Why did modern human populations disperse from Africa 60,000 years ago?
Magus
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0510792103v1
Also:
http://johnhawks.net/weblog/2006/06/14#mellars_modern_human_model_2006
Dar Habel
Full paper available (1.3 MB) in pdf download, at:
http://btfiles.skpg.org.uk/Mellars2006.pdf
Dar
> Also:
> http://johnhawks.net/weblog/2006/06/14#mellars_modern_human_model_2006
pete
` Dar
` > Also:
` > http://johnhawks.net/weblog/2006/06/14#mellars_modern_human_model_2006
Despite the title, the author acknowledges that AMH appear to have
been found outside africa 110kya, but he suggests this was a temporary
situation. Yet, he fails to note that 135k-105kya was interglacial,
and was followed by a glacial epoch, therefore most of the time
between 110kya and the major emigration he proposes at 65kya,
evidence of extra-african habitation would have been mostly on
land currently submerged, so his major thesis has fairly slim
evidencial support, of the "absense of evidence" variety. When
you add in that the subsequent interglacial had its highest sea
level around the time that he cites for the next evidence of
asian AMH remains, the picture of upland human occupation simply
ebbing and flowing with sea level is just underlined. (Yes there
was a brief high water period ~85kya, but it may be that asian
AMH habitations simply have not yet been found from this period -
one might predict that this would be a likely horizon for such
finds to be turned up.)
--
==========================================================================
vincent@triumf[munge].ca Pete Vincent
Disclaimer: all I know I learned from reading Usenet.
Chapstick
"Magus" <mcag...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1150299595....@f6g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
thanks for posting.... items such as this indicate to me that eventually we
will find more evidence that hss was "agricultural" and fully "modern" at
the beginning of our species. Perhaps there was no agricultural revolution
10,000 BC... rather, that was just a population boom.
(Mellars mentions that more and recent artifacts are coming to light in
Africa.)
--chap
prd
news:1150299595....@f6g2000cwb.googlegroups.com by
"Magus" <mcag...@gmail.com> . . . :
Humans dispersed in africa over 120 kya. They reached SE asia by
116kya, PNG by 80 kya, SE australia by 55 kya. even the genetic
arguments place humans in the anadamans at 65 kya. New models with
bad starting premises are worth what?
Nothing.
rmacfarl
"Dar Habel" <Dar_...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1150302294.1...@u72g2000cwu.googlegroups.com...
Audio of not very convincing interview with Mellars from Australian radio
this morning:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/brkfast/stories/s1663471.htm
Ross Macfarlane
rmacfarl
"rmacfarl" <rmac...@alphalink.com.au> wrote in message
news:44912...@news.chariot.net.au...
Actually try this link:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/brkfast/
... then click on 6:20-7:00am
Thursday 15 June 2006
Listen Real Media 6:20–7:00am | 7:30–8:00am | 8:05–8:30am
Listen Windows Media 6:20–7:00am | 7:30–8:00am | 8:05–8:30am
Latest stories and audio from AM 7:00–7:30am
6:20 Homo sapiens hit the road
...
pete
> http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/brkfast/
>
> ... then click on 6:20-7:00am
>
> Thursday 15 June 2006
> Listen Real Media 6:20–7:00am | 7:30–8:00am | 8:05–8:30am
> Listen Windows Media 6:20–7:00am | 7:30–8:00am | 8:05–8:30am
> Latest stories and audio from AM 7:00–7:30am
>
> 6:20 Homo sapiens hit the road
"There has been much debate
as to what gave homo sapiens the travel bug.
Paul Mellars believes it was the discovery of 'bows and arrows'
which in turn lead to new hunting grounds."
There were no bows and arrows
for the first settlers of the Western hemisphere.
--
pete
Magus
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/article878458.ece
)
Mellars said it? or it's an invention of journalists?
richard...@yahoo.com
Perhaps Dar Habel could help with the following questions leading from
all this:
- When is first evidence (or secondary evidence leading to it) of use
of bows and arrows? Spears seem to have been used from up to 500kya
- When is there the first evidence of projectile weapons of any kind
(even purposely chosen or shaped stones?)
- What evidence has been found of throwing spears pre 80kya in Africa?
Or anywhere else?
- Are the dates given by prd generally agreed? And prd, can you give
any more references - ie dated finds etc?
- And, for general discussion (or whatever it's called on this forum):
Why would invention of bows and arrows (and other 'cultural' items)
have led to a population explosion when the first move towards
projectile killing (spears, perhaps) happened 400 thousand years
earlier, and didn't seem to have had the same effect? (perhaps it did,
and we don't know it)
For the benefit of others in this thread, these are not rhetorical
questions put up as any sort of challenge. (Well, maybe the last one
was).
regards
Richard
Paul Crowley
news:1150302294.1...@u72g2000cwu.googlegroups.com...
>
Thanks for the links.
It is the usual PA half-witted drivel, but
the most interesting aspect of the paper
is what it does not say.
Firstly, there is no discussion of the most
extraordinary feature of the fossil record
over the timescale discussed -- its extreme
paucity. Secondly, there is no mention
whatever of the change in eustatic sea-
levels during that time.
I've recently been pointing out to the
standard PA dunderhead types around
here that, while the 'fact' of rising and
falling sea-levels has been known for
some 50 years or so, it has not been
absorbed into the 'science'. This paper
is as good an illustration of the truth of
that statement as we are likely to see.
While Mellars does refer to 'coastal
routes' during human expansion, he
seems to think that there would be no
permanent settlements along those
routes.
As ever, PA people seem to come from
another planet and be unaware that they
are attempt to describe a living species
which would have occupied much the
same habitat over its recent existence.
Paul.
Dar Habel
> prd wrote:
> > In sci.anthropology.paleo message
> > news:1150299595....@f6g2000cwb.googlegroups.com by
> > "Magus" <mcag...@gmail.com> . . . :
> >
> > > "New" model by Paul Mellars.
> > >
> > > http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0510792103v1
> > >
> > > Also:
> > > http://johnhawks.net/weblog/2006/06/14#mellars_modern_human_model
> > > _2006
> >
> > Humans dispersed in africa over 120 kya. They reached SE asia by
> > 116kya, PNG by 80 kya, SE australia by 55 kya. even the genetic
> > arguments place humans in the anadamans at 65 kya. New models with
> > bad starting premises are worth what?
> >
> > Nothing.
>
>
> Perhaps Dar Habel could help with the following questions leading from
> all this:
>
> - When is first evidence (or secondary evidence leading to it) of use
> of bows and arrows? Spears seem to have been used from up to 500kya
The earliest atlatl shaft was recovered from a French Solutrean context
about 19,000 rcyrBP; the earliest evidence for bows and arrows is only
about 11,000 rcyrBP. Obviously way too late for Mellars' scenario.
However, the argument is that because the earliest spear-throwing
atlatl shafts might have been made from perishable materials (wood),
they did not survive taphonomically. As a consequence, the argument
for earlier use of atlatls and bows and arrows is generally based on
projectile point (stone point) size. An example below:
**********************
Modern Humans Made Their Point
By ANN GIBBONS -- Science, 22 April 2005,
308: 491
Long before guns gave European explorers a decisive advantage over
indigenous peoples, our ancestors had their own technological
innovation that allowed them to dominate the Stone Age competition:
the projectile point, launched from bows or spear throwers.
Paleolithic hunters shooting spears or arrows tipped with these
small stone points could stay at a safe distance while hunting a
wide assortment of prey-or other humans, says archaeologist John
Shea of Stony Brook University in New York. Projectile launchers
might even be the key to modern humans' triumph when they entered
the Neandertal territory of Europe about 40,000 years ago, Shea
proposed in his talk. Neandertals lacked projectiles until it was
too late, and they could heft their heavier spears only as far as
they could throw them. "Projectile points were such an important
invention, like gunpowder, that it would have given the bearers a
huge advantage," says archaeologist Alison Brooks of George
Washington University in Washington, D.C. In two separate studies,
Shea and Brooks showed that modern humans were using lightweight
points associated with projectile launchers by 40,000 years ago.
Shea and Brooks both think these new weapons were invented first in
Africa, although they disagree about the timing. They agree that
modern humans had a technological advantage when they left Africa
and spread around the globe. "These lightweight points show up more
than 50,000 years ago in Africa," says Stan Ambrose of the
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, who heard Shea's
talk. "They may have helped modern humans get out of Africa." The
challenge in pinpointing when projectiles were invented is that few
of the launchers themselves survive, because they were made of
materials that disintegrate over time. The oldest known bow is only
11,000 years old, and the oldest known spear thrower is about 18,000
years old, but archaeologists suspect that the technology is much
older. So they try to distinguish projectile points from those used
on the tips of hand-thrown spears. One criterion is size: Projectile
points must be small and light to soar fast enough to kill. "You
wouldn't go up to a Cape buffalo with those tiny points on a
thrusting spear," says Brooks. Shea and Brooks each surveyed points
from around the world, setting an upper limit on the size and weight
of points considered projectiles. Shea set an upper limit on cross
sections at the tip, whereas Brooks set a limit on weight. Shea
found that projectile points were widespread by 40,000 years ago;
earlier points didn't meet his criteria. He proposed that the points
were developed for warfare and may have hastened the extinction of
Neandertals. Brooks found that points from 50,000 to 90,000 years
ago in three regions of Africa met her criteria. She noted that
there was a "grammar and an order" to assembling these tools-one
that required extensive social networks in order to exchange
technology and specialized materials. She thinks that projectiles
made modern humans more efficient hunters who could shoot small game
and live in varied terrain. "They didn't have to kill
[Neandertals]," says Brooks. "They just had to outcompete them."
*******************************
>
> - When is there the first evidence of projectile weapons of any kind
> (even purposely chosen or shaped stones?)
Some archaeologists claim that the defining criteria for the African
Middle Stone Age is stone points. These begin showing up in
assemblages as old as 300,000 years ago or, rarely, older. Convincing
stone points that probably were hafted are more common beginning with
the leaf-shaped bifacial Stillbay points which, at Blombos and other
South African sites are dated to levels preceding the Howiesons Poort,
i.e., 80,000-90,000 BP or so.
> - What evidence has been found of throwing spears pre 80kya in Africa?
> Or anywhere else?
Also found at Blombos with the Stillbay (stone) points are some bone
points that look like convincing projectile points, probably hafted to
a throwing spear. It's primarily the Blombos evidence from 90-60 ka
(including the "abstract art" scratches on ocher, maybe even the
evidence for marine food resources - you'll like that!!!) Mellars seems
to be using for early emergenced of the "technological revolution".
> - Are the dates given by prd generally agreed? And prd, can you give
> any more references - ie dated finds etc?
Obviously, Mellars isn't accepting the 116ka for Liujiang China, but
others do accept that Liujiang is somewhere around 100 ka. As a
minimum it is ~ 68 ka. Reference:
Journal of Human Evolution.
Volume 43, Issue 6 , December 2002, Pages 817-829.
U-Series dating of Liujiang hominid site in Guangxi, Southern China.
Guanjun Shen, Wei Wang, Qian Wang, Jianxin Zhao, Kenneth Collerson,
Chunlin Zhou and Phillip V. Tobias
I've read this and its fairly convincing, and pdr, Mikey Brass, and I
discussed the ervidence extensively on Mikey's Paleoanthro Yahoo group
in December of 2002. Although Peter Brown's website claims Liujiang
is only about 30-35 ka or so, I found the Shen et al. paper had enough
evidence documented to believe the fossil is at least 68 ka, and
probably in the range of 100 ka. Phil likes 116 ka, but.....You'd have
to ask Phil where he gets 80 ka for Papua-New Guinea, but I think the
65ka for Andamans is a genetics-derived estimate. As for Australia,
ask Phil, but more accepted are dates in the 45-50 ka range.
> - And, for general discussion (or whatever it's called on this forum):
It's called "flame-throwing" on this forum :-)
> Why would invention of bows and arrows (and other 'cultural' items)
> have led to a population explosion when the first move towards
> projectile killing (spears, perhaps) happened 400 thousand years
> earlier, and didn't seem to have had the same effect? (perhaps it did,
> and we don't know it)
The big difference in Mellars' scenario is not that projectile killing
made the difference, but that projectile killing 'from a distance'
(with atlatl and bow and arrow tech) allowed a competitive edge and
population expansion by those using the new tech.
Dar
Day Brown
back of a bull in the ring for the toredore to kill.
Its a clue to an ancient tradition. Whether the small points were
launched by atlotl or bow, sooner or later they would have been
'contaminated' with streptococcus or similar bacteria. Then, all men had
to do was get a point in a beast... and have the dogs track the smell of
the blood, and then bay when the beast was at bay, with a raging
infection, and just about dead already.
At this point, the hunting team that had a few burly Neanderthals to
haul tons of megafauna meat back to the camp would have survived better
than those that lacked either the projectile points or the HNS draft
animals.
rmacfarl
Yes, Mellars said it. He discussed it in the radio interview I posted
the link to...
Ross Macfarlane
pete
I wonder what gave Homo erectus The Travel Bug?
--
pete
Jois
"pete" <pfi...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:4492B1...@mindspring.com...
The want of bows and arrows? :)
Our modern children seem to have a burst of rebellion and energy at about 11
years of age, another spike at about 14, probably do another spike in teens
(an age group I worked with enough to "guess" for sure, maybe 16 to 22?)
that doesn't return to "normal" for a while. I've read something like this
about wild animals raised in captivity - they are like kids until they reach
puberty and become "unreasonable", wild, and un-house-pet-like, find
themselves donated to science or something.
Why wouldn't Homo erectus and ancient Hss and other mammals have these same
kinds of bursts of rebellion and energy? Make it reasonable for them to
move away from the basic family unit and take a few buddies of like age with
them? Maybe the fossil record would only show that the younger than
expected ages of those who chose to travel away from home.
Hum, should I sign this Mario or Jois?
Jois
pete
>
> "pete" <pfi...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
> news:4492B1...@mindspring.com...
> > rmacfarl wrote:
> > >
> > > Magus wrote:
> > > > In the news I red that too (like this:
> > > >
> http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/article878458.ece
> > > > )
> > > >
> > > > Mellars said it? or it's an invention of journalists?
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > pete wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > "There has been much debate
> > > > > as to what gave homo sapiens the travel bug.
> > > > > Paul Mellars believes
> > > > > it was the discovery of 'bows and arrows'
> > > > > which in turn lead to new hunting grounds."
> > > > >
> > > > > There were no bows and arrows
> > > > > for the first settlers of the Western hemisphere.
> > >
> > > Yes, Mellars said it.
> > > He discussed it in the radio interview I posted
> > > the link to...
> >
> > I wonder what gave Homo erectus The Travel Bug?
> The want of bows and arrows? :)
>
> Our modern children seem to have a burst of rebellion and energy
> at about 11 years of age, another spike at about 14,
> probably do another spike in teens
> (an age group I worked with enough to "guess" for sure,
> maybe 16 to 22?)
> that doesn't return to "normal" for a while.
> I've read something like this
> about wild animals raised in captivity
> - they are like kids until they reach
> puberty and become "unreasonable", wild, and un-house-pet-like,
> find themselves donated to science or something.
>
> Why wouldn't Homo erectus and ancient Hss
> and other mammals have these same
> kinds of bursts of rebellion and energy?
> Make it reasonable for them to
> move away from the basic family unit
> and take a few buddies of like age with
> them? Maybe the fossil record would only show that the younger than
> expected ages of those who chose to travel away from home.
>
> Hum, should I sign this Mario or Jois?
I think the deal is that people have been leaving Africa
as long as there have been people in Africa, and that at some time,
about 60000 years ago according to the subject line of this thread,
they started surviving to a substantial degree.
The day that an animal escapes the zoo,
isn't the day that it decides to do it,
it's the day that it can.
There is no Travel Bug.
--
pete
richard...@yahoo.com
response to my questions - it may well beat the record for a sensible
answer to some (sensible ?) questions, on this forum at least:
John Shea is a flint-knapper and stone tool specialist. He certainly
knows his stuff, but Alison Brooks may be a more (multi-disciplined?)
academic (although she's done her bit in the field). You can hardly
expect Shea to venture very far from his specialist expertise into
speculating that Early Humans used anything but rock flakes to do what
they wanted done.
Alison Brooks found (with John Yellen) sophisticated carved bone
harpoons on the Ishango river, dated to about 90kya. They were smart
designs (with a lot of passed-down cultural knowledge), but preceded
the earliest Blombos tools by about 20,000 years
I do like that.
At Blombos, the catching of quite large, non-scavengeable fish preceded
the bone points, ochre, etc, by about 70,000 years. Not much has been
made of this, and in the Blombos publicity, the LSA 'particularly rich
shell midden' was totally omitted from the archaeologists' fauna list
in favour of more 'acceptable' finds, like the few eland bones, etc.
See: http://www.svf.uib.no/sfu/blombos/Artefact_Review1.html and
http://www.coconutstudio.com/Shell%20Middens.htm#Blombos%20Cave
Such progress (detaching the effect on the prey from the visible
immediate use of the weapon) would need intelligent 'connection' of two
or more separated actions (perhaps better put as having "grammar and an
order" to assembling them), and must have involved a major change of
brain wiring, but perhaps not as late as Mellars or Klein propose.
Other forms of 'killing from a distance' could have developed, step by
step, much earlier, including:
1 - Poisoning the environment - dropping poisonous fruit into water -
very easy to discover as it happens naturally anyway - works for fish
but not land animals. Poison doesn't work in air, as Germans found when
they tried gassing Brits in 1916 (or vice versa - information still -
90 yrs later - 'Classified') - and then it wasn't in the least limited,
selective, or effective.
2 - Poisoning animal flesh directly (see Day Brown 15 June 2006 - a bit
later in the thread) needs a more tortuous thought process to connect
plant poison and dead animal, so it probably developed much later. But
early humans (if they had just half the machismo of the average Spanish
torero) could easily have planted poison darts (banderillas) by hand
into anything they wanted to kill, however big, angry and threatening
it might have been.
See all this stuff on:
http://www.coconutstudio.com/Eco-Friendly%20Poisons.htm
Sorry to keep on puffing my own website, but if there are a (great
deal) more hits, some credulous businessman might advertise on it, and
I need the money. Earning it, as I'm not a remittance man or a
pensioner, is not easy on a Pacific island.
3 - Harpoons - attaching a loose and loseable poisoned point on a
spear, dart or arrow would let you just prick the game, then wait until
it dies. Such a point need only be a wood splinter jammed into a bamboo
shaft or split stick.
Later, attach a string between point and shaft, and let that help
tangle the prey in bushes. Whipping one end of the string to the shaft,
and the other to the projectile point (wood, stone or bone) needs no
great knowledge of knot-making, but maybe some sticky plant gum to help
keep them together.
Still, a long way, intellectually, from throwing a rock or thrusting a
spear and seeing it immediately knock down an animal.
Note: The spearmen in Spanish bullfights (the picadors) have to use
horses to get them near their prey, and absorb the damage. It's only
recently that the horses have been 'armoured' to spare animal lover
sensibilities.
Harpoons work very well for marine animals, including fish and mammals
(ask Moby Dick). They were later adapted for use on land, and are
useful in bush or forest - Aeta tribesmen in the Philippines' mountains
still use toggled harpoon arrows for boar and other small game.
4 - Passive hunting - primitive fish weirs - just blocking a tidal pool
with a few coconut fronds - would also require an early, but quite easy
intellectual jump, from trapping fish immediately to waiting until the
tide changed, and the fish caught themselves. Not far from that to the
forest net-hunting still practised by Ituri pygmies, and land animal
traps of all kinds.
All of these hunting methods are much more obvious first steps when
used in limited amounts of water, not in large open areas on land.
Alison Brooks's early-dated harpoons at Ishango were used for fish, of
course.
None of them would leave much trace. You wouldn't need to strike flakes
from rocks if there's plenty of easily usable plant material (and plant
poison) about. That's maybe why we find most stone tools inland on the
African savannah, Arabia, uplands, Europe, etc, etc.
You don't find any (or not many of them) east of the Movius line
(roughly between Burma and India) or in the Indian Ocean coastal forest
belt. No need to faff about, using time and effort to strike Acheulian
blades off stone cores if there's plenty of other, easier forest tool
material to hand.
But since permanent stone bits are about the only things archaeologists
might find, (and earlier humans re-used for generations, if not
millennia) you can hardly blame them for latching onto stone tools and
analysing them (and not much else, because there isn't any) to the nth
degree.
regards
Richard
richard...@yahoo.com
Great idea, but very Politically Incorrect - just delete the H, add a
few letters between N and S, and you've got the unmentionable name for
the most recent burly draft humans.
Poison might have done it, but streptococcus wouldn't. Otherwise, we'd
all have died from teenage pimples.
deowll
<richard...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1150390238.7...@p79g2000cwp.googlegroups.com...
So for as I can tell the Asian population that left africa first and the
various waves that followed have all left a few traces in human genes. Some
populations may still have gone extinct. That being the case I don't even go
anywhere near the bottle neck idea.
Day Brown
finding the trail of an elephant in the jungle, and when he caught up
with it, stabbed it in a back thigh with his little 3foot spear. Then he
quickly climbed a tree to get out of the way of a very pissed elephant.
But, eventually, the elephant wore out, and went on his way, with the
spear still in him. The pygmi just kept on tracking him. Five days
later, the elephant keeled over from septicemia. He went back to his
village, and they moved the whole village there to eat the elephant.
It occurs to me, that it would have been ritual for all the hunters to
take a turn sticking the elephant, and thereby unknowingly inoculating
their own weapons with strep, or whatever the bacteria was.
Inevitably, some Neanderthal would have stuck a spear in a megafauna
that already was slowed down with some infection, and thereby have the
same kind of thing happen. Only on the tundra, when dogs were added to
the mix, it wouldda got gonzo easier to track a wounded beast.
But yes, the whole idea of HNS and HSS cooperating, and what's worse,
trying to inbreed, draws lotsa flack. I've had fun shooting it down.
rmacfarl
pete wrote:
...
> > > I wonder what gave Homo erectus The Travel Bug?
>
Hunger!
A learned ability to access new sources of food leads to increased
survival of individuals within a population, which then leads to
increasing population, until a) the newly accessed resource is
exhausted beyond the point where it becomes limiting to growth of the
population, or b) another new food source is found, or c) a portion of
the population moves off to access food sources in a different
location.
Behold: human history in a sentence...
Ross Macfarlane
P.S. Note to neo-cons: c) is no longer an option.
Ref.: Malthus, T. ibid.
richard...@yahoo.com
Ross, your last note suggests you feel somewhat the same about neo-cons
as I do, but I feel a bit more, because I was 'impacted' by them
directly and personally a decade ago, when the same little gang advised
Binyamin Net and Yahoo and made him prime minister of Israel.
That's politics and nothing to do with this forum.
As for your message:
" A learned ability to access new sources of food leads to increased
survival of individuals within a population, which then leads to
increasing population'
- pure Lamarckianism - good for you, but a bit passe now.
a) the newly accessed resource is exhausted beyond the point where it
becomes limiting to growth of the population
b) another new food source is found
c) a portion of the population moves off to access food sources in a
different
location.
This is a fine summary of the fix that early humans, if they found
themselves in a zone of dry grass, fast-moving antelopes, a lot of
nasty big predators, precious little drinking water, and a vegetable
diet buried 4ft deep, might think about,
They headed off to the coast.
Don't you do the same on a hot, dry, Saturday afternoon?
regards
Richard