Michael Bolus

Pleistocene Mitochondrial Genomes Suggest a Single Major Dispersal of Non-Africans and a Late Glacial Population Turnover in Europe

How modern humans dispersed into Eurasia and Australasia, including the number of separate expansions and their timings, is highly debated [1, 2]. Two categories of models are proposed for the dispersal of non-Africans: (1) single dispersal, i.e., a single major diffusion of modern humans across Eurasia and Australasia [3-5]; and (2) multiple dispersal, i.e., additional earlier population expansions that may have contributed to the genetic diversity of some present-day humans outside of Africa [6-9]. Many variants of these models focus largely on Asia and Australasia, neglecting human dispersal into Europe, thus explaining only a subset of the entire colonization process outside of Africa [3-5, 8, 9]. The genetic diversity of the first modern humans who spread into Europe during the Late Pleistocene and the impact of subsequent climatic events on their demography are largely unknown. Here we analyze 55 complete human mitochondrial genomes (mtDNAs) of hunter-gatherers spanning ∼35,000 years of European prehistory. We unexpectedly find mtDNA lineage M in individuals prior to the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). This lineage is absent in contemporary Europeans, although it is found at high frequency in modern Asians, Australasians, and Native Americans. Dating the most recent common ancestor of each of the modern non-African mtDNA clades reveals their single, late, and rapid dispersal less than 55,000 years ago. Demographic modeling not only indicates an LGM genetic bottleneck, but also provides surprising evidence of a major population turnover in Europe around 14,500 years ago during the Late Glacial, a period of climatic instability at the end of the Pleistocene.

Radiocarbon dating the late Middle Paleolithic and the Aurignacian of the Swabian Jura

Many lines of evidence point to the period between roughly 40 and 30 ka BP as the period in which modern humans arrived in Europe and displaced the indigenous Neandertal populations. At the same time, many innovations associated with the Upper Paleolithic--including new stone and organic technologies, use of personal ornaments, figurative art, and musical instruments--are first documented in the European archaeological record. Dating the events of this period is challenging for several reasons. In the period about six to seven radiocarbon half-lives ago, variable preservation, pre-treatment, and sample preparation can easily lead to a lack of reproducibility between samples and laboratories. A range of biological, cultural, and geological processes can lead to mixing of archaeological strata and their contents. Additionally, some data sets point to this period as a time of significant spikes in levels of atmospheric radiocarbon. This paper assesses these questions in the context of the well-excavated and intensively studied caves of Geissenklösterle and Hohle Fels in the Swabian Jura of southwestern Germany. We conclude that variable atmospheric radiocarbon production contributes to the problems of dating the late Middle Paleolithic and the early Upper Paleolithic. To help establish a reliable chronology for the Swabian Aurignacian, we are beginning to focus our dating program on short-lived, stratigraphically secure features to see if they yield reproducible results. This approach may help to test competing explanations for the noisy and often non-reproducible results that arise when trying to date the transition from the Middle to the Upper Paleolithic.

Tracing Group Identity in Early Upper Paleolithic Stone and Organic Tools – Some Thoughts and Many Questions

While discussions about identity in the Upper Paleolithic usually focus on art, decorated objects, and personal ornaments, regarding style as one crucial topic, organic tools and especially stone artifacts have been considered to a much lesser degree. This paper tries to assess the significance of stone and organic tools, representing the most common archaeological record beyond art and ornaments, for establishing group identity in the early Upper Paleolithic. It starts providing a short overview of some major contributions addressing style with regard to stone artifacts and then screens the archaeological record. Problems result from the lack of an unambiguous definition of ‘style’ and from the lack of applicable parameters to decide whether differences between tools have to be interpreted in terms of different styles or rather in terms of different types. In both cases it is not clear if and in which way identity is conveyed. Both stone and organic tools appear to be weak indicators for group identity and even with data added by other artifact categories such as personal ornaments, decorated objects and art objects the chance of getting positive results is rated to be rather low for the early Upper Paleolithic.

The Nature of Culture

T book is the result of an interdisciplinary symposium held in 2011 to explore the role that culture played in early human expansions. The symposium had two goals: first, to develop a unified theory of cultural evolution from data collected from great apes, sea mammals, and birds; and, second, to examine the nature of culture as defined by the social sciences and humanities. The evolution of cultural behavior is ultimately presented in terms of information flow, using individual ontogeny, archaeology, and ethology. The results are presented in twelve chapters, written almost exclusively by scholars from Europe, Israel, South Africa, and Australia. The editors summarize the major points in each chapter in an introduction that also presents the symposium’s contentious debate and final model of cultural evolution and intensification in cultural capacities—the EECC model. It is irritating that this acronym is nowhere explicitly defined in the book. It stands for the Evolution and Expansion of Cultural Capacities, and is further explicated in Haidle et al. (2015). The model is illustrated in Figure 1.2. Eight grades of cultural evolution are spread across two dimensions—a dimension of evolutionary biology and a dimension of history and sociality. The four lower grades (social information, social learning, traditions, and basic cultural) exist in some animal species, and are documented by ethological data. The four higher grades (modular, composite, complementary [solving a problem with a new concept], and notional [dealing with abstract concepts]) exist in hominins, and are documented by archaeological data. The scheme is not hierarchical, because the grades can exist simultaneously, and do not inevitably replace each other, as they did in nineteenth century schemes of human cultural evolution, such as that of Lewis Henry Morgan, for example (Morgan 1877). In addition, the model is meant to account for disjunction between actual behavior displayed (performance) and potential capacity for that behavior. Haidle’s chapter discusses Tasmanian culture in the late eighteenth century, which, in the early twentieth century, was compared to that of Mousterian people, and, in the late twentieth century, was compared to that of common chimpanzees. It is estimated that less than 10,000 Tasmanians existed at the time of European contact. These people were organized into 9 endogamous tribes, separated into 48–80 local bands of about 30–50 people each. There were 12 languages, divided into 5 distinct clusters. Material culture was the most primitive recorded by ethnographic evidence. Archaeology apparently documents that major cultural elements (the eating of marine fish, bone points, and the ability to make fire) had been lost, although Haidle observes that the loss of fire-making is based on sparse evidence, and that the ability to transport fire would have been very practical in the rainy Tasmanian climate, which would make starting fire very difficult. Haidle uses the distance between identification of a problem and its solution (the “problem-solution distance”) of Wolfgang Köhler that was developed in the early twentieth century as the protocol for examining cultural complexity. Köhler used this protocol to study the mentality of apes. Haidle offers no practical scheme for translating archaeological data into different stages of the problem-solution distance. Köhler’s chimpanzee investigations unfortunately taint Haidle’s later critique of the use of wild common chimpanzees to examine Tasmanian culture. Haidle extensively analyzes William McGrew’s comparison of Tasmanian behavior to that of wild common chimpanzees. She comments that McGrew deals only with food procurement behavior. Even so, she notes that McGrew left out Tasmanian stone knives and eight additional items. She further describes how stone tool assemblages increased in complexity and incorporated exotic lithic raw materials, even though fish-eating and firemaking were lost. Haidle concludes that the Tasmanians did not suffer from deteriorating mental abilities, even if their material culture became less complex. Gerhardt’s chapter is a philosophical discussion of why culture is not distinct from nature. He considers technology to be the vital element that organizes nature into culture. Whiten discusses the pre-hominin foundation of human culture by focusing on the great apes, particularly common chimpanzees. Whiten wrongly claims (p. 33) that common chimpanzees make and use a greater variety of tools than any other non-human animal. Capuchin monkeys and corvid birds rival, if not trump, chimpanzees. Although Whiten recognizes that social learning and traditions are widely distributed in the animal world, he argues that a basal great ape capacity for culture existed at 16–14 mya. The relative paucity of traditions in gorillas and bonobos must then be explained. The emphasis on common chimpanzees ignores the fact that Japanese primatologists have accumulated over sixty years of evidence for multiple innovations and traditions among Japanese macaques. And New World tufted capuchins naturally exhibit the greatest evidence of tool use among living non-human primates. Because com-

Chronicling modern human’s arrival in Europe

Dental remains elucidate the demise of the Neandertals [Also see Report by Benazzi et al.] The Aurignacian, named after the type site of Aurignac in southern France, is the best known cultural group associated with the spread of modern humans across Europe between about 45,000 and 35,000 years ago. The Protoaurignacian is a cultural group that is well represented in southern Europe and has long been viewed as a precursor of the Aurignacian. On page 793 in this issue, Benazzi et al. (1) use both morphological arguments and ancient DNA to show that two incisors from Protoaurignacian layers at Grotta di Fumane and Riparo Bombrini in Italy are from modern humans and not Neandertals. These results confirm that modern humans were the makers of the Protoaurignacian and thereby help to plot the spread of modern humans across Europe. This process is closely associated with the demise and ultimate extinction of the indigenous Neandertal populations.

The Nature of Culture: Research Goals and New Directions

How do we define and deal with culture? Paleolithic archaeologists view even the crudest human-made stone tools as material expression of cultural behavior.

The Gravettian calvaria from Mollet III cave (Serinyà, Northeastern Iberian Peninsula)

The Mollet III cave is situated in the vicinity of Serinya and is very close to the important Palaeolithic caves of Reclau Viver, Mollet, Pau and Arbreda. All of these sites are concentrated along a travertine cliff, only a few metres apart from each other (Fig. 1). Mollet III cave should not be confused with the adjacent site of Mollet (sometimes also referred to as Mollet I), in which an archaic human molar dated to MIS 7 was found (Maroto et al., 2012). The dimensions and exact geomorphology of Mollet III are presently uncertain because the cave has never been totally excavated and its roof is partially collapsed. The first archaeological research began on September 30, 1972, and concluded shortly afterwards on November 24, 1972. The excavation was carried out under the leadership of J.M. Corominas, a medical doctor living in the nearby city of Banyoles. Corominas was an experienced amateur prehistorian who had previously examined all of the above-mentioned sites.