Tag Archives: pleistocene

Merging morphological and genetic evidence to assess hybridization in Western Eurasian late Pleistocene hominins

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    New Evidence Supports a Coastal Route for Peopling of Americas

    Boulders transported by glaciers.
    Photo: Ian Watkinson/EGU

    The opening of the ice-free corridor that linked Beringia to the North American interior happened potentially thousands of years after the first human migrations to the continent, according to new evidence. Scientists say this finding should bolster the idea that ancient humans traveled to the Americas along a coastal route, but other researchers remain skeptical.

    New research in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences pinpoints the appearance of an ice-free corridor linking Beringia to the Great Plains to around 13,800 years ago. Prior estimates suggested the corridor appeared around one thousand years earlier, as the last ice age was coming to an end. According to previous archaeological work, the first human migrations into the North American continent happened around 15,000 to 16,000 years ago, and possibly 20,000 years ago. The authors of the new paper say their findings strengthen the coastal migration hypothesis, in which the first people to reach the Americas did so by traveling along the Pacific coast.

    “The ice-free corridor has long played a key role in hypotheses about the peopling of the Americas, but our results provide robust evidence that the ice-free corridor was not open and available for this,” Jorie Clark, the first author of the new paper and a researcher from the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University, explained in an email. “This has been inferred before, but the evidence for the age of the ice-free corridor opening was very uncertain and could not be used conclusively to address this question one way or the other.”

    Clark and her colleagues used a dating method known as “cosmogenic nuclide surface exposure dating,” which works by “dating a boulder that was deposited by the ice sheet when it first retreated from the site, with the date telling us how long ago that boulder was first deposited by the ice sheet and exposed to the atmosphere,” she said. In simpler terms, they counted hits by cosmic rays to determine how long a boulder’s been sitting on Earth’s surface.

    In an email, Ben Potter, an archaeologist from the Arctic Studies Center at Liaocheng University in China who wasn’t involved with the new research, said he was “unconvinced” by the paper. Cosmogenic exposure dating provides minimum ages, not maximum ages, he said, adding that the researchers failed to provide reasons for rejecting other efforts to date the opening of the ice sheets, including research showing the emergence of a deglaciated and lake-free corridor by at least 15,000 years ago.

    Establishing the timing of an overland route linking Eurasia to North America is important, as it carries implications for the Clovis-first hypothesis. That theory holds that people living in Alaska and Yukon traveled southward along the interior to the Great Plains, where they established the Clovis culture, named for their distinctive stone tools. Recent archaeological and genetic evidence has challenged this theory, pointing instead to a pre-Clovis migration to the Americas prior to the receding of the massive Cordilleran and Laurentide ice sheets. “Resolving this debate” over migration routes is “important for addressing the questions of when and how the first Americans arrived,” the scientists write in the new study.

    Previous studies using other dating techniques are limited, said Clark, in that they only show that the ice-free corridor emerged some time before the acquired date. For example, “a radiocarbon date on a piece of organic fossil material only dates the time of when that fossil material lived, which could be any time after the ice-free corridor opened—we simply don’t know how long before the date that the IFC opened.” As for prior research that used cosmogenic exposure dating to date the ice-free corridor, they’re limited in terms of geographic scope and the amount of samples analyzed, she added.

    For the new analysis, Clark and her team studied glacially displaced boulders along 745 miles (1,200 kilometers) of the Cordilleran-Laurentide ice sheet suture zone, allowing them to sample 64 cosmogenic exposures. The team was able to “evaluate various potential uncertainties in the dates and derive a robust average date for each site,” she explained. Using cosmic rays to date boulders might sound weird, but Clark likened it to a suntan.

    “When the boulder is first deposited by the retreating ice sheet, it is exposed to the atmosphere for the first time, including the cosmic rays which come from space and pass through the atmosphere and hit the surface of the Earth,” Clark explained. “This would be analogous to sitting outside for the first time after being indoors all winter and starting to be exposed to the sun. As soon as the boulder is first exposed, cosmic rays penetrate the boulder and produce new elements—cosmogenic nuclides—in the boulder, so with time, the concentration of these elements increases.”

    Scientists can measure the concentration of these elements in the lab, and since they know how many new elements are produced each year, they can “calculate the time since the boulder was first exposed by retreat of the ice sheet,” Clark said. “Some people might question our dating method, but we feel confident that any adjustments to our ages will not change our bottom-line conclusion,” said Clark, to which she added: “We are also very confident in our results.”

    Potter doesn’t share this confidence, saying the team used only one standard deviation for their interpretation when two were required. When using the more conservative value, the new evidence would indicate minimum ages for the opening of the ice sheets to some time between 13,000 and 15,600 years ago, he said. This range of uncertainty, Potter said, is consistent with numerous optically stimulated luminescence and infrared stimulated luminescence dating efforts that point to the appearance of an ice-free corridor by at least 15,000 years ago.

    A key finding of the new paper is that a viable passageway for the first wave of humans to enter into North America by land did not exist until at least 13,800 years ago, and that the humans who migrated earlier must have done so by traveling along the Pacific coast. That this might be the case is not a huge surprise given other clues, such as 15,000-year-old archaeological evidence at the Cooper’s Ferry site in Idaho.

    Potter believes we shouldn’t discount the interior route just yet. He said there’s “no widespread consensus that the oldest ages of scattered charcoal at Cooper’s Ferry relates to the occupations,” which some scientists have dated to 11,500 and 14,000 years ago. Thus, “the ice free corridor cannot be ruled out as a potential route for the earliest unequivocal sites south of the ice sheets” after 15,000 years ago, Potter wrote. And as he also explained, there’s still no unequivocally dated sites along the north Pacific coastal route prior to 12,600 years ago, and none from the Kuril Islands to the Aleutians and south central Alaska that date prior to 9,000 years ago, which is a fair point.

    On this last issue, Clark would seem to agree. “While we may have addressed one question about the first peopling of the Americas, there is still a lot to learn about whether they actually did come down the coastal route, and if so, how did they travel—we need to find archaeological sites from this area,” she told me in her email.

    The question as to when an interior corridor emerged and how the first humans managed to make their way into the continent remains unresolved. As it typical of archaeology, we simply need more evidence if we’re to truly understand this fascinating period in human history.

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    Archaic Hominin Made Elephant Bone Tools 400,000 Years Ago, Study Finds

    Archaeologists examining artifacts collected from a site in Italy found that an archaic hominin species had made elephant bone tools, including pointed tools for carving meat and wedge-shaped tools for cracking open large femurs and other long bones, 400,000 years ago. This is hundreds of thousands of years before such a thing had been considered possible. These innovative toolmakers lived in the Middle Pleistocene epoch, at least 100,000 years before modern man first appeared in far-off Africa.

    Fig 12 from the study showing unifaces and pointed tools made with elephant bones found at the  Castel di Guido site, Rome, Italy.  A-C: unifaces with a side scraper edge;  D: pointed wedge (base is battered).  E-F: pointed tools on bovid diaphysis fragments, catalogue numbers 326, 2807.  G-H: pointed tools. ( Plos One )

    A Total of 98 Flaked Elephant Bone Tools Were Found

    This astonishing discovery was made by a team of researchers from Italy, France, South Africa, and the United States, headed by University of Colorado-Boulder archaeology professor Paola Villa. They studied elephant bone tools excavated between 1979 to 1991 from the Castel di Guido site near Rome, and in the process revealed fascinating details about the craftsmanship involved in making these  bone tools .

    Writing about their findings in the  Plos One journal study  the archaeologists note that the 98 verified  elephant bone  tools found at Castel di Guido represent “the highest number of flaked bone tools made by pre-modern hominids published so far.” Acknowledging the advanced techniques used to make these rare tools, the archaeologists credit the ancient toolmakers with completing “the first step in the process of increasing complexity of bone technology.”

    In the Middle Pleistocene, there was a stream running through Castel di Guido. An extinct Eurasian straight-tusked elephant species used the stream as a source of fresh water, and  archaic humans  were drawn to the area as well and likely settled very nearby. Occasionally one of these 13-foot (four-meter) tall elephants would die of natural causes, and the local hominins would then scavenge the massive remains for hides, meat, and bones.

    These elephant bones were strong and sturdy, which made them suitable for use as tools. They were often broken randomly into pieces and used as they were. But sometimes toolmakers would customize the bones by using rocks or other pieces of bone to break off flakes or chunks, carefully working the bone’s shape until it was just as they wanted.

    Not all the bone tools found at the Castel de Guido site were made from elephant bones. Fig 14 from the study shows the polished tip of an aurochs (a species wild cattle) bone, compared with an ancient horse bone tool from Germany (bottom right). These tools are known as  lissoirs, which ancient humans used to treat leather with. ( Plos One )

    In this case, the tools were modified in ways that were unusual 400,000 years ago.

    “We see other sites with bone tools at this time,” Professor Paola Villa, who is also the adjoint curator at the CU Boulder Museum of Natural History, explained in  a University of Colorado-Boulder press release . “But there isn’t this variety of well-defined shapes.”

    “At Castel di Guido, humans were breaking the long bones of the elephants in a standardized manner and producing standardized blanks to make bone tools,” Villa continued. “This kind of aptitude didn’t become common until much later.”

    “Much later” in this instance means up to 100,000 years later!

    “Until recently the generally accepted idea was that early bone technology was essentially immediate and expedient, based on single-stage operations, using available bone fragments of large to medium size animals,” Villa and her colleagues wrote in their Plos One article. “Only  Upper Paleolithic  bone tools would involve several stages of manufacture with clear evidence of primary flaking or breaking of bone to produce the kind of fragments required for different kinds of tools.”

    The discovery of the work of the Castel di Guido toolmakers has shattered the previous timeline. It’s left archaeologists questioning everything they thought they new about the development of  human toolmaking practices  on the Eurasian continent. It seems that the process was not linear and that it progressed much faster in at least one small part of the world.

    Did the Neanderthals Live at Castel di Guido?  The lead author of the study, archaeology professor  Paola Villa ( Colorado University Boulder) , believes the Neanderthals as the likely makers of these extremely old elephant bone tools. ( Gorodenkoff / Adobe Stock)

    Did Neanderthals or Homo Erectus Live at Castel di Guido?

    So far, archaeologists working at Castel di Guido have failed to find the fossilized remains of ancient humans. Such a discovery could have helped them to pin down the true identity of the ancient toolmakers.

    Nevertheless, Paola Villa  has a theory about who they might have been. She believes they were Neanderthals, the long-extinct cousin of modern humans who  were in Eurasia  during the Middle Pleistocene.

    “About 400,000 years ago, you start to see the habitual use of fire, and it’s the beginning of the Neanderthal lineage,” Villa explained. “This is a very important period for Castel di Guido.”

    It is hardly surprising that Villa would identify the Neanderthals as  the likely toolmakers . She is considered one of the world’s top experts on the Neanderthals, and her contributions have helped reverse previous negative judgments about their intellectual capacities and their level of cultural and social development.

    Another possible candidate for who made these bone tools would be  Homo erectus . ( York / Adobe Stock)

    Another possible toolmaking candidate would be  Homo erectus . This ancient ancestor of  Homo sapiens  (modern man) first emerged more than two million years ago, and by 400,000 years ago they were living throughout Europe and Asia. They were the first hominin species to demonstrate impressive toolmaking skills, although they would have had to have been more advanced than believed to have produced the elephant bone tools found in Italy.

    Whoever the manufacturers were, the tools they created were impressively diverse. The crafted objects found at Castel di Guido included tools with sharp points, which could have been used to cut meat. There were also bone wedges that could have been used to splinter large, long, and heavy elephant bones into smaller pieces.

    One tool was especially sophisticated. Long and smooth at one end, this object was identified as a lissoir, which ancient humans used to treat leather. All previously discovered lissoirs have been dated to 300,000 ago or later, and of all the tools discovered at Castel di Guido this is the one that pushes the archaeological record back the furthest.

    Interestingly, this particular tool was not made from an elephant bone. It was shaped from a wild cattle bone instead. The ancient toolmakers at Castel di Guido were obviously happy to use elephant bones whenever possible, but they didn’t rely on them exclusively as a source of raw material.

    Professor Paola Villa lead author of the study  doesn’t think the Castel di Guido hominins who made the elephant bone tools were unusually smart, compared to Neanderthals living in other areas . ( Leakey Foundation )

    Innovation Determined by Circumstance

    Paola Villa doesn’t think the Castel di Guido hominins were unusually smart, compared to Neanderthals living in other areas. She believes they used the resources that were available to them as best they could, and because they didn’t have access to large pieces of flint at their location they turned to elephant bones as an alternative. Elephant bones weren’t so easy to find elsewhere, so other hominin groups wouldn’t have had the opportunity to explore the tool manufacturing possibilities so thoroughly.

    “At other sites 400,000 years ago, people were just using whatever bone fragments they had available,” Villa noted. “The Castel di Guido people had cognitive intellects that allowed them to produce complex bone technology. At other assemblages, there were enough bones for people to make a few pieces, but not enough to begin a standardized and systematic production of bone tools.”

    The Castel di Guido hominins were pioneers. But they remained relatively isolated, with limited chances to pass on what they’d learned to others. Consequently, the techniques they perfected would need to be rediscovered independently by others, at various times in the future.

    Top image: A closeup of a few of the 98 verified elephant bone tools found in Rome, Italy, which have been attributed to an archaic hominin species based on a recent study published in the Plos One journal. Source:  Plos One

    By Nathan Falde

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    Gigantic Stone ‘Tiger Stripes’ Etched Across Ethiopia Pose an Ancient Mystery

    If we want to predict our planet’s future under climate change, we must better understand what has happened on Earth before, even hundreds of thousands of years in the past.

    New research into the Ethiopian Highlands during the Last Glacial Period helps do just that. As well as answering some geological questions, it has also raised up a new one: What created the gigantic stone stripes across the central Sanetti Plateau in the Bale Mountains?

     

    As part of the research, scientists looked at moraine boulder samples in the Bale and Arsi Mountains, rocks that would once have been carried along by glaciers.

    By studying their physical arrangement and measuring the extent of decay in an isotope of chlorine, they determined that past glaciations would not have been in sync with other similar stretches of mountains.

    (Groos et al., Earth Surface Dynamics, 2021)

    “Our results show that glaciers in the southern Ethiopian Highlands reached their maximum extent between 40,000 and 30,000 years ago, several thousand years earlier than in other mountainous regions in Eastern Africa and worldwide,” says glaciologist Alexander Groos from the University of Bern in Switzerland.

    While these highlands aren’t packed with ice today, between 42,000 and 28,000 years ago – thousands of years before the most recent period in which ice sheets stretched far from the poles – they would have been topped by glaciers that covered as much as 350 square kilometres (about 135 square miles). The relatively early cooling and glacier onset is likely caused by variations in rainfall and mountain features, the researchers say.

     

    In other words, temperature wasn’t the only driver of glacier movement across Eastern Africa during this time. Such insights can help us understand what might happen next, and what the impact on biodiversity and ecosystems is likely to be.

    As for the massive stone stripes formed by boulders and basalt columns, they were discovered during the course of the research, just outside the area of the former ice cap. The stripes measure up to 1,000 meters (3,281 feet) long, 15 meters (49 feet) wide, and 2 meters (6.5 feet) deep, and haven’t been seen before in the tropics.

    (Groos et al., Earth Surface Dynamics, 2021)

    “The existence of these stone stripes on a tropical plateau surprised us, as so-called periglacial landforms of this magnitude were previously only known from the temperate zone and polar regions and are associated with ground temperatures around freezing point,” says Groos.

    Another way in which the Ethiopian Highlands are different to their immediate neighbors then, in terms of what went down during the last ice age. The scientists think these stripes are the natural result of periodic freezing and thawing of the ground near the ice cap, which would have drawn similar rocks together.

    (Alexander R. Groos/Digital Globe Foundation)

    That would have required substantial drops in the ground and air temperature, however – and what’s less clear is whether this is typical of the way tropical high mountains cooled at the time, or whether it was a regional phenomenon.

    We’ll need to wait for future studies of other regions to find out, but the research gives plenty for scientists to go on. Understanding climate shifts in the tropics is crucial – it’s where much of the circulation of the world’s atmosphere and oceans is driven from – and it would seem these mountainous regions might have experienced the Last Glacial Period in a variety of different ways.

    “Our findings highlight the importance of understanding the local climatic setting when attempting to draw wider climatic interpretations from glacial chronologies,” conclude the researchers in one of their newly published papers.

    The research has been published in Science Advances and Earth Surface Dynamics.

     

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