Which is the correct date for the beginning of the SE Asian Bronze Age

Quickies

According to this new study of Thai sites, the SE Asian Bronze Age, whose dating has been controversial, began probably in the late 2nd millennium BCE and not before.

Charles F.W. Higham et al., A New Chronology for the Bronze Age of Northeastern Thailand and Its Implications for Southeast Asian Prehistory. PLoS ONE 2015. Open access → LINK [doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0137542]

Abstract

There are two models for the origins and timing of the Bronze Age in Southeast Asia. The first centres on the sites of Ban Chiang and Non Nok Tha in Northeast Thailand. It places the first evidence for bronze technology in about 2000 B.C., and identifies the origin by means of direct contact with specialists of the Seima Turbino metallurgical tradition of Central Eurasia. The second is based on the site of Ban Non Wat, 280 km southwest of Ban Chiang, where extensive radiocarbon dating places the transition into the Bronze Age in the 11th century B.C. with likely origins in a southward expansion of technological expertise rooted in the early states of the Yellow and Yangtze valleys, China. We have redated Ban Chiang and Non Nok Tha, as well as the sites of Ban Na Di and Ban Lum Khao, and here present 105 radiocarbon determinations that strongly support the latter model. The statistical analysis of the results using a Bayesian approach allows us to examine the data at a regional level, elucidate the timing of arrival of copper base technology in Southeast Asia and consider its social impact.

Fig 8. Bayesian probability functions (PDFs) for the beginning of the Bronze Age in Thailand.

Pondering the Middle Paleolithic of South Africa

Quantity over quality series.

Sylvain Soriano et al. The Still Bay and Howiesons Poort at Sibudu and Blombos: Understanding Middle Stone Age Technologies. PLoS ONE 2015. Open access → LINK [doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0131127]

Abstract

The classification of archaeological assemblages in the Middle Stone Age of South Africa in terms of diversity and temporal continuity has significant implications with respect to recent cultural evolutionary models which propose either gradual accumulation or discontinuous, episodic processes for the emergence and diffusion of cultural traits. We present the results of a systematic technological and typological analysis of the Still Bay assemblages from Sibudu and Blombos. A similar approach is used in the analysis of the Howiesons Poort (HP) assemblages from Sibudu seen in comparison with broadly contemporaneous assemblages from Rose Cottage and Klasies River Cave 1A. Using our own and published data from other sites we report on the diversity between stone artifact assemblages and discuss to what extent they can be grouped into homogeneous lithic sets. The gradual evolution of debitage techniques within the Howiesons Poort sequence with a progressive abandonment of the HP technological style argues against the saltational model for its disappearance while the technological differences between the Sibudu and Blombos Still Bay artifacts considerably weaken an interpretation of similarities between the assemblages and their grouping into the same cultural unit. Limited sampling of a fragmented record may explain why simple models of cultural evolution do not seem to apply to a complex reality.

South Asian first Neolithic and its relation with West Asia

Informative compilation of dates for West and South Asian Neolithic sites.

Kavita Kangal et al., The Near-Eastern Roots of the Neolithic in South Asia. PLoS ONE 2014. Open access → LINK [doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0095714]

Abstract

The Fertile Crescent in the Near East is one of the independent origins of the Neolithic, the source from which farming and pottery-making spread across Europe from 9,000 to 6,000 years ago at an average rate of about 1 km/yr. There is also strong evidence for causal connections between the Near-Eastern Neolithic and that further east, up to the Indus Valley. The Neolithic in South Asia has been far less explored than its European counterpart, especially in terms of absolute (¹⁴C) dating; hence, there were no previous attempts to assess quantitatively its spread in Asia. We combine the available ¹⁴C data with the archaeological evidence for early Neolithic sites in South Asia to analyze the spatio-temporal continuity of the Neolithic dispersal from the Near East through the Middle East and to the Indian subcontinent. We reveal an approximately linear dependence between the age and the geodesic distance from the Near East, suggesting a systematic (but not necessarily uniform) spread at an average speed of about 0.65 km/yr.

We must be warned that the study dwells on statistical data, mostly ¹⁴C and other archaeological dates and not in pottery typology and such. So there are probably a lot of nuances to be added to what the authors conclude. However the study is a major effort to systematize West and South Asian Neolithic dates (details in the extensive supplementary materials) and that must be acknowledged as very useful on its own.

Fig. 2 synthesizes the findings of this study:

Figure 2. A linear envelope fit to the data using the weighted dates yields the average Neolithic dispersal speed km/yr.

The filled circles (red) and triangles (magenta) show the archaeologically dated sites from Iran and the Indus valley Civilization, respectively; filled circles (black) and open triangles represent sites with multiple and single ¹⁴C dates, respectively.

[Note: Gesher is one of the earliest PPNA sites, located in Northern Palestine].

The graph is a bit misleading because there are places in South Asia with ¹⁴C dates older than the apparent 7000 BP baseline (see Appendix in the study). Ayakagytma has several dates nearing 6000 BCE (i.e. ~8000 BP), while Merhgar is dated to as early as 8520 BCE (~10,500 BP), which overlaps the oldest sites of West Asia. These oldest Neolithic sites of South Asia are hardly recognizable in the graph, as they are shown as mere dots, whose only distinction is that they are ~3000 km away from Gesher. I had to investigate the Appendix to spot them.

The Merhgar ¹⁴C date is just one but it does not seem the authors felt compelled to discard it for any reason, so it should stand in principle.

Actually, rather than explain South Asian Neolithic as West Asian derived, the data in this study only offers an interesting overview of the dates but as such demonstrates nothing. Actually, if, as they argue, we are to consider always the oldest regional date (unless unreliable), then the expansion of Neolithic to South Asia was very fast. What was rather slow was its expansion within West Asia apparently.

Said that, there are many reasons to think that there was at least an important West Asian contribution to South Asian Neolithic, if nothing else because of the important presence of several important Western Y-DNA lineages (R1a, J), which seem somehow related to Neolithic spread, as well as the so-called "ANI" component, of clear West Asian affinity. Also many crops and animals were obviously imported from West Asia.

In this regard, a reader pointed to me weeks ago to a study that claims that sheep were independently domesticated in South Asia. However I found their conclusions far fetched so I never discussed it... until now.

Sachin Singh et al., Extensive Variation and Sub-Structuring in Lineage A mtDNA in Indian Sheep: Genetic Evidence for Domestication of Sheep in India. PLoS ONE 2013. Open access → LINK [doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0077858]

What this study did find is a very specific founder effect of sheep lineages in India. However this cannot be accepted to be caused by an independent domestication but rather looks like a founder effect after domestication, which almost certainly owes to West Asia, where the ancestors of domestic sheep lives.

Figure 3. Neighbor-joining tree of domestic sheep based on 432 bp of control region mtDNA.
(A) Neighbor-joining tree of mtDNA sequences of Indian sheep (330) along with representative samples of five lineages (▲), namely; A, B, C, D & E. Indian sheep show three lineages, namely; A, B and C. (B) Neighbor-joining tree of mtDNA sequences of the Indian (330), Chinese (129), Central Asian, Caucasian and European (406), Portuguese (161), and West Balkan (60), sheep along with representative samples of five lineages (▲), namely; A, B, C, D & E . The sequences of wild Ovis species have been used as outgroups. MEGA 5 version 5.0.1.102 was used to construct the trees using Tamura-Nei model with 10,000 bootstrap. Numbers above a given branch represent bootstrap support for the branch as a percentage out of 10,000 re samplings.

Notice please how the root of the tree is at the bottom, where the various wild species of sheep are listed by their names. So the dominance of lineage A in South Asia surely owes to a founder effect and not local domestication.

"Modern human behavior" is out, generic human potential is in

There is a hypothetical model in Prehistory on something vague and ethereal which has been called "Modern human behavior" (MHB). It's not about nuclear weapons, Internet addiction nor commuting to work; it's not either about the printing machine, the Industrial Revolution and the ideals of Human Rights; it's not even about farming, living in cities and through sailing the seas... it's about something extremely vague and ill-defined but which, by definition would set apart "modern humans" (H. sapiens) from "archaic humans" (other Homo species, particularly Neanderthals).

While it is almost intangible and every day more dubious, a large number of prehistorians, some as notorious as Mellars, Stringer or Bar-Yosef, strikingly influenced by religious ideas setting an arbitrarily absolutist line between "humans" (i.e. Homo sapiens) and the rest (including other humans), have insisted for decades on the validity of such notion. Now three researchers challenge the model radically:

Christopher J. H. James, Julien Riel-Salvatore & Benjamin R. Collins, Why We Need an Alternative Approach to the Study of Modern Human Behaviour. Canadian Journal of Archaeology Volume 37, Issue 1 (2013). Pay per view → LINK

Abstract

In this paper we review recent developments in the debate over the emergence of modern human behaviour (MHB) to show that despite considerable diversity among competing models, the identification of given material traits still underpins almost all current perspectives. This approach, however, allows assumptions over the biological relationship between archaic and modern humans to permeate the definitions of MHB and, as a result, has effectively stultified archaeology’s potential contribution to the issue. We suggest that the concept of MHB as currently defined is flawed. It must either be redefined in strictly behavioural terms before reincorporation into the debate over modern human origins or, more productively, discarded all together to avoid the harsh and unrealistic dichotomy it creates between a modern and non-modern archaeological record.

The paper has been uploaded by Riel-Salvatore at Academia.edu.

They essentially argue that: that the model (of which there are several, often contradictory variants) is extremely useless and confusing, that there are "archaic humans" with many or even all traits of MHB and there are "modern humans" without many or even most of them.

They tentatively argue for a throughout revision of the model but then they seem to lean rather for the whole abandonment of the idea suggesting instead a mosaic and punctuated evolution pattern that is socio-cultural rather than merely genetic or essentialist:

(...) the rapidly accumulating evidence for a mosaic pattern of behavioural change (...) and the evidence of behavioural advances appearing and rapidly disappearing in the MSA, make the harsh dichotomy model untenable. What it does suggest is a punctuated or saltation model that led to widespread adoption of more complex behavioural patterns once the demographic circumstances were appropriate (...).

Somehow this made me recall one of my all-time favorite bands: Suicidal Tendencies and their 1990 hit "Disco's out, murder's in" (surely not apt for pop, techno and folk music lovers):

Ancient Homo sapiens from Laos (46-63,000 years ago)

Tam-Pa-Ling skull

While this is not the only nor even probably the oldest remain of the so-called anatomically modern humans (i.e. Homo sapiens, our kin) in Eastern or SE Asia, it seems to be the less controversial one so far, what should help to consolidate our knowledge of the period of colonization of the Eurasian region East of Bengal.

Fabrice Demeter et al., Anatomically modern human in Southeast Asia (Laos) by 46 ka. PNAS 2012. Pay per view (6 months embargo) ··> LINK [doi:10.1073/pnas.1208104109]

Abstract

Uncertainties surround the timing of modern human emergence and occupation in East and Southeast Asia. Although genetic and archeological data indicate a rapid migration out of Africa and into Southeast Asia by at least 60 ka, mainland Southeast Asia is notable for its absence of fossil evidence for early modern human occupation. Here we report on a modern human cranium from Tam Pa Ling, Laos, which was recovered from a secure stratigraphic context. Radiocarbon and luminescence dating of the surrounding sediments provide a minimum age of 51–46 ka, and direct U-dating of the bone indicates a maximum age of ∼63 ka. The cranium has a derived modern human morphology in features of the frontal, occipital, maxillae, and dentition. It is also differentiated from western Eurasian archaic humans in aspects of its temporal, occipital, and dental morphology. In the context of an increasingly documented archaic–modern morphological mosaic among the earliest modern humans in western Eurasia, Tam Pa Ling establishes a definitively modern population in Southeast Asia at ∼50 ka cal BP. As such, it provides the earliest skeletal evidence for fully modern humans in mainland Southeast Asia.

Some more details can be found at the press release by the University of Illinois (h/t Pileta).

There are some skulls and skull fragments from East Asia that can be actually older than this one but they may be less straightforward either in their dating or their identification as Homo sapiens:

• Liujiang skull (at Don's Maps, at P. Brown's site, at Bradshaw Foundation), from Guangxi-Zhuang, is clearly a modern Homo sapiens but the exact date is not known because it was originally dug with very limited means. Recent datings of nearby sediment suggest an age of 68-139 Ka but this is hotly debated.
• Zhirendong jaw (at this blog, at PhysOrg), also from Guangxi-Zhuang and dated to before 100,000 years ago (110,000 years ago according to first reports), is argued to be a modern Homo sapiens but its very ancient date and some unavoidable ambiguity of such limited skeletal evidence allow for some skepticism, if you are so inclined.
• Callao cave metatarsal (foot) bone (at Leherensuge) is dated to before 67,000 years ago and comes from Luzon, the largest Filipino island, but because of its small size cannot be ascribed to any human species safely. All we can say is that they knew how to use rafts or boats - but then Homo floresiensis (H. erectus?) did too. 
• Also some non-skeletal evidence to consider:
• 120,000 70,000 years old stone tools (?) from Japan ··> Leherensuge.
• 130,000 years old "African-like" stone tools from Crete ··> Leherensuge.
• Stone tools from Papua are at least 49,000 years old ··> this blog.
• Early Indians used Southern African style MSA tools c. 80,000 years ago ··> Petraglia 2007 (ppv).
• Growing evidence for a first out of Africa (into Arabia, Palestine) migration since c. 125,000 years ago ··> at this blog for example: Dhofar's Nubian culture, various Africa-to-Arabia scenarios, Nefud, Arabian coastal route 130 Ka. ago; also at WP: Skhul and Qahfzeh people from Palestine (ill dated but very very old).

Whichever is your personal take, it is clear that this skull adds up in support of a very old colonization of East Asia. The question is: exactly how old?


Update: a creative reconstruction by H. Zänder:

The Neolithic site of Leopard Cave (Namibia)

A new interesting open access paper on the Neolithic of Southern Africa has been published:

D. Pleurdeau et al., “Of Sheep and Men”: Earliest Direct Evidence of Caprine Domestication in Southern Africa at Leopard Cave (Erongo, Namibia). PLoS ONE, 2012. Open access.

Abstract

The origins of herding practices in southern Africa remain controversial. The first appearance of domesticated caprines in the subcontinent is thought to be c. 2000 years BP; however, the origin of this cultural development is still widely debated. Recent genetic analyses support the long-standing hypothesis of herder migration from the north, while other researchers have argued for a cultural diffusion hypothesis where the spread of herding practices took place without necessarily implicating simultaneous and large population movements. Here we document the Later Stone Age (LSA) site of Leopard Cave (Erongo, Namibia), which contains confirmed caprine remains, from which we infer that domesticates were present in the southern African region as early as the end of the first millennium BC. These remains predate the first evidence of domesticates previously recorded for the subcontinent. This discovery sheds new light on the emergence of herding practices in southern Africa, and also on the possible southward routes used by caprines along the western Atlantic coast.

The caprine (sheep) remains are the oldest ones of the whole region, being dated to c. 2270 BP, almost 200 years (est.) before the next oldest one with a good date (Spoegrivier, Western South Africa, dated to c. 2100 BP). Notice however the "uncertain" much older date for the Orowanjo site near the Angolan border (c. 3100 BP) in the map below:

Fig. 4 - Later Stone Age sites of southern Africa with early evidence of caprines

Caprines are a focus of this research but they are only a minority (2) of the animals identified in Leopard Cave, with bovines (cows) being the most important (16) among domesticates and in general if we exclude ostrich eggshells. Unspecified rodents and birds reach similar figures to those of bovine cattle but these belong to diverse species with all likelihood. 

Besides animal remains the cave has also yielded a dearth of stone artifacts and some pottery. 

It is unclear to which modern ethnic group, if any, can the site be associated with but the area has been traditionally inhabited by the Damara people, who speak either Khoekhoe or sometimes Herero languages but who, like their peculiar Northern Neighbors, the Himba people, are generally speculated to be a different ethnic, cultural and probably also genetic stock from both Khoisan and Bantu peoples. Sadly I do not know of any genetic study on either ethnic group, which may be of great interest for ethnographic and prehistoric reconstruction purposes.


Update (Jul 29): for a new study on Khoesan (and also Damara, Himba, etc.) autosomal genetics see HERE.

Bronze Age temple of Tel Haror, Palestine

The Archaeology Network mentions the finding of a pre-Jewish temple at Tel Haror, near Beersheba, dated to c. 1800-1550.

The finding is interesting because of the many sacrificial burials of young dogs and corvids. Puppies were ritually slaughtered in some West Asian religious rituals, the use of corvids is not documented however. It is also known that the Jewish mythological text declared both animals impure and that it banished the ritual of slaughtering dog cubs by breaking their necks. 

Bantu expansion damaged the Central African rainforests

Some 3000 years ago the sediments of the Congo river's mouth were suddenly altered in an unexpected way: it is the signature of the first forest agriculture, which implied opening patches of the rainforest, allowing weathering of the soil.

Germain Bayon, Intensifying Weathering and Land Use in Iron Age Central Africa. Science 2012. Pay per view.

Freely accessible article at Science Now by Rachel Nuwer:

The researchers analyzed the cores for elements like hydrogen that leave distinctive signatures in sediment. These geochemical markers correspond with past precipitation levels, which influence weathering. They also examined ratios of aluminum and potassium, which indicate weathering intensity, because potassium is a highly mobile element whereas aluminum is one of the most immobile. As expected, the weathering patterns closely followed precipitation levels—that is, until about 3000 years ago. At that point, Bayon says, the pattern became completely different. The sediment appeared to have undergone intense chemical weathering, which the climate alone could not explain. So the team began suspecting another factor was responsible. 

Hat tip to Stone Pages' Archaeonews.

Coconut scatter shows that, once established, a population structure is hard to alter

You may have heard of this by now:

B. F. Gunn et al, Independent Origins of Cultivated Coconut (Cocos nucifera L.) in the Old World Tropics. PLoS ONE 2011. Open access.

I was a bit perplex at first because what I have read around is that this paper somehow demonstrates that coconuts only spread with human domestication and colonizing flows. This is a most extreme claim which hardly fits the nature of this plant, which is not truly a domesticate but a widely exploited wild plant in fact. It is a very hardy plant that grows primarily at the high tide line and is naturally transported across the oceans by mere drift.

Fig. 2 has the essence of the paper

It is evident from this paper that coconuts have at least two distinct ancestral populations: one seemingly originated in South Asia and the other from SE Asia/Pacific, that its dispersal to the Atlantic Ocean happened necessarily with human help and that the East African population while essentially the Indian variety, has some admixture from the SE Asian/Pacific variants.

Coconut germinating at a volcanic beach

This last element is argued by the authors to signify human influence by means of the Austronesian colonists of Madagascar. While this is plausible I see no definitive argument for this logic in fact. Similarly I fail to see the hand of Austronesians in the Pacific  scatter as something cast on iron, rather as just a possibility. 

The only clear case of human intervention are the Dwarf variants because they are self-pollinating and this is not a trait you typically find in wild plants. But the Dwarf component is relatively rare and is not even present in the alleged Austronesian-mediated arrivals to East Africa and South America (Panama variant). 

So I am not really persuaded of their thesis that most of this structure was caused by humans. It is possible but very far from demonstrated in fact. 

Regardless, what eventually brought me to write this entry was after all their other discovery, which is quite solid and obvious: that in spite of the palm being so widely exploited and moved around in the Modern Era, the original genetic structure has persisted almost unaffected. 

This is quite astonishing because copra (dried coconut flesh) and palm oil, as well as the fibre and the fresh fruit, so suitable as natural preserve for the long travels of sailors of not so long ago, make the coconut a clear candidate for extensive alteration of its ancestral genetic landscape, yet it has resisted all that almost impassible in all its range from Africa to South America. 

A lesson to be assimilated by all those who happily proclaim that established populations can easily be altered. It can happen indeed but it is not easy.

Did agriculture worsen life conditions?

This is the thesis proposed by Amanda Mummert and colleagues: that Neolithic was not so good, or rather that it had at least very poor trade-offs. We tend to think having regular sources of food as something good but when that means eating mostly one or two vegetable foods all year long it may well be a problem.

Whatever the reason what Mummert discovered is that the health and size of Europeans  suffered with the introduction of farming. 

Source: Science Daily. 

Ref. A. Mummert et al., Stature and robusticity during the agricultural transition: Evidence from the bioarchaeological record. Economics & Human Biology, 2011. Pay per view.

Incidentally a couple of days ago, I stumbled upon the Wikipedia page on life expectancy and I noticed that same pattern in the list of documented life expectancy variation over time: the record before the Middle Ages was in the Paleolithic period, when newborns could expect to live 33 years. Then, with Neolithic, it fell to a mere 20 years, recovering only very slowly.

Early farming was inefficient compared to foraging

Early farming was only able to generate some 60% of what foraging (hunting and gathering) did, according to new research:

Samuel Bowles, Cultivation of cereals by the first farmers was not more productive than foraging. PNAS, 2011. Pay per view (depending on world region and time).

Abstract

Did foragers become farmers because cultivation of crops was simply a better way to make a living? If so, what is arguably the greatest ever revolution in human livelihoods is readily explained. To answer the question, I estimate the caloric returns per hour of labor devoted to foraging wild species and cultivating the cereals exploited by the first farmers, using data on foragers and land-abundant hand-tool farmers in the ethnographic and historical record, as well as archaeological evidence. A convincing answer must account not only for the work of foraging and cultivation but also for storage, processing, and other indirect labor, and for the costs associated with the delayed nature of agricultural production and the greater exposure to risk of those whose livelihoods depended on a few cultivars rather than a larger number of wild species. Notwithstanding the considerable uncertainty to which these estimates inevitably are subject, the evidence is inconsistent with the hypothesis that the productivity of the first farmers exceeded that of early Holocene foragers. Social and demographic aspects of farming, rather than its productivity, may have been essential to its emergence and spread. Prominent among these aspects may have been the contribution of farming to population growth and to military prowess, both promoting the spread of farming as a livelihood.

A news article is also available at PhysOrg.

Is the alternative explanation correct?

I find this discovery most interesting because the assumption has generally been that automatically farming was more productive than the old human way of life: foraging what Nature had to offer. 

Yet this assumption did not explain why farming had not evolved earlier or why the, generally very pragmatic, peoples of the World, did not adopt it earlier, as they were no doubt aware of how gardening could be done.

It reminds me somewhat of the very much comparable misunderstanding on the transition from the Bronze to the Iron Age: iron had by then been known for very long but it was brittle in comparison with bronze, quasi-bronze (copper and arsenicum) and even the old good flint stone. Actually I read somewhere recently that another good old friend of humankind, obsidian, makes such great blades that compete favorably with steel scalpels.

Things are not so simple: steel began to be developed (as sweet iron is not really good for most uses) after tin resources began to fail in the Eastern Mediterranean, as the communications with Atlantic Europe (where most tin mines were back then) may have collapsed when the two classical Iberian civilizations, El Argar and Zambujal (VNSP), did as well for reasons not well understood and not too relevant to discuss here. 

It was therefore problems in the bronze industry, so critical for the military of the time, what pushed steel technology ahead, inaugurating the Iron Age.

Seed milling was done long before Neolithic too

Therefore I'd like to consider what may have caused people to adopt farming instead of just continue foraging, as they had done successfully until that time. We know that farming was preceded by a period we call Mesolithic and that is characterized by intensive foraging of wild cereals or other foraging behaviors that somehow announce the advent of farming or herding. 

So, in the Fertile Crescent, there was for a time, since about the end of the Ice Age, a focus on a pre-farming type of foraging. As I have not read the paper yet, I do not know if Bowles has factored this period in his equations. As for me, I'd think that this kind of foraging (maybe already associated to some early gardening practices) we call Mesolithic, seems to respond to an ecological pressure of some sort, no doubt related to the then ongoing climate change. 

Another issue I am pondering is that, even before cereal farming was fully developed in Palestine, herding of sheep and goat was adopted in Kurdistan, followed by cow herding in Anatolia (near the well-named Taurus mountains). Maybe herding had to be developed in order to make farming effective? Cattle (be it bovine or ovi-caprine) provides nutrients in form of manure and, goats specially but not only, can also be used to clear up wild vegetation areas, while pigs are great to plow the fields.

So I am wondering if animal domestication was a condition to make cereal (and pulse and flax) farming an economically effective way of life. 

Honestly I prefer a true economic explanation rather than one based on very conjectural preferences about sedentarism, and this may be made up of:

• The push factor of climate change at the end of the Ice Age
• The pull factor of animal domestication, increasing the yields of agriculture until it became economically worthwile

What do you think?

Challenging 'behavioral modernity'

This issue of behavioral modernity is something I have never really accepted from mainstream Prehistory and Anthropology. In this conceptual paradigm or intellectual fetish (whatever you prefer to call it), humankind almost suddenly emerged from the amorphous shadows of what we could call (by contrast) behavioral primitivism and began being us, maybe when they decided to create some perdurable art like that we can find in the caves of Southwestern Europe and the related technologies defined as mode four (or blade-based stone industries or Upper Paleolithic in the narrowest possible sense). 

The reference is silly and eurocentric but very real in these academic fields. As of late, the finding of other, more ancient and not really European expressions of prehistoric artwork, notably in Palestine, North Africa and South Africa (in this chronological order per the available data) allowed the concept to escape its original sin of Eurocentrism somewhat but, regardless, is the concept real?

A new study by John J. Shea, published in Current Anthropology (pay per view, discussed at Science Daily), challenges this, already quite shattered perception of some almost miraculous transition towards behavioral modernity on scientific grounds: Shea analyzes the rather well documented early Humankind in East Africa between 250,000  and 6000 years ago, and finds no linear pattern of evolution but rather an outstanding array of nonlinear diversity. 

From the news article:

A systematic comparison of variability in stone tool making strategies over the last quarter-million years shows no single behavioral revolution in our species' evolutionary history. Instead, the evidence shows wide variability in Homo sapiens toolmaking strategies from the earliest times onwards. Particular changes in stone tool technology can be explained in terms of the varying costs and benefits of different toolmaking strategies, such as greater needs for cutting edge or more efficiently-transportable and functionally-versatile tools. One does not need to invoke a "human revolution" to account for these changes, they are explicable in terms of well-understood principles of behavioral ecology.

Wiki created

Waiting to be filled with content...

http://ourorigins.wikia.com/wiki/Human_Prehistory_and_Genetics_Wiki

A lot of debates take place here and elsewhere but often I feel the lack of a more solid and encyclopedic goal-oriented repository. Blog posts seldom get any attention for more than a few days (and when they do there's a huge risk that they have become obsolete). So I think a more stable repository is needed.

Feel free to add to it, within the basic criteria of objectivity and neutral point of view. If you need to write subjectively (opinion article), make a subpage on the main subject and describe it as opinion article and sign it (on top).

Zomia and the rivers of SE Asia

Zomia

I just discovered the concept of Zomia, proposed in 2002 to describe the rather unruly highland areas of SE Asia running from Tibet to the Bay of Bengal and the South China Sea. 

This area has come to the debates in this blog about the Great Eurasian colonization, as it is pivotal between South, Southeast and Mid-East Asia, the main regions of Eurasia where H. sapiens settled early on most likely. But until now I was unaware that it had a name.

The proposed name, Zomia, derives from Tibeto-Burman Zomi (also Mizo), meaning highlander or more strictly remote people. 

The borders do not exist. As member of a highlander (and yet coastal) people, I reckon that nearby lowlands are typically incorporated into the highlands and vice-versa. Yet the lowlands are also more open to foreign influences, more cosmopolitan and easy to conquer, while the highlands are the backbone of the people. 

So that's why I titled this article Zomia and the rivers... and not just Zomia: the mountains.  Because I do not think they can be detached from each other, at least not easily. 

For the reference: some blogs and media mentioning Zomia: Geocurrents, Loudcanary, Perspectives on Pan-Asianism, Freedom, Understanding Society.

I'm finding difficult to find a good map of the rivers of the area but the satellite map above can give a basic idea. Essentially the Zomia highlands enclose the following rivers:

• Brahmaputra (by the West)
• Irrawady
• Chao Praya
• Mekong
• Red River
• Pearl River (by the NE)

The northernmost implicated river is the Yangtze but this one is a region on its own, alone or with the Yellow and Pearl river basins. 

The main river is the Mekong, which, along the Chao Praya make up the largest lowland area of the whole region and what can be the heartland of Indochina (mainland SEA). But the other river areas also have their own personality. 

Following the premise of "coastal" (tropical) migration model, upon arrival to this area people must have formed several different populations, probably following the river-basins' logic to some extent. Burma (or Myanmar) appears here as a crossroads, allowing people to head northwards into Yunnan, southwards into Andaman and in SE direction into Sundaland (along the coast) and the Chao Praya and Mekong basin (not necessarily by the coast). 

So we can hypothesize at least four different populations resulting from this split after crossing into SE Asia. This is my best-guess reconstruction of the main population flows implied in East Eurasian (and partly All-Eurasian) genesis.

Now feel free to place the major lineages (mtDNA M derivates and all N, Y-DNA D, C and MNOPS) in each of those arrows as you think best. While not indicated there was also at some point a backflow in Westward direction (mtDNA N, R, Y-DNA P). 

I would say that the Irrawady basin (because of its crossroads characteristic) and the Chao Praya/Mekong basin (because of it greater size) must have been areas of certain relevance. However Sundaland and South China (Yangtze, Pearl River and coasts) also look like having played major roles.

Working on a free repository of info on prehistory and genetics

As you may know, I do not collaborate with Wikipedia anymore (since years ago) on ideological reasons. But I do feel that that a wiki on human prehistory and genetics is something almost necessary. 

So I looked up wikifarms and found one that is free and does not use adverts (they request donations hence, of course). Also they seem to have a quite libertarian (as in anarchist, i.e. free and cooperative) philosophy. Hence I have created an account and submitted a project to OurProject. They will reply, hopefully in approval, in 72 hrs. (three days) and I'd like to begin working in it as soon as it is ready. 

So, even before the project is available to begin working with, I want to ask to the readers of this blog if they would be interested in helping with creating quality unbiased content on these matters. I think I can produce some quite decent stuff alone but slowly but it'd be much better and faster with other collaborators.

While I do not understand yet quite well the details, I see in their documentation that they emphasize multilingualism to at least some extent, so, if you are not fluent in English, this should not be any major obstacle. However my priority is of course in the modern lingua franca, English.

I chose as license type public domain, what means that any collaboration automatically becomes owned by 7 billion people altogether on this planet. There was a host of licenses to choose from (though no private copyright or anything like that) but I think public domain is simplest. 

While I have not thought much in further details, there are some things I have in mind already:

• Comprehensive and as objective as possible pages on each of the haplogroups, including relevant paper references and known distribution and phylogenies.
• Dumping some of my best maps there, so they are not just in my blogs.
• Mapping archaeological cultures throughout the World.

In brief, gradually building a comprehensive repository, available to all for free, on human origins, emphasizing objectivity and neutral point of view. As no current affairs/politics are directly involved this should not be a big deal, however I am also considering, if possible and compatible with the project, the existence of distinctive, signed and clearly marked as such, opinion articles if someone feels the need. But my priority is to gather all or most relevant information in a publicly available site. 

What do you say?


Update: the project has been approved and it should be available withing 6 hrs. The address is http://humanorigins.ourproject.org/  and the full title is Human Prehistory and Genetics. As far as I understand, you need to create an account with this project in the corresponding field (the full name) in order to be able to edit the wiki. However I am still a noob and I will need some practice before I become acquainted.

Actually you may need to create an OurProject account, visit this page and request to join. 

Policies and administration privileges will be discussed as need arises and we see who is taking the wiki seriously. I just realized that there is the possibility of having more than one license but all are in the line of open access (no private copyrights) - also to be discussed as need arises.

Update(2): I have (as recommended) categorized the project as:

• Topic: Encyclopedia, Archaeology and Anthropology (3 categories are possible and there was no "genetics" one)
• License: Public Domain (two other can be added, probably Creative Commons is a good idea)
• Natural language: English (two other can be added but I wonder how to work in multiple languages)
• Status: planning (to be changed to initial development as soon as something is in)

Update - Jan 11

I managed to figure out how to create a "MoinMoin" wiki within the main OurProject wiki. (LINK, feel free to edit with good reason - create a user first anyhow prefereably). This is however quite disappointingly complicated to manage (of course it may depend on your expectations but I am used to Wikipedia and other user-friendly GUIs).

There is the possibility of uploading some wiki software to the main subdomain but I fear I am not sufficiently techy for that (at least not yet).

Ancient lake revealed in Upper Egypt

An ancient major lake that would have appeared some 250,000 years ago and vanished definitively some 80,000 years ago has been discovered just North of the Egypt-Sudan border, just West of modern Aswan Reservoir, in the region known as Tushka.

Lake Tushka (deep blue) at two different prehistorical sizes

This lake probably played some role, yet to be understood, in the early period of Humankind. It was not the only one of its kind, other large lakes existed in what is now the Sahara, the most famous maybe being Lake Chad, which in the past was at least a thousand times larger than it is now, a true inland sea.

Today there are a few smaller lakes but were caused by human intervention, pumping excess water  from Lake Nasser.

Full story at Science News (found via Wash Park Prophet).

East Asian jaw from 100,000 years ago is 'modern human'

The Zhirendong jaw from Guangxi Zhuang (South China) was discovered in 2007 (but I did not know until late 2009). Its most striking characteristic is the chin, which is a trait typical of Homo sapiens. Now a paper co-authored by palaeontology superstar Erik Trinkaus says we are before a modern human jaw, maybe admixed with other Homo species.

Wu Liu et al., Human remains from Zhirendong, South China, and modern human emergence in East Asia. PNAS 2010. Pay per view (depending on your country and for six months only elsewhere). 

Abstract

The 2007 discovery of fragmentary human remains (two molars and an anterior mandible) at Zhirendong (Zhiren Cave) in South China provides insight in the processes involved in the establishment of modern humans in eastern Eurasia. The human remains are securely dated by U-series on overlying flowstones and a rich associated faunal sample to the initial Late Pleistocene, >100 kya. As such, they are the oldest modern human fossils in East Asia and predate by >60,000 y the oldest previously known modern human remains in the region. The Zhiren 3 mandible in particular presents derived modern human anterior symphyseal morphology, with a projecting tuber symphyseos, distinct mental fossae, modest lateral tubercles, and a vertical symphysis; it is separate from any known late archaic human mandible. However, it also exhibits a lingual symphyseal morphology and corpus robustness that place it close to later Pleistocene archaic humans. The age and morphology of the Zhiren Cave human remains support a modern human emergence scenario for East Asia involving dispersal with assimilation or populational continuity with gene flow. It also places the Late Pleistocene Asian emergence of modern humans in a pre-Upper Paleolithic context and raises issues concerning the long-term Late Pleistocene coexistence of late archaic and early modern humans across Eurasia. 

Sources: NeanderFollia[cat] and Discovery News.

Mitochondrial DNA H1 in North Africa

A new paper on mtDNA H1 has been published, detailing its presence and phylogeny in Africa.

Claudio Ottoni et al., Mitochondrial Haplogroup H1 in North Africa: An Early Holocene Arrival from Iberia. PLoS ONE 2010. Open Access. [LINK]

They ratify that African H1 is, as its sisters, of 'Iberian' (SW European) derivation  (something known at least for Tunisia since last year, see Cherni 2009) . They also add some detail on its phylogeny and frequencies. 

Maybe most notable is the high frequency (but low diversity) of the lineage found among Libyan Tuaregs, telling of some sort of specific founder effect. 

Of some interest is the description of three novel sublineages:  H1v, H1w and H1x, all them almost exclusive of Lybian Tuaregs (see fig. 1). 

Fig. 2 Frequency of mtDNA H1

The authors make the leit motiv of this paper their molecular clock estimates, which they calculate between 3400 and 11,500 years ago for all H1. If anybody needed further evidence of why the molecular clock methods are unreliable this is it: the only way Europe could have got a meaningful genetic influence on North Africa (and we are talking here c. 25% of the maternal ancestry, not counting K nor V) in this period would have been the Megalithic phenomenon. However, if that would be the case, where is the Y-DNA?

The only comparable Y-DNA is R1b1b2a2, which does exist in North Africa (along with some fossil I found in Guanches), looks of European origin too, but is found at much smaller frequencies (and lower diversity) than in Europe. There are no possible inputs between Megalithism and present day, as we know that Roman and Islamic conquests had minimal demic impact (nor they look likely origins for the dominant Y-DNA E1b1b1).

Additionally there is reasonably clear evidence of the existance of mtDNA H (and in general similar frequencies as today) at Taforalt some 12,000 years ago (Kefi 2005), which argues for an older arrival, surely at the genesis of Oranian culture, in the LGM.

Only the Oranian time-frame really seems to explain the deep and extended penetration of Iberian DNA in North Africa.

References:

R. Kéfi et al., Diversité mitochondriale de la population de Taforalt (12.000 ans bp - maroc): une approche génétique a l’étude du peuplement de l’afrique du nord. Anthropologie 2005. [PPT presentation direct download - Institut Pasteur]

L. Cherni et al., Post-last glacial maximum expansion from Iberia to North Africa revealed by fine characterization of mtDNA H haplogroup in Tunisia. American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Pay per view. [LINK]

H. Enafaa, V. M. Cabrera et al., Mitochondrial DNA haplogroup H structure in North Africa. BMC Genetics 2009. Open Access. [LINK]

For papers on H but not specifically related to Africa, see this post at Leherensuge (April 2009).

Cyprus Neolithic among the earliest ones

A Cornell University press release tell us of how the view of Cyprus Neolithic is changing as research advances.

"Up until two decades ago, nobody thought anybody had gone to Cyprus before about 8,000 years ago, and the island was treated as irrelevant to the development of the Neolithic in the Near East," Manning said. "Then Alan Simmons (now at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas) discovered a couple of sites that seemed to suggest Epipaleolithic peoples went there maybe about 12,000 or 13,000 years ago, much earlier than anyone had thought possible. The big question started to become in the field, well, what happened in between?"

The new findings at Ayia Varvara Asprokremnos, in the central part of the island, place early Cypriot Neolithic c. 11,000 years ago (9000 BCE), totally in line with mainland Neolithic in West Asia: PPNA may be as old as 10,700 BCE, with more common occurrences after 9500 BCE. So the Neolithic of Cyprus seems to be one of the first offshoots of West Eurasian Neolithic.

... these dates mean that Cyprus, an island tens of miles off the Levantine coast, was involved in the very early Neolithic world, and thus long-distance sea travel and maritime communication must now be actively factored into discussions of how the Neolithic developed and spread.

Ref. Sturt W. Manning et al., The earlier Neolithic in Cyprus: recognition and dating of a Pre-Pottery Neolithic A occupation. Antiquity 2010. Pay per view.

Found via R&D, via Archaeology in Europe.

Important Tamil Nadu Paleolithic site discovered

From Times of India (via Archaeo News).

Archaeologists S. Rama Krishna Pisipaty and S. Shanmugavelu have researched what may be a key site in a dry lake bed at Singadivakkam, a village some 65 km south of Chennai (Madras). The site is known as Kancheepuram.

The site has so far provided some 200 tools and, crucially, it seems to have no disruption from the Lower Paleolithic (thought to be work of H. erectus) and the Middle Paleolithic (maybe work of H. sapiens), unlike all other sites in the subcontinent. The tools found include hand axes, borers, scrappers, choppers and pointed tools, as well as microliths.

Kancheepuram was ideal for early settlers with its large number of safe water bodies a lifeline for any human settlement, said Pisipaty.