libya (22 3 0 5 00 E/32 53 0 70 00 N; Fig.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The chronostratigraphy of the Haua Fteah cave (Cyrenaica, northeast Libya) — Optical dating of early human occupation during Marine Isotope Stages 4, 5 and 6

Jacobs

Farr

et al. 2017

Journal of Human Evolution

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a b s t r a c tThe 1950s excavations by Charles McBurney in the Haua Fteah, a large karstic cave on the coast of northeast Libya, revealed a deep sequence of human occupation. Most subsequent research on North African prehistory refers to his discoveries and interpretations, but the chronology of its archaeological and geological sequences has been based on very early age determinations. This paper reports on the initial results of a comprehensive multi-method dating program undertaken as part of new work at the site, involving radiocarbon dating of charcoal, land snails and marine shell, cryptotephra investigations, optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating of sediments, and electron spin resonance (ESR) dating of tooth enamel. The dating samples were collected from the newly exposed and cleaned faces of the upper 7.5 m of the w14.0 m-deep McBurney trench, which contain six of the seven major cultural phases that he identified. Despite problems of sediment transport and reworking, using a Bayesian statistical model the new dating program establishes a robust framework for the five major lithostratigraphic units identified in the stratigraphic succession, and for the major cultural units. The age of two anatomically modern human mandibles found by McBurney in Layer XXXIII near the base of his Levalloiso-Mousterian phase can now be estimated to between 73 and 65 ka (thousands of years ago) at the 95.4% confidence level, within Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 4. McBurney's Layer XXV, associated with Upper Palaeolithic Dabban blade industries, has a clear stratigraphic relationship with Campanian Ignimbrite tephra. Microlithic Oranian technologies developed following the climax of the Last Glacial Maximum and the more microlithic Capsian in the Younger Dryas. Neolithic pottery and perhaps domestic livestock were used in the cave from the mid Holocene but there is no certain evidence for plant cultivation until the Graeco-Roman period.

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Successes and failures of human dispersals from North Africa

Cited by 58 publications

References 47 publications

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Palaeolithic artefact deposits at Wadi Dabsa, Saudi Arabia; a multi-scalar geoarchaeological approach to building an interpretative framework

The chronostratigraphy of the Haua Fteah cave (Cyrenaica, northeast Libya) — Optical dating of early human occupation during Marine Isotope Stages 4, 5 and 6

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