Zooarchaeological research at Qesem Cave, Israel demonstrates that large-game hunting was a regular practice by the late Lower Paleolithic period. The 400- to 200,000-year-old fallow deer assemblages from this cave provide early examples of prime-age-focused ungulate hunting, a human predator-prey relationship that has persisted into recent times. The meat diet at Qesem centered on large game a...

Significant new information shows that the Campanian Ignimbrite (CI) eruption from the Phlegrean Fields, southern Italy, was much larger than hitherto supposed and in fact one of the largest late Quaternary explosive events. The eruption can be dated to 40,000 calendar years ago, within the interval of the so-called Middle to Upper Paleolithic 'transition'. Its position can be precisely correla...

Author(s): Christian A. Tryon and J. Tyler Faith Source: Current Anthropology, Vol. 54, No. S8, Alternative Pathways to Complexity: Evolutionary Trajectories in the Middle Paleolithic and Middle Stone Age (December 2013), pp. S234-S254 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/67...

Despite intensive study and a number of remarkable discoveries in the last two decades of the 20th century, our understanding of the cultural and biological processes that resulted in the emergence of the Upper Paleolithic and the establishment of modern humans in Interpleniglacial Europe remains far from complete. There is active debate concerning the timing and location of the origins of the ...

Turkey lies at the interface between distinctive archeological and biotic provinces.7 For example, the Middle Pleistocene sequences of the Levant and the Caucasus include many Acheulean assemblages, whereas Acheulean handaxes and biface technology are seldom found in the contemprary Lower Paleolithic assemblages of the Balkans. Likewise, areas surrounding Turkey, including the Levant, the Zagro...

■ Abstract The transition from the Middle Paleolithic to the Upper Paleolithic is considered one of the major revolutions in the prehistory of humankind. Explanations of the observable archaeological phenomena in Eurasia, or the lack of such evidence in other regions, include biological arguments (the role of Cro-Magnons and the demise of the Neanderthals), as well as cultural-technological, an...

Human predator<prey relationships changed dramatically in the Mediterranean Basin between 250,000 and 9,000 years ago. Many of these changes can be linked to increases in Paleolithic human population densities. Small game species are particularly diagnostic of increases in human hunting pressure and are a major source of evidence for demographic change after 40–45,000 years ago. Biomass-correct...

Middle Paleolithic fossil human remains from the Sima de las Palomas in southeastern Iberia (dated to <or=43,000-40,000 calendar years before present) present a suite of derived Neandertal and/or retained ancestral morphological features in the mandibular symphysis, mandibular ramus, dental occlusal morphology, and distal hand phalanx. These traits are combined with variation in the mandibular ...

The "Red Lady" partial human skeleton found at Goat's Hole, Paviland, in south Wales by William Buckland in 1823 is one of the iconic relics of the British Paleolithic. Originally thought to be Roman, a Paleolithic age has been suspected from the middle of the 19th century. Several attempts have been made at directly radiocarbon dating the "Red Lady," and here we report new determinations that ...

In the Eurasian Upper Paleolithic after about 35,000 years ago, abstract or depictional images provide evidence for cognitive abilities considered integral to modern human behavior. Here we report on two abstract representations engraved on pieces of red ochre recovered from the Middle Stone Age layers at Blombos Cave in South Africa. A mean date of 77,000 years was obtained for the layers cont...