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Current Dates Of Modern Human Emergence & Culture
Current Dates Of Modern Human Emergence & Culture
368 Views
posted on Friday, October 19, 2007
EARLY HUMANS REACH THE BEACH
By John Timmer
arstechnica.com
October 18, 2007
Original Link
Molecular data and fossil remains suggest that anatomically modern humans appeared as a distinct population somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 years ago. But that evidence does not speak to a key question: when did these otherwise modern humans begin to display sophisticated cultural behaviors? The evidence for advanced tool use and symbolic behaviors doesn't become extensive until about 45,000 years ago.
There are two explanations for the large time gap. One possibility is that, despite their anatomical modernity, the earlier humans lacked a key neural development that enabled these behaviors. The alternative is that modern humans engaged in sophisticated cultural activities from the start, but the evidence is sparse. Some evidence
published this week in Nature
makes that case for the latter.
The paper takes advantage of a cliff-face cave on the coast of South Africa which was sealed off by dunes nearly 100,000 years ago. Within the cave, layers of material have been preserved as they formed, and uranium dating places some of the early layers at roughly 160,000 years ago. Those early layers contain a variety of oceanic shellfish that have been used as food, along with many stone tools and rocks that had been processed to create red ochre. Ochre has been associated with symbolic and artistic expressions such as cave and body painting. The early date of these findings makes it clear that at least some advanced cultural behaviors date from the very origin of modern humans.
It's notable that rising and falling sea levels in the intervening millennia would have put many other sites of equivalent age under water; only their position on a cliff has kept these findings preserved for discovery. It's possible that modern humans were culturally sophisticated from the start, but found their niche at the sea side, where much of the evidence has been washed away. The authors also point out that the ability to live by the ocean may have been critical to getting humans across the Red Sea and out of Africa, starting them on their worldwide spread.
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NHNE Human Evolution Resource Page
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