The human colonisation of Australia: optical dates of 53,000 and 60,000 years bracket human arrival at Deaf Adder Gorge, Northern Territory

Roberts, Richard G.; Jones, Rhys; Spooner, Nigel A.; Head, Martin J.; Murray, Andrew; Smith, Michael

doi:10.1016/0277-3791(94)90080-9

Cited by 260 publications

(150 citation statements)

References 28 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

142

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…TL dating had previously been used to derive ages for archaeological sediments at Malakunanja II (Roberts et al, 1990), a rock shelter located in western Arnhem Land in the far north of the Northern Territory, a likely entry point for the first human arrivals into Australia. First occupation of Malakunanja II was placed at between 50 000 and 60 000 years, and a similar age envelope was obtained subsequently by optically stimulated luminescence (OSL, or optical) dating of sediments in the nearby rock shelter of Nauwalabila I (Roberts et al, 1994a).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 80%

Section: Silica Chronologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…With the redating of the Jinmium artefacts to the Holocene, the oldest dated human occupation sites in northern Australia remain those of Malakunanja II (Roberts et al, 1990) and Nauwalabila I (Roberts et al, 1994a). Both of the sites were first occupied around 50 000-60 000 years ago, the ages being derived from TL dating (Malakunanja II) and optical dating (Nauwalabila I) of multiple-grain subsamples.…”

Section: Silica Chronologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Until technical improvements allow such 'dim' grains to be examined, the multiple-grain optical ages of 53 000-60 000 years (Roberts et al, 1994a) provide the best 'age bracket' for initial occupation of this site. We consider these ages to be reliable because, as at Malakunanja II, the bedrock does not weather rapidly and both of the TL samples from the upper occupation levels passed the 'plateau test'.…”

Section: Silica Chronologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The wall of this shelter is covered in pecked cupules, and the original excavators (Fullagar et al, 1996) reported that a fallen fragment of engraved sandstone was buried in sediments dated to between 50 000 ± 6100 and 75 300 ± 7000 years using TL. Fullagar et al (1996) also recovered stone artefacts from levels dated by TL to between 116 000 ± 12 000 and 176 000 ± 16 000 years, which would have made it the oldest known human occupation site on the continent, two to three times as ancient as Malakunanja II (Roberts et al, 1990) or Nauwalabila I (Roberts et al, 1994a).In 1994, we had warned about the possibility of contamination of rock shelter deposits with grains of weathered rubble or bedrock, and for the need to check for such contamination to avoid distortion of luminescence ages (Roberts & Jones, 1994). Luminescence dating methods give the time elapsed since the sediment grains in a sample were last exposed to sunlight (a process known as 'bleaching').…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Humanity from African Naissance to Coming Millennia

Tobias¹,

Raath²,

Moggi‐Cecchi³

et al. 2001

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The first 2.5 million years of hominid history is characterized by limited dispersals similar to those of the living great apes whose home range sizes very little between years. Unlike our closest relative Pan, who are particulary vulnerable during dispersal because the distribution of their resources is highly habitat specific and predation takes a relatively higher toll than it does in r-selected animals, hominids are widely dispersed after 1.8 Ma. Hominid dispersal must have entailed either a shift in the types of resources exploited or a technological advance to ensure resource availability or both. Using data from ecology, geochronology, morphology, and paleontology we assess the initial hominid dispersal from Africa and the relationship to patterns of dispersal in nonhuman primates and large mammals of both 'widely dispersing' and 'non-dispersing' species. The dispersal rates of Plio/Pleistocene hominids differ from those of nonhuman primates and are typical of widely-dispersing large mammals. In fact, H. erectus first appears in Java almost immediately after its appearence in Africa, yet its first appearence in Java is contemporaneous with that of Colobus, Macaca, and Pongo that had already inhabited mainland Asia for millions of years. Although the timing of the first hominid dispersal pre-dates significant technological advances, the energy required by larger hominid body/brain sizes suggest a shift to exploitation of highprotein packages that, according to correlation between faunal and chronometric sequences, is itself dispersing. These data suggest that it is at the origin of H. erectus (sensu lato) that our uniquely human dispersal capabilities began to emerge and that this dispersal is not primarily due to the technological innovation of the Acheulean tradition. IntroductionThe global distribution of Homo sapiens contrasts with the restricted ranges of our closest living primate relative, Pan. Yet for some three million years after our lineages diverged, both were apparently exclusively African phenomena, as Pan remains today. These current biogeographic differences are reflected in home range (HR) sizes that are some 15 to 100 times greater in recent human huntergatherers than in Pan. (23 hectares in Pan, 330-2600 in humans; Leonard and Robertson, 2000). Although an extensive literature considers the significance of the behavioral repertoire that allows the final, relatively late, dispersal of Homo sapiens into Australasia, North and South America, and Siberia (e.g., Lindly & Clark, 1990;Roberts et al., 1991; Davidson & Noble, 1992; Jelinek, 1994; Waters et al., 1997), the origin of this difference in dispersal patterns is not well understood.The original hominid dispersal from Africa has been viewed as a largely hominid (technologically) driven rather than ecologically driven phenomenon. Such scenarios are based on the idea that widely dispersed ex-African hominids are not found before 1.0 ma (Pope, 1983) or are not found before the development of the Acheulean (Wolpoff, 1999), and thus that th...

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 80%

Section: Silica Chronologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Silica Chronologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Silica Chronologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Humanity from African Naissance to Coming Millennia

Tobias¹,

Raath²,

Moggi‐Cecchi³

et al. 2001

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Towards a theory of modern human origins: Geography, demography, and diversity in recent human evolution

Lahr¹,

Foley²

1998

Am. J. Phys. Anthropol.

338

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The origins of modern humans have been the central debate in palaeoanthropology during the last decade. We examine the problem in the context of the history of anthropology, the accumulating evidence for a recent African origin, and evolutionary mechanisms. Using a historical perspective, we show that the current controversy is a continuation of older conflicts and as such relates to questions of both origins and diversity. However, a better fossil sample, improved dates, and genetic data have introduced new perspectives, and we argue that evolutionary geography, which uses spatial distributions of populations as the basis for integrating contingent, adaptive, and demographic aspects of microevolutionary change, provides an appropriate theoretical framework. Evolutionary geography is used to explore two events: the evolution of the Neanderthal lineage and the relationship between an ancestral bottleneck with the evolution of anatomically modern humans and their diversity. We argue that the Neanderthal and modern lineages share a common ancestor in an African population between 350,000 and 250,000 years ago rather than in the earlier Middle Pleistocene; this ancestral population, which developed mode 3 technology (Levallois/Middle Stone Age), dispersed across Africa and western Eurasia in a warmer period prior to independent evolution towards Neanderthals and modern humans in stage 6. Both lineages would thus share a common large-brained ancestry, a technology, and a history of dispersal. They differ in the conditions under which they subsequently evolved and their ultimate evolutionary fate. Both lineages illustrate the repeated interactions of the glacial cycles, the role of cold-arid periods in producing fragmentation of populations, bottlenecks, and isolation, and the role of warmer periods in producing trans-African dispersals.

show abstract

Luminescence dating and modern human origins

Feathers

1996

Evol. Anthropol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The human colonisation of Australia: optical dates of 53,000 and 60,000 years bracket human arrival at Deaf Adder Gorge, Northern Territory

Cited by 260 publications

References 28 publications

Humanity from African Naissance to Coming Millennia

Humanity from African Naissance to Coming Millennia

Towards a theory of modern human origins: Geography, demography, and diversity in recent human evolution

Luminescence dating and modern human origins

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About