Demography is increasingly being invoked to account for features of the archaeological record, such as the technological conservatism of the Lower and Middle Pleistocene, the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition, and cultural loss in Holocene Tasmania. Such explanations are commonly justified in relation to population dynamic models developed by Henrich [Henrich J (2004)Am Antiq69:197-214] an...

Cueva de los Aviones (southeast Spain) is a site of the Neandertal-associated Middle Paleolithic of Europe. It has yielded ochred and perforated marine shells, red and yellow colorants, and shell containers that feature residues of complex pigmentatious mixtures. Similar finds from the Middle Stone Age of South Africa have been widely accepted as archaeological proxies for symbolic behavior. U-...

BACKGROUND A Paleolithic diet has been suggested to be more in concordance with human evolutionary legacy than a cereal based diet. This might explain the lower incidence among hunter-gatherers of diseases of affluence such as type 2 diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease. The aim of this study was to experimentally study the long-term effect of a Paleolithic diet on risk factors for thes...

Several intriguing questions are of major interest in studying the Middle Paleolithic period. A challenging enigma concerns the southeasternmost spread of the Neanderthal sub-groups “which inhabited a vast geographical area extending from Europe to western Asia and the Middle East” (Febre, Condemi, Degioanni, 2009: 1), a topic of major importance, the discussion of which has been avoided by mos...

The Chinese open-air site Xuchang-Lingjing (Henan) is located near the border between Palearctic and Oriental biozone in a lowland depression at southern edge of North China Plain. yielded Middle Palaeolithic assemblage that includes two fragmented, incomplete human (possibly Denisovan) skulls (Xuchang 1 Xuchang 2), more than 15,000 artefacts 40,000 mammalian remains representing least 20 taxa....