ORCID Profile
0000-0002-4403-7548
Current Organisation
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
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Archaeological science | Archaeology | Archaeology of Asia Africa and the Americas |
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 20-04-2023
DOI: 10.1038/S43247-023-00784-8
Abstract: Investigation of Homo sapiens ’ palaeogeographic expansion into African mountain environments are changing the understanding of our species’ adaptions to various extreme Pleistocene climates and habitats. Here, we present a vegetation and precipitation record from the Ha Makotoko rockshelter in western Lesotho, which extends from ~60,000 to 1,000 years ago. Stable carbon isotope ratios from plant wax biomarkers indicate a constant C 3 -dominated ecosystem up to about 5,000 years ago, followed by C 4 grassland expansion due to increasing Holocene temperatures. Hydrogen isotope ratios indicate a drier, yet stable, Pleistocene and Early Holocene compared to a relatively wet Late Holocene. Although relatively cool and dry, the Pleistocene was ecologically reliable due to generally uniform precipitation amounts, which incentivized persistent habitation because of dependable freshwater reserves that supported rich terrestrial foods and provided prime locations for catching fish.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 10-2020
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 07-03-2022
Abstract: Oceania is a key region for studying human dispersals, adaptations and interactions with other hominin populations. Although archaeological evidence now reveals occupation of the region by approximately 65–45 000 years ago, its human fossil record, which has the best potential to provide direct insights into ecological adaptations and population relationships, has remained much more elusive. Here, we apply radiocarbon dating and stable isotope approaches to the earliest human remains so far excavated on the islands of Near and Remote Oceania to explore the chronology and diets of the first preserved human in iduals to step across these Pacific frontiers. We demonstrate that the oldest human (or indeed hominin) fossil outside of the mainland New Guinea-Aru area dates to approximately 11 800 years ago. Furthermore, although these early sea-faring populations have been associated with a specialized coastal adaptation, we show that Late Pleistocene–Holocene humans living on islands in the Bismarck Archipelago and in Vanuatu display a persistent reliance on interior tropical forest resources. We argue that local tropical habitats, rather than purely coasts or, later, arriving domesticates, should be emphasized in discussions of human diets and cultural practices from the onset of our species' arrival in this part of the world. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Tropical forests in the deep human past’.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 10-06-2021
DOI: 10.1038/S41559-021-01474-4
Abstract: It has been suggested that Iberian arrival in the Americas in 1492 and subsequent dramatic depopulation led to forest regrowth that had global impacts on atmospheric CO 2 concentrations and surface temperatures. Despite tropical forests representing the most important terrestrial carbon stock globally, systematic examination of historical afforestation in these habitats in the Neotropics is lacking. Additionally, there has been no assessment of similar depopulation–afforestation dynamics in other parts of the global tropics that were incorporated into the Spanish Empire. Here, we compile and semi-quantitatively analyse pollen records from the regions claimed by the Spanish in the Atlantic and Pacific to provide pan-tropical insights into European colonial impacts on forest dynamics. Our results suggest that periods of afforestation over the past millennium varied across space and time and depended on social, economic and biogeographic contexts. We argue that this reveals the unequal and ergent origins of the Anthropocene as a socio-political and biophysical process, highlighting the need for higher-resolution, targeted analyses to fully elucidate pre-colonial and colonial era human–tropical landscape interactions.
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 07-03-2022
Abstract: Some of the earliest evidence for the presence of modern humans in rainforests has come from the fossil deposits of Lida Ajer in Sumatra. Two human teeth from this cave were estimated to be 73–63 thousand years old, which is significantly older than some estimates of modern human migration out of Africa based on genetic data. The deposits were interpreted as being associated with a rainforest environment based largely on the presence of abundant orangutan fossils. As well as the main fossil-bearing chamber, fossil-bearing passages are present below a sinkhole, although the relationship between the different fossil deposits has only been tenuously established. Here, we provide significant new sedimentological, geochronological and palaeoecological data aimed at reconstructing the speleological and environmental history of the cave and the clastic and fossil deposits therein. Our data suggest that the Lida Ajer fossils were deposited during Marine Isotope Stage 4, with fossils from the lower passages older than the main fossil chamber. Our use of stable carbon and oxygen isotope analyses of mammalian tooth enamel demonstrates that early humans probably occupied a closed-canopy forest very similar to those present in the region today, although the fossil orangutans may have occupied a slightly different niche. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Tropical forests in the deep human past’.
Publisher: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Date: 07-04-2014
Abstract: Mammalian extinction during the past several hundred thousand years has been a major focus for evolutionary biologists, geologists, and archaeologists, often being linked to climate change and human overhunting. Until relatively recently, study has been largely restricted to the Americas, Europe, and Australasia. We present the oldest well-dated sequence of mammalian faunas for the Indian subcontinent, demonstrating continuity of 20 of 21 identified mammals from at least 100,000 y ago to the present. We suggest that, although local extirpations occurred, the majority of taxa survived or adapted to substantial ecological pressures in fragmented habitats. These results complement data from Africa and elsewhere that demonstrate the necessity of a nuanced ecological understanding of such extinctions in different areas of the world.
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Date: 24-03-2021
Abstract: Megafaunal extinctions are recurring events that cause evolutionary ripples, as cascades of secondary extinctions and shifting selective pressures reshape ecosystems. Megafaunal browsers and grazers are major ecosystem engineers, they: keep woody vegetation suppressed are nitrogen cyclers and serve as seed dispersers. Most angiosperms possess sets of physiological traits that allow for the fixation of mutualisms with megafauna some of these traits appear to serve as exaptation (preadaptation) features for farming. As an easily recognized ex le, fleshy fruits are, an exaptation to agriculture, as they evolved to recruit a non-human disperser. We hypothesize that the traits of rapid annual growth, self-compatibility, heavy investment in reproduction, high plasticity (wide reaction norms), and rapid evolvability were part of an adaptive syndrome for megafaunal seed dispersal. We review the evolutionary importance that megafauna had for crop and weed progenitors and discuss possible ramifications of their extinction on: (1) seed dispersal (2) population dynamics and (3) habitat loss. Humans replaced some of the ecological services that had been lost as a result of late Quaternary extinctions and drove rapid evolutionary change resulting in domestication.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 12-05-2015
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 05-2017
DOI: 10.1016/J.JHEVOL.2017.01.015
Abstract: Sri Lanka has yielded some of the earliest dated fossil evidence for Homo sapiens (∼38-35,000 cal. years BP [calibrated years before present]) in South Asia, within a region that is today covered by tropical rainforest. Archaeozoological and archaeobotanical evidence indicates that these hunter-gatherers exploited tropical forest resources, yet the contribution of these resources to their overall subsistence strategies has, as in other Late Pleistocene rainforest settings, remained relatively unexplored. We build on previous work in this tropical region by applying both bulk and sequential stable carbon and oxygen isotope analysis to human and faunal tooth enamel from the sites of Batadomba-lena, Fa Hien-lena, and Balangoda Kuragala. Tooth enamel preservation was assessed by means of Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy. We use these data to produce a detailed stable isotope ecology for Late Pleistocene-Holocene foragers in Sri Lanka from ∼36-29,000 to 3000 cal. years BP, allowing us to test the degree of human tropical forest resource reliance over a considerable time period. Given that non-human primates dominate the mammalian assemblages at these sites, we also focus on the stable isotope composition of three monkey species in order to study their ecological preferences and, indirectly, human hunting strategies. The results confirm a strong human reliance on tropical forest resources from ∼36-29,000 cal. years BP until the Iron Age ∼3 cal. years BP, while sequential tooth data show that forest resources were exploited year-round. This strategy was maintained through periods of evident environmental change at the Last Glacial Maximum and upon the arrival of agriculture. Long-term tropical forest reliance was supported by the specialised capture of non-human primates, although the isotopic data revealed no evidence for niche distinction between the hunted species. We conclude that humans rapidly developed a specialisation in the exploitation of South Asia's tropical forests following their arrival in this region.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 06-2015
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 23-02-2023
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 29-04-2020
DOI: 10.1038/S41467-020-15969-4
Abstract: The resource-poor, isolated islands of Wallacea have been considered a major adaptive obstacle for hominins expanding into Australasia. Archaeological evidence has hinted that coastal adaptations in Homo sapiens enabled rapid island dispersal and settlement however, there has been no means to directly test this proposition. Here, we apply stable carbon and oxygen isotope analysis to human and faunal tooth enamel from six Late Pleistocene to Holocene archaeological sites across Wallacea. The results demonstrate that the earliest human forager found in the region c . 42,000 years ago made significant use of coastal resources prior to subsequent niche ersification shown for later in iduals. We argue that our data provides clear insights into the huge adaptive flexibility of our species, including its ability to specialize in the use of varied environments, particularly in comparison to other hominin species known from Island Southeast Asia.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 09-08-2021
DOI: 10.1002/EVAN.21921
Abstract: Plant wax biomarkers are an innovative proxy for reconstructing vegetation composition and structure, rainfall intensity, temperature, and other climatic and environmental dynamics. Traditionally used in earth sciences and climate studies from “off‐site” ocean and lake records, biomarker research is now incorporated in archeology and paleoanthropology to answer questions relating to past human‐environment interactions and human evolution. Biomarker research is generating new and exciting information on the ecological context in which Homo and its closest relatives evolved, adapted, and invented stone tool technologies. In this review, we examine plant wax biomarkers and their use in reconstructing past plant landscapes and hydroclimates. We summarize the applications of plant wax molecular proxies in archeological research, assess challenges relating to taphonomy, consider the role of modern plant ecosystems in interpreting ancient habitats, and examine case studies conducted at key paleoanthropological locations in eastern and southern Africa and Europe.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 14-09-2020
Publisher: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Date: 03-05-2021
Abstract: We provide global assessment of the possible link between Pleistocene hominin arrival and island extinction. The existing records on islands around the world do not support a significant and detrimental impact on island biotas following island colonization prior to the Holocene. This suggests that models using island extinctions as evidence in support of anthropogenic megafaunal overhunting, or as extensions of continental-level extinctions, need to be reconsidered.
Publisher: Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Date: 02-02-2023
DOI: 10.1371/JOURNAL.PONE.0280347
Abstract: Human responses to climate change have long been at the heart of discussions of past economic, social, and political change in the Nile Valley of northeastern Africa. Following the arrival of Neolithic groups in the 6 th millennium BCE, the Northern Dongola Reach of Upper Nubia witnessed a cultural florescence manifested through elaborate funerary traditions. However, despite the wealth of archaeological data available from funerary contexts, including evidence for domesticated animals and plants as grave goods, the paucity of stratified habitation contexts hinders interpretation of local subsistence trajectories. While it is recognised archaeologically that, against the backdrop of increasing environmental deterioration, the importance of agriculture based on Southwest Asian winter cereals increased throughout the Kerma period (2500–1450 BCE), the contribution of domesticated cereals to earlier Neolithic herding economies remains unclear. This paper presents direct dietary data from a total of 55 Middle Neolithic and Kerma period in iduals from Kadruka 21 and Kadruka 1. Microbotanical data obtained from human dental calculus and grave sediments are integrated with human and faunal stable isotopes to explore changes in dietary breadth over time. The combined results demonstrate the consumption of wild plant species, including C 4 wetland adapted grasses, by Middle Neolithic in iduals at Kadruka 1. Despite existing evidence for domesticated barley in associated graves, the results obtained in this study provide no clear evidence for the routine consumption of domesticated cereals by Middle Neolithic in iduals. Rather, direct microparticle evidence for the consumption of Triticeae cereals is only associated with a single Kerma period in idual and corresponds with an isotopic shift indicating a greater contribution of C 3 -derived resources to diet. These results provide evidence for Neolithic dietary flexibility in Upper Nubia through the persistence of foraging activities and support existing evidence linking increased agricultural reliance to the development of the Kerma culture.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 06-03-2019
DOI: 10.1038/S41598-019-39959-9
Abstract: Elemental analysis of biogeochemical archives is an established technique used to study climate in a range of applications, including ocean circulation, glacial/interglacial climates, and anthropogenic climate change. Data from mollusc archives are especially important because of their global abundance and sub-annual resolution. Despite this potential, they are underrepresented among palaeoclimate studies, due to enigmatic physiological influences skewing the elemental record. Understanding the patterns behind these influences will improve data interpretation and lead to the development of new climate proxies. Here, we show for the first time that extensive spatial mapping of multiple mollusc specimens using Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) across a wider region can resolve enigmatic patterns within the elemental record caused by physiological influences. 2D elemental (Mg/Ca) maps of whole limpet shells (Patella caerulea) from across the Mediterranean revealed patterns of variability within in idual mollusc records as well as within isochronous parts of specimens. By registering and quantifying these patterns, we established previously uninterpretable correlations with temperature (R 2 0.8, p 0.01). This outcome redefines the possibilities of accessing sub-annual climate proxies and presents the means to assess annual temperature ranges using oxygen isotope analysis requiring only 2 s les per shell.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 10-11-2021
DOI: 10.1038/S41586-021-04108-8
Abstract: The origin and early dispersal of speakers of Transeurasian languages—that is, Japanese, Korean, Tungusic, Mongolic and Turkic—is among the most disputed issues of Eurasian population history 1–3 . A key problem is the relationship between linguistic dispersals, agricultural expansions and population movements 4,5 . Here we address this question by ‘triangulating’ genetics, archaeology and linguistics in a unified perspective. We report wide-ranging datasets from these disciplines, including a comprehensive Transeurasian agropastoral and basic vocabulary an archaeological database of 255 Neolithic–Bronze Age sites from Northeast Asia and a collection of ancient genomes from Korea, the Ryukyu islands and early cereal farmers in Japan, complementing previously published genomes from East Asia. Challenging the traditional ‘pastoralist hypothesis’ 6–8 , we show that the common ancestry and primary dispersals of Transeurasian languages can be traced back to the first farmers moving across Northeast Asia from the Early Neolithic onwards, but that this shared heritage has been masked by extensive cultural interaction since the Bronze Age. As well as marking considerable progress in the three in idual disciplines, by combining their converging evidence we show that the early spread of Transeurasian speakers was driven by agriculture.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 29-10-2018
DOI: 10.1038/S41559-018-0698-9
Abstract: Despite its largely hyper-arid and inhospitable climate today, the Arabian Peninsula is emerging as an important area for investigating Pleistocene hominin dispersals. Recently, a member of our own species was found in northern Arabia dating to ca. 90 ka, while stone tools and fossil finds have hinted at an earlier, middle Pleistocene, hominin presence. However, there remain few direct insights into Pleistocene environments, and associated hominin adaptations, that accompanied the movement of populations into this region. Here, we apply stable carbon and oxygen isotope analysis to fossil mammal tooth enamel (n = 21) from the middle Pleistocene locality of Ti's al Ghadah in Saudi Arabia associated with newly discovered stone tools and probable cutmarks. The results demonstrate productive grasslands in the interior of the Arabian Peninsula ca. 300-500 ka, as well as aridity levels similar to those found in open savannah settings in eastern Africa today. The association between this palaeoenvironmental information and the earliest traces for hominin activity in this part of the world lead us to argue that middle Pleistocene hominin dispersals into the interior of the Arabian Peninsula required no major novel adaptation.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2020
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2021
Publisher: Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Date: 29-05-2019
Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Date: 30-08-2019
Abstract: Humans began to leave lasting impacts on Earth's surface starting 10,000 to 8000 years ago. Through a synthetic collaboration with archaeologists around the globe, Stephens et al. compiled a comprehensive picture of the trajectory of human land use worldwide during the Holocene (see the Perspective by Roberts). Hunter-gatherers, farmers, and pastoralists transformed the face of Earth earlier and to a greater extent than has been widely appreciated, a transformation that was essentially global by 3000 years before the present. Science , this issue p. 897 see also p. 865
Publisher: Springer Netherlands
Date: 2016
Publisher: Research Square Platform LLC
Date: 06-08-2020
DOI: 10.21203/RS.3.RS-49789/V1
Abstract: Environmental change is key for human evolution, especially at times of anatomical and behavioral change in life histories, such as the origin of meat consumption, economic ersification, and dispersal. However, for the earliest phase of human evolution featuring the technology-dependent hominins that shaped our lineage since 2.6 Ma, the Oldowan, there is a dearth of archaeological evidence directly associated with rich chronostratigraphic and environmental datasets amenable to tracking ecological change and adaptation to new physiographic conditions. One place where this type of information has been recently retrieved is the Western Plio-Pleistocene rift basin of Olduvai Gorge (now Oldupai), Tanzania. We explore habitat range by Oldowan-bearing hominins amidst extremely erse ecosystems throughout a stratified sequence 235 ka-long, thus predating by ka the earliest landmark fossil hominins and classic Oldowan from the Eastern side of the basin. Our study provides multi-proxy evidence of environmental adaptability, demonstrating colonisation of fresh volcanic landscapes and occupation of fast-changing biomes by 2 Ma.
Publisher: Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Date: 02-10-2019
Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Date: 12-06-2020
Abstract: Fa-Hien Lena provides evidence for bone-tipped arrows and brilliant symbolic displays 48,000 years ago in tropical Sri Lanka.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2020
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 05-05-2021
DOI: 10.1038/S41586-021-03457-8
Abstract: The origin and evolution of hominin mortuary practices are topics of intense interest and debate
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 21-08-2017
DOI: 10.1002/JQS.2975
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 09-05-2018
DOI: 10.1038/S41467-018-04057-3
Abstract: The Middle to Later Stone Age transition in Africa has been debated as a significant shift in human technological, cultural, and cognitive evolution. However, the majority of research on this transition is currently focused on southern Africa due to a lack of long-term, stratified sites across much of the African continent. Here, we report a 78,000-year-long archeological record from Panga ya Saidi, a cave in the humid coastal forest of Kenya. Following a shift in toolkits ~67,000 years ago, novel symbolic and technological behaviors assemble in a non-unilinear manner. Against a backdrop of a persistent tropical forest-grassland ecotone, localized innovations better characterize the Late Pleistocene of this part of East Africa than alternative emphases on dramatic revolutions or migrations.
Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Date: 12-06-2020
Abstract: New ancient genomes from Africa provide details of the spread of food production across sub-Saharan Africa.
Publisher: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Date: 27-09-2021
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 27-02-2018
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 27-01-2021
DOI: 10.1038/S41467-020-20682-3
Abstract: Consuming the milk of other species is a unique adaptation of Homo sapiens , with implications for health, birth spacing and evolution. Key questions nonetheless remain regarding the origins of dairying and its relationship to the genetically-determined ability to drink milk into adulthood through lactase persistence (LP). As a major centre of LP ersity, Africa is of significant interest to the evolution of dairying. Here we report proteomic evidence for milk consumption in ancient Africa. Using liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) we identify dairy proteins in human dental calculus from northeastern Africa, directly demonstrating milk consumption at least six millennia ago. Our findings indicate that pastoralist groups were drinking milk as soon as herding spread into eastern Africa, at a time when the genetic adaptation for milk digestion was absent or rare. Our study links LP status in specific ancient in iduals with direct evidence for their consumption of dairy products.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 04-2021
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Date: 24-03-2022
DOI: 10.3389/FEART.2022.680926
Abstract: Land use modelling is increasingly used by archaeologists and palaeoecologists seeking to quantify and compare the changing influence of humans on the environment. In Southeast Asia, the intensification of rice agriculture and the arrival of European colonizers have both been seen as major catalysts for deforestation, soil erosion, and bio ersity change. Here we consider the Tuwali-Ifugao people of the Cordillera Central (Luzon, Philippines), who resisted Spanish colonial subjugation from the 16th to the mid-nineteenth century, in part through the development of a world-renowned system of intensive wet-rice terrace agriculture. To quantify changes in how the Tuwali-Ifugao used their environment, we model land use in Old Kiyyangan Village, a long-inhabited settlement, at two timepoints: circa 1570 CE, prior to the Spanish arrival in Luzon, and circa 1800 CE, before the village was sacked by Spanish military expeditions. Our model demonstrates that between 1570 and 1800 the adoption of rice as a staple and the corresponding expansion in terrace agriculture, along with a general ersification of diet and land use, enabled the village’s population to double without increasing total land use area. Further, this major intensification led to the solidification of social hierarchies and occurred without a proportional increase in deforestation.
Publisher: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Date: 21-03-2016
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Date: 06-12-2021
DOI: 10.3389/FEART.2021.787669
Abstract: Climate variability and hominin evolution are inextricably linked. Yet, hypotheses examining the impact of large-scale climate shifts on hominin landscape ecology are often constrained by proxy data coming from off-site lake and ocean cores and temporal offsets between paleoenvironmental and archaeological records. Additionally, landscape response data (most commonly, records of vegetation change), are often used as a climate proxy. This is problematic as it assumes that vegetation change signifies global or regional climate shifts without accounting for the known non-linear behavior of ecological systems and the often-significant spatial heterogeneity in habitat structure and response. The exploitation of erse, rapidly changing habitats by Homo by at least two million years ago highlights that the ability to adapt to landscapes in flux had emerged by the time of our genus’ African origin. To understand ecosystem response to climate variability, and hominin adaptations to environmental complexity and ecological ersity, we need cross-disciplinary datasets in direct association with stratified archaeological and fossil assemblages at a variety of temporal and spatial scales. In this article, we propose a microhabitat variability framework for understanding Homo ’s adaptability to fluctuating climates, environments, and resource bases. We argue that the exploitation of microhabitats, or unique ecologically and geographically defined areas within larger habitats and ecoregions, was a key skill that allowed Homo to adapt to multiple climates zones and ecoregions within and beyond Africa throughout the Pleistocene.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 07-01-2021
DOI: 10.1038/S41467-020-20176-2
Abstract: Rapid environmental change is a catalyst for human evolution, driving dietary innovations, habitat ersification, and dispersal. However, there is a dearth of information to assess hominin adaptions to changing physiography during key evolutionary stages such as the early Pleistocene. Here we report a multiproxy dataset from Ewass Oldupa, in the Western Plio-Pleistocene rift basin of Olduvai Gorge (now Oldupai), Tanzania, to address this lacuna and offer an ecological perspective on human adaptability two million years ago. Oldupai’s earliest hominins sequentially inhabited the floodplains of sinuous channels, then river-influenced contexts, which now comprises the oldest palaeolake setting documented regionally. Early Oldowan tools reveal a homogenous technology to utilise erse, rapidly changing environments that ranged from fern meadows to woodland mosaics, naturally burned landscapes, to lakeside woodland alm groves as well as hyper-xeric steppes. Hominins periodically used emerging landscapes and disturbance biomes multiple times over 235,000 years, thus predating by more than 180,000 years the earliest known hominins and Oldowan industries from the Eastern side of the basin.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 06-07-2023
DOI: 10.1002/JQS.3555
Abstract: In comparison to temperate and arid regions, environmental responses to the Last Glacial Maximum and the Terminal Pleistocene and Holocene boundary remain poorly known for many parts of the tropics, making it challenging to unravel human–landscape interactions across this timeframe. This is particularly the case in insular Near Oceania, where sea‐level fluctuations and potential changes in forest cover may have had major impacts on hunter–gatherer populations. Here, we apply stable carbon and oxygen isotope analyses to small‐mammal teeth from four Pleistocene–Holocene (spanning from 29 000 years ago to the late Holocene) sequences in the Bismarck Archipelago to reconstruct changes in environments directly exploited by human populations in this part of the world. Our results show a subtle response of tropical habitats in Near Oceania to relatively arid conditions during the late‐glacial period, something that has also been observed at sites in South and Southeast Asia, followed by a Terminal Pleistocene–Holocene expansion of tropical forest cover. Nevertheless, site‐based variability in environmental responses across this period highlight the need for more multidisciplinary studies of human occupation sequences in a region that is becoming increasingly central to exploring human adaptations, environmental modifications and social network development over the past 20 000 years.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 25-01-2021
DOI: 10.1038/S41559-020-01379-8
Abstract: Little is known about the Pleistocene climatic context of northern Australia at the time of early human settlement. Here we generate a palaeoprecipitation proxy using stable carbon isotope analysis of modern and archaeological pandanus nutshell from Madjedbebe, Australia’s oldest known archaeological site. We document fluctuations in precipitation over the last 65,000 years and identify periods of lower precipitation during the penultimate and last glacial stages, Marine Isotope Stages 4 and 2. However, the lowest effective annual precipitation is recorded at the present time. Periods of lower precipitation, including the earliest phase of occupation, correspond with peaks in exotic stone raw materials and artefact discard at the site. This pattern is interpreted as suggesting increased group mobility and intensified use of the region during drier periods.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 05-06-2018
DOI: 10.1038/S41467-018-04753-0
Abstract: The originally published version of this Article contained an error in Fig. 3, whereby an additional unrelated graph was overlaid on top of the magnetic susceptibility plot. Furthermore, the Article title contained an error in the capitalisation of ‘Stone Age’. Both of these errors have now been corrected in both the PDF and HTML versions of the Article.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 11-2016
DOI: 10.1002/EVAN.21508
Abstract: Tropical forests constitute some of the most erse and complex terrestrial ecosystems on the planet. From the Miocene onward, they have acted as a backdrop to the ongoing evolution of our closest living relatives, the great apes, and provided the cradle for the emergence of early hominins, who retained arboreal physiological adaptations at least into the Late Pliocene. There also now exists growing evidence, from the Late Pleistocene onward, for tool-assisted intensification of tropical forest occupation and resource extraction by our own species, Homo sapiens. However, between the Late Pliocene and Late Pleistocene there is an apparent gap in clear and convincing evidence for the use of tropical forests by hominins, including early members of our own genus. In discussions of Late Pliocene and Early Pleistocene hominin evolution, including the emergence and later expansion of Homo species across the globe, tropical forest adaptations tend to be eclipsed by open, savanna environments. Thus far, it is not clear whether this Early-Middle Pleistocene lacuna in Homo-rainforest interaction is real and representative of an adaptive shift with the emergence of our species or if it is simply reflective of preservation bias.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 18-05-2020
DOI: 10.1002/AJPA.24077
Publisher: Research Square Platform LLC
Date: 15-07-2021
DOI: 10.21203/RS.3.RS-255765/V1
Abstract: The origin and early dispersal of speakers of Transeurasian languages, i.e., Japanese, Korean, Tungusic, Mongolic and Turkic, is among the most disputed issues of Eurasian population history. A key problem is the relationship between linguistic dispersals, agricultural expansions and population movements. Here we address this question through ‘triangulating’ genetics, archaeology and linguistics in a unified perspective. We report new, wide-ranging datasets from these disciplines, including the most comprehensive Transeurasian agropastoral and basic vocabulary presented to date, an archaeological database of 255 Neolithic and Bronze Age sites from Northeast Asia, and the first collection of ancient genomes from Korea, the Ryukyu islands and early cereal farmers in Japan, complementing previously published genomes from East Asia. Challenging the traditional ‘Pastoralist Hypothesis’, we show that the common ancestry and primary dispersals of Transeurasian languages can be traced back to the first farmers moving across Northeast Asia from the Early Neolithic onwards, but that this shared heritage has been masked by extensive cultural interaction since the Bronze Age. As well as marking significant progress in the three in idual disciplines, by combining their converging evidence, we show that the early spread of Transeurasian speakers was driven by agriculture.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 11-08-2015
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 24-04-2018
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 19-02-2019
DOI: 10.1038/S41467-019-08623-1
Abstract: Defining the distinctive capacities of Homo sapiens relative to other hominins is a major focus for human evolutionary studies. It has been argued that the procurement of small, difficult-to-catch, agile prey is a hallmark of complex behavior unique to our species however, most research in this regard has been limited to the last 20,000 years in Europe and the Levant. Here, we present detailed faunal assemblage and taphonomic data from Fa-Hien Lena Cave in Sri Lanka that demonstrates specialized, sophisticated hunting of semi-arboreal and arboreal monkey and squirrel populations from ca. 45,000 years ago, in a tropical rainforest environment. Facilitated by complex osseous and microlithic technologies, we argue these data highlight that the early capture of small, elusive mammals was part of the plastic behavior of Homo sapiens that allowed it to rapidly colonize a series of extreme environments that were apparently untouched by its hominin relatives.
Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Date: 13-03-2015
Abstract: The tropical rainforest environment is nutritionally poor and tricky to navigate as compared to open habitats. This poses challenges for human subsistence. There has been little evidence to suggest that human populations relied on rainforest resources before the start of the Holocene, 10,000 years ago. Roberts et al. analyzed earlier fossil human and animal tooth enamel from Sri Lanka. The diet of these humans suggests rainforest rather than open-habitat foraging. Thus, humans were effectively exploiting rainforests in Sri Lanka since at least 20,000 years ago throughout periods of considerable climatic and environmental flux. Science , this issue p. 1246
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Location: Germany
Start Date: 2023
End Date: 12-2025
Amount: $452,748.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded Activity