AURIGNACIAN TOOL INDUSTRY UPGRADE

Researchers also analyzed shells associated with the now-human teeth and dated the site to around 44 kya, making them the oldest probably-human remains in Europe.

The authors provided nice qualitative and quantitative arguments for the human status of the teeth, though again I have to raise caution that these are only teeth and we have no idea what the rest of the skeleton would have looked like. BUT! also like in Kent’s Cavern paper, Benazzi and colleagues examined what little morphology is preserved in the fossil teeth, and (re)assigned them to modern-looking humans.

AURIGNACIAN TOOL INDUSTRY UPGRADE

So this assemblage could be used to argue that Neandertals were smart enough to upgrade to a sexier stone tool industry shortly before their anatomy (but not their genes!) disappeared. After the site was excavated in 1967, the teeth were attributed to Neandertals and the lithics classified as “Uluzzian.” I would be a dirty liar if I said knew anything about the “Uluzzian” industry (try this other site which may be more informative), but apparently it’s seen as transitional between the Neandertal-associated Mousterian and ‘more advanced’ Upper Paleolithic toolkits. Bummer.Ī similar older-than-we-thought story is reported by Stefano Benazzi and buddies, who reanalyzed teeth from the Italian site of Grotta del Cavallo (left). The researchers tried to extract DNA for analysis, but apparently organic remains were too poorly preserved for a good analysis. why would an individual have derived traits of both ‘modern’ humans and Neandertals?). A more rigorous analysis of what this mix of traits means would have been nice (i.e. The authors examined what little of the morphology was left and concluded that the fossil shared the most similarities with recent humans but only a few with Neandertals. The laughable amount of bone makes it rather impossible to say whether the fossil represents a Neandertal or more modern-looking human. The jaw fragment with highly worn teeth was found just above some Aurignacian-like (Upper Paleolithic) blades in 1927. The media have been reporting these studies as revealing “the first Europeans,” but of course we all know that the first Europeans were the badass hominids, my favorites, from the 1.8 million year old site of Dmanisi.įrom Kent’s Cavern (United Kingdom) is a partial maxilla, now dated to 44 – 41 kya * (Higham et al. The contemporaneity of the two loci is then treated, and the article finishes with a discussion regarding how Régismont-le-Haut fits both diachronically and synchronically within the Aurignacian.Two reports came out last week in the journal Nature, re-dating some European human fossils to before 40 thousand years ago (kya), a few thousand years older than previous evidence for modern-looking people in the region. A summary of activities occurring in two complementary loci ensues, followed by a preliminary spatial reading of one of the primary domestic units. While more difficult to integrate directly into chronological models of Aurignacian evolution, mostly derived from stratified rock-shelter and cave sites from the northern Aquitaine Basin, it is argued that studying open-air sites like Régismont-le-Haut can furnish detailed information that rock shelter/cave sites cannot, therefore providing critical building blocks and possible reading keys to help reconstruct prehistoric circulation systems and marry synchronic and diachronic perspectives on variability.Ī detailed description of the geomorphological and sedimentary context, as well as the differing materials and activities (lithic industry and use-wear, faunal remains, mineral colouring materials, personal ornamentation, limestone blocks, fireplaces) that occur on-site, is provided.

Régismont-le-Haut, an Aurignacian open-air campsite, provides an occasion to investigate aspects of Aurignacian site variability that are rarely broached: (1) the relatively poorly known area connecting the Aquitaine and Mediterranean Basins, and (2) the high-resolution spatial organization of an Early Upper Palaeolithic campsite.

Aurignacian tool industry