Anatomically modern humans (i.e. Homo sapiens) are believed to have emerged in Africa around 300,000 years ago. It has been argued by some that their ways of life changed relatively little from that of archaic humans of the Middle Paleolithic,[2] until about 50,000 years ago, when there was a marked increase in the diversity of artefacts found associated with modern human remains.
This period coincides with the most common date assigned to expansion of modern humans from Africa throughout Asia and Eurasia, which contributed to the extinction of the Neanderthals.
The Upper Paleolithic has the earliest known evidence of organized settlements, in the form of campsites, some with storage pits. Artistic work blossomed, with cave painting, petroglyphs, carvings and engravings on bone or ivory. The first evidence of human fishing is also found, from artefacts in places such as Blombos caveinSouth Africa. More complex social groupings emerged, supported by more varied and reliable food sources and specialized tool types. This probably contributed to increasing group identification or ethnicity.[3]
Both Homo erectus and Neanderthals used the same crude stone tools. Archaeologist Richard G. Klein, who has worked extensively on ancient stone tools, describes the stone tool kit of archaic hominids as impossible to categorize. He argues that almost everywhere, whether Asia, Africa or Europe, before 50,000 years ago all the stone tools are much alike and unsophisticated.
Firstly among the artefacts of Africa, archeologists found they could differentiate and classify those of less than 50,000 years into many different categories, such as projectile points, engraving tools, knife blades, and drilling and piercing tools. These new stone-tool types have been described as being distinctly differentiated from each other; each tool had a specific purpose. The early modern humans who expanded into Europe, commonly referred to as the Cro-Magnons, left many sophisticated stone tools, carved and engraved pieces on bone, ivory and antler, cave paintings and Venus figurines.[4][5][1]
The Neanderthals continued to use Mousterian stone tool technology and possibly Châtelperronian technology. These tools disappeared from the archeological record at around the same time the Neanderthals themselves disappeared from the fossil record, about 40,000 cal BP.[6]
Stone core for making fine blades, Boqer Tachtit, Negev, Israel, circa 40,000 BP
Settlements were often located in narrow valley bottoms, possibly associated with hunting of passing herds of animals. Some of them may have been occupied year round, though more commonly they appear to have been used seasonally; people moved between the sites to exploit different food sources at different times of the year. Hunting was important, and caribou/wild reindeer "may well be the species of single greatest importance in the entire anthropological literature on hunting".[7]
The changes in human behavior have been attributed to changes in climate, encompassing a number of global temperature drops. These led to a worsening of the already bitter cold of the last glacial period (popularly but incorrectly called the last ice age). Such changes may have reduced the supply of usable timber and forced people to look at other materials. In addition, flint becomes brittle at low temperatures and may not have functioned as a tool.
Art of Lascaux, with painted animal, and four dots, a possible notation for Lunar months[9]
Some notational signs, used next to images of animals, may have appeared as early as the Upper Palaeolithic in Europe circa 35,000 BCE, and may be the earliest proto-writing: several symbols were used in combination as a way to convey seasonal behavioural information about hunted animals.[9] Lines (|) and dots (•) were apparently used interchangeably to denote lunar months, while the (Y) sign apparently signified "To give birth". These characters were seemingly combined to convey the breeding period of hunted animals.[9]
The Upper Paleolithic covered the second half of the Last glacial period from 50,000 to 10,000 before present, until the warming of the Holocene. Ice core data from Antarctica and Greenland.
The climate of the period in Europe saw dramatic changes, and included the Last Glacial Maximum, the coldest phase of the last glacial period, which lasted from about 26.5 to 19 kya, being coldest at the end, before relatively rapid warming (all dates vary somewhat for different areas, and in different studies). During the Maximum, most of Northern Europe was covered by an ice-sheet, forcing human populations into the areas known as Last Glacial Maximum refugia, including modern Italy and the Balkans, parts of the Iberian Peninsula and areas around the Black Sea.
This period saw cultures such as the Solutrean in France and Spain. Human life may have continued on top of the ice sheet, but we know next to nothing about it, and very little about the human life that preceded the European glaciers. In the early part of the period, up to about 30 kya, the Mousterian Pluvial made northern Africa, including the Sahara, well-watered and with lower temperatures than today; after the end of the Pluvial the Sahara became arid.
The Last Glacial Maximum was followed by the Allerød oscillation, a warm and moist global interstadial that occurred around 13.5 to 13.8 kya. Then there was a very rapid onset, perhaps within as little as a decade, of the cold and dry Younger Dryas climate period, giving sub-arctic conditions to much of northern Europe.
The Preboreal rise in temperatures also began sharply around 10.3 kya, and by its end around 9.0 kya had brought temperatures nearly to present day levels, although the climate was wetter.[citation needed]
This period saw the Upper Paleolithic give way to the start of the following Mesolithic cultural period.
As the glaciers receded sea levels rose; the English Channel, Irish Sea and North Sea were land at this time, and the Black Sea a fresh-water lake. In particular the Atlantic coastline was initially far out to sea in modern terms in most areas, though the Mediterranean coastline has retreated far less, except in the north of the Adriatic and the Aegean. The rise in sea levels continued until at least 7.5 kya (5500 BC), so evidence of human activity along Europe's coasts in the Upper Paleolithic is mostly lost, though some traces have been recovered by fishing boats and marine archaeology, especially from Doggerland, the lost area beneath the North Sea.[citation needed]
Known archaeological remains in Europe and Africa of anatomically modern humans: directly dated, calibrated carbon dates as of 2013[10]Layer sequence at Ksar Akil in the Levantine corridor, and discovery of two fossils of Homo sapiens, dated to 40,800 to 39,200 years BP for "Egbert",[11]and 42,400–41,700 BP for "Ethelruda"[11]
Numerous Aboriginal stone tools were found in gravel sediments in Castlereagh, Sydney, Australia. At first when these results were new they were controversial; more recently dating of the same strata has revised and corroborated these dates.[12][13]
Earliest evidence of modern humans found in Europe, in Southern Italy.[19] These are indirectly dated.[20]
Earliest mathematical artifact, the notched Lebombo bone, a possible tally stick or lunar calendar, dated to 44,000–43,000 BP in Eswatini (Swaziland), southern Africa.[21]
Oldest-known mining in archaeological record, the Ngwenya Mine in Swaziland, at about 43,000 years ago, where humans mined hematite to make the red pigment ochre.[22][23]
Notational signs in caves, apparently conveying calendaric meaning about the behaviour of animal species drawn next to them, are the first known (proto-)writing in history (see above).[28][9]
Most of the giant vertebrates and megafauna in Australia became extinct.
Examples of cave art in Spain are dated from around 40,000 BP, making them the oldest examples of cave art yet discovered in Europe (see: Caves of Nerja). Scientists theorise that the paintings may have been made by Neanderthals, rather than by modern humans.[29][30]
Wall painting with horses, rhinoceroses and aurochs is made at Chauvet Cave, Vallon-Pont-d'Arc, Ardéche gorge, France. Discovered in December 1994.
Evidence for continued Neanderthal presence in the Iberian Peninsula at 37,000 years ago was published in 2017.[31]
Artifacts suggests early human activity occurred at some point in Canberra, Australia.[39] Archaeological evidence of settlement in the region includes inhabited rock shelters, rock art, burial places, camps and quarry sites, and stone tools and arrangements.[40]
Last Glacial Maximum. Mean sea levels are believed to be 110 to 120 metres (360 to 390 ft) lower than present,[41] with the direct implication that many coastal and lower riverine valley archaeological sites of interest are today under water.
The Châtelperronian culture was located around central and south western France, and northern Spain. It appears to be derived from the Mousterian culture, and represents the period of overlap between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. This culture lasted from approximately 45,000 BP to 40,000 BP.[6]
The Aurignacian culture was located in Europe and south west Asia, and flourished between 43,000 and 26,000 BP. It may have been contemporary with the Périgordian (a contested grouping of the earlier Châtelperronian and later Gravettian cultures).
The Gravettian culture was located across Europe. Gravettian sites generally date between 33,000 and 20,000 BP.
The Solutrean culture was located in eastern France, Spain, and England. Solutrean artifacts have been dated c. 22,000 to 17,000 BP.
The Magdalenian culture left evidence from Portugal to Poland during the period from 17,000 to 12,000 BP.
Gilman, Antonio (1996). "Explaining the Upper Palaeolithic Revolution". Pp. 220–239 (Chap. 8) in Contemporary Archaeology in Theory: A Reader. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
^Gilman, Antonio. 1996. "Explaining the Upper Palaeolithic Revolution". pp. 220–239 (Chap. 8) in Contemporary Archaeology in Theory: A Reader. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell
^"In North America and Eurasia the species has long been an important resource—in many areas the most important resource—for peoples' inhabiting the northern boreal forest and tundra regions. Known human dependence on caribou/wild reindeer has a long history, beginning in the Middle Pleistocene (Banfield 1961:170; Kurtén 1968:170) and continuing to the present. ... The caribou/wild reindeer is thus an animal that has been a major resource for humans throughout a tremendous geographic area and across a time span of tens of thousands of years." Ernest S. Burch, Jr. "The Caribou/Wild Reindeer as a Human Resource", American Antiquity, Vol. 37, No. 3 (July 1972), pp. 339–368.
^Backwell, L; d'Errico, F; Wadley, L (2008). "Middle Stone Age bone tools from the Howiesons Poort layers, Sibudu Cave, South Africa". Journal of Archaeological Science. 35 (6): 1566–1580. Bibcode:2008JArSc..35.1566B. doi:10.1016/j.jas.2007.11.006.
^Lombard M, Phillips L (2010). "Indications of bow and stone-tipped arrow use 64,000 years ago in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa". Antiquity. 84 (325): 635–648. doi:10.1017/S0003598X00100134. S2CID162438490.
^Lombard M (2011). "Quartz-tipped arrows older than 60 ka: further use-trace evidence from Sibudu, Kwa-Zulu-Natal, South Africa". Journal of Archaeological Science. 38 (8): 1918–1930. Bibcode:2011JArSc..38.1918L. doi:10.1016/j.jas.2011.04.001.
^Bowdler, Sandra. "Human settlement". In Denoon, D. (ed.). The Cambridge History of the Pacific Islanders. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. pp. 41–50. Cited in Bowdler, Sandra. "The Pleistocene Pacific". University of Western Australia. Archived from the original on 16 February 2008. Retrieved 26 February 2008.
^Isabel Ellender and Peter Christiansen, People of the Merri Merri. The Wurundjeri in Colonial Days, Merri Creek Management Committee, 2001 ISBN0-9577728-0-7
^Gary Presland, The First Residents of Melbourne's Western Region (revised edition), Harriland Press, 1997. ISBN0-646-33150-7. Presland says on page 1: "There is some evidence to show that people were living in the Maribyrnong River valley, near present day Keilor, about 40,000 years ago."
^Flood, J. M.; David, B.; Magee, J.; English, B. (1987), "Birrigai: a Pleistocene site in the south eastern highlands", Archaeology in Oceania, 22: 9–22, doi:10.1002/j.1834-4453.1987.tb00159.x
^Gillespie, Lyall (1984). Aborigines of the Canberra Region. Canberra: Wizard (Lyall Gillespie). pp. 1–25. ISBN978-0-9590255-0-7.
^M. Mirazón Lahr et al., "Inter-group violence among early Holocene hunter-gatherers of West Turkana, Kenya", Nature 529, 394–398 (21 January 2016), doi:10.1038/nature16477.
"Here we report on a case of inter-group violence towards a group of hunter-gatherers from Nataruk, west of Lake Turkana ... Ten of the twelve articulated skeletons found at Nataruk show evidence of having died violently at the edge of a lagoon, into which some of the bodies fell. The remains ... offer a rare glimpse into the life and death of past foraging people, and evidence that warfare was part of the repertoire of inter-group relations among prehistoric hunter-gatherers."
"Evidence of a prehistoric massacre extends the history of warfare". University of Cambridge. 20 Jan 2016. Retrieved 20 Mar 2017..
For early depiction of interpersonal violence in rock art see:
Taçon, Paul; Chippindale, Christopher (October 1994). "Australia's Ancient Warriors: Changing Depictions of Fighting in the Rock Art of Arnhem Land, N.T.". Cambridge Archaeological Journal. 4 (2): 211–48. doi:10.1017/S0959774300001086. S2CID162983574..
^Mulvaney, D J and White, Peter, 1987, Australians to 1788, Fairfax, Syme & Weldon, Sydney
^Gary Presland, Aboriginal Melbourne: The Lost Land of the Kulin People, Harriland Press (1985), Second edition 1994, ISBN0-9577004-2-3. This book describes in some detail the archaeological evidence regarding aboriginal life, culture, food gathering and land management, particularly the period from the flooding of Bass Strait and Port Phillip from about 7–10,000 years ago, up to the European colonisation in the nineteenth century.
^Dousset, Laurent (2005). "Daruk". AusAnthrop Australian Aboriginal tribal database. Archived from the original on April 9, 2011. Retrieved 27 August 2012.
