Extra Credit Opportunity!

Go to a museum that has an anthropology/archaeology/cultural

history component (e.g. Fernbank Museum or High Museum of
Art)

Write five sentences describing a portion of an exhibit. Be sure

to include how it relates to anthropology (anything we have or
will discuss in class) and what you enjoyed about it.

Turn in your paragraph on a sheet of paper with your name and

student ID and the museum ticket stub stapled to the paper

DUE April 17th (last day of lecture)

2 points on your final grade

 Evolution Review
Today: Neanderthals and
Modern Humans

heidelbergensis
400-200 kya
H. erectus 2-0.5 mya

Australopithecines 4-2 mya

 Neanderthals
Homo neanderthalensis
Existed ~ 30-125kya in Europe & SW Asia

Key questions:
• What was neanderthal life like?
• How smart were they and what
was their culture like?
• Are they a separate species?
 Neanderthal Environment
Colder, northern
latitudes

Lived into the last Ice

Age

Lived in caves and

rock shelters
 The Skull
Projecting mid-face
Large nasal aperture
Occipital bun
Where strong neck muscles attached
 The Skeleton
Heavy, strong bones
-Strong muscles

Short limbs
-Conserves heat in a old
climate

Neanderthals were bulky,

muscular, and adapted for
a physically demanding
life in a cold climate
Dumb Brutes?

Not so fast…
Largest brain – as smart
as modern humans?
 Mousterian Tool Tradition
• Levallois technique for producing hafted spear
points

• They were able to predict how stone reacts to

being struck, and they planned for removing
flakes of a specific size and shape
Mousterian Tool Tradition
 Mousterian Tool Tradition
• Smaller retouched flakes & various tools

Higher variety of tools than earlier ancestors, more

complex toolkit for hunting and processing big game
 Neanderthal diet
Specialized in big-game
hunting
Wooly mammoths etc.

Close range
Thrusting spears
(no evidence of atlatls or
spear throwers yet)
 Trauma pattern
resembles modern bull riders

“Close encounters of a nasty kind”

 Hard Times Among
Neanderthals
 Cave collapses

 Close-range hunting –
broken, healed bones

 Excessive tooth wear - old

age

 Compassion – caring for

injured and elderly
 Symbolic Life
Deliberate burial of dead
Shanidar Cave, Iraq
Dug “graves”
Positioned bodies?
Pollen
Musical flute (??)
These provide the first evidence
of possible belief in an afterlife
 Neanderthal language?
If they had symbolic thinking
(afterlife), they had the
symbolic capacity for language
We know they had more breathing
control than previous species:

Hyoid bone
Throat muscle attachment
Same shape as modern humans
 Images of ourselves…?
Understanding environment and
behaviors of Neanderthals
has led to the realization that
they had a certain
“humanness.” But how do
they relate to modern
humans?
Modern human
origins
 Modern Human Origins
Fossil Evidence
When/where did they appear?
How do we define being human?
How do Neanderthals fit in?

2 Models:
1) Recent African Origins
2) Multi-regional Hypothesis
 Anatomically Modern Homo sapiens
(AMHS)

Smaller brow ridges

Gracile face
Chin
High forehead
Rounded brain case
- More volume in forehead
and base of skull

160kya in East Africa

 Anatomically modern human

2 Models:
1) Recent African Origins
2) Multi-regional Hypothesis
 Recent-African Origins model
aka Replacement
1. Modern humans originated
in Africa ~ 200kya
2. Descendents from 1 African
population
3. Neanderthals a dead end
4. Asian H. erectus a dead end

Support: mtDNA (??)

Weakness: Fossils outside of
Africa
 Multi-regional model
1. Emerged at different times over
the Old World
2. Descendents from pops. of each
region (Gene flow = 1 species)
3. Implies: Neanderthal and humans
interbred
4. Asian Homo erectus NOT a dead
end

Support: Fossils & morphological

continuity
Weakness: Genetics does not
support (??)
If Multi-regional….. Then Expect:
Fossils to exhibit mixture of Neanderthal &
humans (hybrids)

Fossils from Asia to show continuous

morphology from H. erectus to modern

Milford Wolpoff
If Recent Out of Africa….. Then
Expect:
The earliest humans in Africa

Earliest humans outside of Africa (the

Levant) look like earliest in Africa

No mixture
- Genetic
- Anatomical
Chris Stringer
 Genetic Evidence:
Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA)
Only inherited from mother
Does not “recombine”

Tracks mutations back in time to 1African female

Shows highest variation in African
Longest time span?
OR Bigger Population?

Neanderthal mtDNA
Not found in modern humans
 African Fossil Evidence
Earliest Homo sapiens fossils found in East
Africa
Earliest out of Africa in Levant, look African

Skuhl site, Israel

Herto – earliest human skull (160kya)
 The Levant (Israel) Fossils
Sites with Neanderthals & Modern humans
– Lived side by side?
– Or occupied different times?
Some behavioral differences
Skuhl/Qafzeh, Israel
 Asian Fossil
Evidence
Morphological Continuity

Modern Asian H. sapiens have

similar traits w/ Asian H.
erectus

 Asian H. erectus NOT a dead

end (MR)
 European Fossil
Evidence
Cro-magnons - AMHS
Out-compete the Neanderthals?
Interbreeding w/ Neanderthals?

?
 Lagar Velho
Portugal “Hybrid”
Neanderthal:
Limbs
½ mandible

Human:
chin
½ mandible
Dates to 24,500 and shows
evidence of interbreeding?
 Dates of Hominid sites 250-50 kya
Neanderthal:
In Europe and
western Asia

Human:
Only in
Africa

After 50kya, we see humans leave Africa

 Modern Human Origins
Fossil Evidence
• Genetics suggest out of Africa replacement

• Fossil evidence is confusing. In some cases it

looks multiregional, in others not. This is still
an unresolved debate!

• What does the archaeological record tell us?

that modern human material culture was very
distinct from Mousterian! (replacement?)
Upper Paleolithic
Technology
&
Culture
 Classifying Technologies
Paleolithic (c. 2.6 Ma–300 ka)
Lower Paleolithic
Early Stone Age
Homo
Control of fire
Stone tools

Middle Paleolithic (300–30 ka)

Middle Stone Age
Homo neanderthalensis
Mousterian Levallois technique

Upper Paleolithic (50–10 ka)

Late Stone Age
Homo sapiens
Blade technology
Behavioral modernity, Atlatl,
 Upper Paleolithic
• 40-10kya
• Modern humans only
• “explosion” of technological
and cultural innovation
– Europe, Asia and Africa
 Upper Paleolithic Technology
More complex manufacture
More diverse tool types (needles, harpoons,
spears, etc.)
More diverse materials (stone, bone, antler,
ivory, wood)
More composite tools
 Lithic Technology
• Manufactured Stone Tools
– How are the tools made?
– What are their functions?

• Lithic analysis – classification

into types
– Shape/size
– Manufacturing technology
– Actual function
 Blade Technique
• Long, parallel-sided
– At least 2x long as wide

• Multiple blades from 1 core

• More efficient than flakes

– 5x’s more usable edges
 Pressure Flaking
• Final step in stone-tool manufacture
• Use bone, antler or wooden tool to press off
smaller flakes
• More precise shaping
• Retouching
 Specialized tools
• Burin: chisel-like edge
– Engraving and etching
• Awls
– To drill holes

• Help to make: fishhooks, harpoons and eyed

needles
 Specialized tools - Fishing
• Fish Hooks
• Harpoons
• Nets
 Atlatl
Atlatl

• Accuracy at long
distances
• Safer for hunting big
game
 Pictorial Art
• Begins around 32kya in Africa
and Europe
• Realistic and
geometric/abstract styles
 Pictorial Art
• Seem to be “spiritual” locations
– Not easy to get to
• Some hunting pics, but also
animals not eaten
Lascaux, France 17kya
 Lascaux, France 17kya
• 200 caves, 600+ paintings, 1500+ engravings
• Black, yellow, red, white paints
• Large prey animals in main galleries, carnivores in
restricted areas
• Other images – rows of dots, cross-hatched boxes
• Spiritual? Recreating hunts? Initiations (child and
adult footprints)?
 Venus Figures
• First discovered 25kya
• Robust women
– Exaggerated
• Mother Goddesses?
• Or pregnant women?
 Jewelry
• Necklaces, rings, bracelets

• Made from:
– Bone
– Antler
– Shell
– Ivory

process for making Aurignacian

basket beads
 Dolni Vestonice
Eastern Europe 25kya
• Earliest known village
Czech Republic

• #s of mammoth bone huts

• Central hearths
• #s of tools, nets
• Decorative items
– First portrait?
 Mammoth bone structures:
adaptations to arctic environments
 Triple burial @ Dolni Vestonice

1 female, 2 males, extended position, covered by

burnt spruce logs/branches, heads covered with
red ochre
 Upper Paleolithic:
Replacement or Multiregional?
New technologies distinct from and more complex
than Mousterian (Neanderthal)

New, highly symbolic art

Archaeology suggests modern humans replaced

neanderthals and others (like genetics, not like
fossil evidence)

Still strongly debated…but when did humans spread

out?
 Modern Human Dispersals
• Australia, Pacific, Siberia and the Americas
• Occupied more extreme environments
– Survive b/c of advanced culture, new technologies
Settling of Australia

~50kya

•Upon leaving
Africa, they rapidly
skirted along the
coast to Australia

•Must have had

primitive watercraft
Settlement
of Siberia
30-16kya

Dyuktai
Cave
example

Fagan, Brian
2004 People of the Earth: Introduction to World Prehistory, 11th Edition. Pearson Prentice Hall, New Jersey.
 Dyukti Cave, Russian Far East

16 kya

By 16kya, people are in

far northeastern Siberia,
poised to enter the
Americas

Equipped with a new

hunting technology -
microblades
A The D’uktai Tradition
Biface Blank Platform Production Microblade Detachment
•Siberian Upper Paleolithic tradition

•Dates ca. 18,000 to 12,000 BP

B
•Named after D’uktai Cave site
Platform Production Core Trimming Microblade Detachment

•Big game hunters on the open tundra,

including mammoth and musk-ox

microliths •Technology includes:

-Bifacial points (not fluted), burins, and blades

•Development of very distinctive

microblade core technology
Organic Stone Composite
(strong) (lethal) (strong/lethal)
Slide Credit – Scott Meeks
 Dyuktai, Russia

Dyuktai flaked bone tools

Stone knives and
points

Microblades
inset into
bone point.

Text and Images courtesy of Center for the Study of the First Americans
Modern Human Dispersals
?? kya 30-16 kya

50-40 kya

180 kya

50 kya
 Next: Settling of the Americas
• Probably crossed over the Bering land bridge
– But how many migrations?
– And when?
– What did they do once they got there?