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Middle Stone Age
The Middle Stone Age (or MSA) was a period of African prehistory between the Early Stone Age and the Late Stone Age. It is generally considered to have begun around 280,000 years ago and ended around 50–25,000 years ago. The beginnings of particular MSA stone tools have their origins as far back as 550–500,000 years ago and as such some researchers consider this to be the beginnings of the MSA. The MSA is often mistakenly understood to be synonymous with the Middle Paleolithic of Europe, especially due to their roughly contemporaneous time span, however, the Middle Paleolithic of Europe represents an entirely different hominin population, ''Homo neanderthalensis'', than the MSA of Africa, which did not have Neanderthal populations. Additionally, current archaeological research in Africa has yielded much evidence to suggest that modern human behavior and cognition was beginning to develop much earlier in Africa during the MSA than it was in Europe during the Middle Paleoli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paleolithic
The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός ''palaios'', "old" and λίθος ''lithos'', "stone"), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone tools, and which represents almost the entire period of human prehistoric technology. It extends from the earliest known use of stone tools by hominins, 3.3 million years ago, to the end of the Pleistocene, 11,650 cal BP. The Paleolithic Age in Europe preceded the Mesolithic Age, although the date of the transition varies geographically by several thousand years. During the Paleolithic Age, hominins grouped together in small societies such as bands and subsisted by gathering plants, fishing, and hunting or scavenging wild animals. The Paleolithic Age is characterized by the use of knapped stone tools, although at the time humans also used wood and bone tools. Other organic commodities were adapted for use as tools, includ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
CC-BY Icon
A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work".A "work" is any creative material made by a person. A painting, a graphic, a book, a song/lyrics to a song, or a photograph of almost anything are all examples of "works". A CC license is used when an author wants to give other people the right to share, use, and build upon a work that the author has created. CC provides an author flexibility (for example, they might choose to allow only non-commercial uses of a given work) and protects the people who use or redistribute an author's work from concerns of copyright infringement as long as they abide by the conditions that are specified in the license by which the author distributes the work. There are several types of Creative Commons licenses. Each license differs by several combinations that condition the terms of distribution. They were initially released on December 16, 2002, by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Human Variability
Human variability, or human variation, is the range of possible values for any characteristic, physical or mental, of human beings. Frequently debated areas of variability include cognitive ability, personality, physical appearance (body shape, skin color, etc.) and immunology. Variability is partly heritable and partly acquired ('' nature vs. nurture'' debate). As the human species exhibits sexual dimorphism, many traits show significant variation not just between populations but also between the sexes. Sources of human variability Human variability is attributed to a combination of environmental and genetic sources including: For the genetic variables listed above, few of the traits characterizing human variability are controlled by simple Mendelian inheritance. Most are polygenic or are determined by a complex combination of genetics and environment. Many genetic differences ( polymorphisms) have little effect on health or reproductive success but help to distingui ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Archaic Admixture To Anatomically Modern Humans
There is evidence for interbreeding between archaic and modern humans during the Middle Paleolithic and early Upper Paleolithic. The interbreeding happened in several independent events that included Neanderthals and Denisovans, as well as several unidentified hominins. In Eurasia, interbreeding between Neanderthals and Denisovans with modern humans took place several times. The introgression events into modern humans are estimated to have happened about 47,000–65,000 years ago with Neanderthals and about 44,000–54,000 years ago with Denisovans. Neanderthal-derived DNA has been found in the genomes of most or possibly all contemporary populations, varying noticeably by region. It accounts for 1–4% of modern genomes for people outside Sub-Saharan Africa, although estimates vary, and either none or possibly up to 0.3% — according to recent research — for those in Africa. It is highest in East Asians, intermediate in Europeans, and lower in Southeast Asians. According to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Archaic Human
A number of varieties of ''Homo'' are grouped into the broad category of archaic humans in the period that precedes and is contemporary to the emergence of the earliest early modern humans (''Homo sapiens'') around 300 ka. Omo-Kibish I (Omo I) from southern Ethiopia ( 195 or 233 ka), the remains from Jebel Irhoud in Morocco (about 315 ka) and Florisbad in South Africa (259 ka) are among the earliest remains of ''Homo sapiens''. The term typically includes ''Homo neanderthalensis'' (430 ± 25 ka), Denisovans, ''Homo rhodesiensis'' (300–125 ka), ''Homo heidelbergensis'' (600–200 ka), ''Homo naledi'', ''Homo ergaster'', ''Homo antecessor'', and ''Homo habilis''. There is no universal consensus on this terminology, and varieties of "archaic humans" are included under the binomial name of either ''Homo sapiens'' or ''Homo erectus'' by some authors. Archaic humans had a brain size averaging 1,200 to 1,400 cubic centimeters, which overlaps with the range of modern h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Makapansgat
Makapansgat () (or Makapan Valley World Heritage Site) is an archaeological location within the Makapansgat and Zwartkrans Valleys, northeast of Mokopane in Limpopo province, South Africa. It is an important palaeontological site, with the local limeworks containing ''Australopithecus''-bearing deposits dating to between 3.0 and 2.6 million years BP. The whole Makapan Valley has been declared a South African Heritage Site. Makapansgat belongs to the Cradle of Humankind. Makapansgat Valley sites Makapansgat limeworks This is the oldest of the cave sites in the Makapansgat valley, spanning an age of greater than 4.0 million years until perhaps 1.6 million years ago. This site has yielded many thousands of fossil bones, amongst which were found remains of the gracile australopithecine ''Australopithecus africanus''. The ''A. africanus'' fossils are suggested to date to between 2.85 and 2.58 million years ago based on palaeomagnetism by Andy Herries (La Trobe University, Australi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bouri Formation
The Bouri Formation is a sequence of sedimentary deposits that is the source of australopithecine and Homo (that is, hominin) fossils, artifacts, and bones of large mammals with cut marks from butchery with tools by early hominins. It is located in the Middle Awash Valley, in Ethiopia, East Africa, and is a part of the Afar Depression that has provided rich human fossil sites such as Gona and Hadar. The Bouri Formation stretches down much of the length and breadth of the Bouri "peninsula", which projects across the dry bed of the Afar Depression. The Formation is sufficiently eroded to expose three geological members or layers: the Hatayae, the Dakanihylo, and the Herto. Human remains with signs of having been prepared for burial have been found in the Upper Herto layers. Geology The Bouri "peninsula" is a geological fault-raised horst that diverts the Awash River, forming a partial dam and creating Lake Yardi; and it contains the Bouri Formation. The peninsula is about ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Middle Awash
The Middle Awash is a paleoanthropological research area in the Afar Region along the Awash River in Ethiopia's Afar Depression. It is a unique natural laboratory for the study of human origins and evolution and a number of fossils of the earliest hominins, particularly of the ''Australopithecines'', as well as some of the oldest known Olduwan stone artifacts, have been found at the site—all of late Miocene, the Pliocene, and the very early Pleistocene times, that is, about 5.6 million years ago (mya) to 2.5 mya. It is broadly thought that the divergence of the lines of the earliest humans (hominins) and of chimpanzees (hominids) was completed near the beginning of that time range, or sometime between seven and five mya. However, the larger community of scientists provide several estimates for periods of divergence that imply a greater range for this event, ''see'' CHLCA: human-chimpanzee split. A recent find of ''Australopithecus anamensis'' is dated to about 4.2 mi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Levallois Technique
The Levallois technique () is a name given by archaeologists to a distinctive type of stone knapping developed around 250,000 to 300,000 years ago during the Middle Palaeolithic period. It is part of the Mousterian stone tool industry, and was used by the Neanderthals in Europe and by modern humans in other regions such as the Levant. It is named after 19th-century finds of flint tools in the Levallois-Perret suburb of Paris, France. The technique was more sophisticated than earlier methods of lithic reduction, involving the striking of lithic flakes from a prepared lithic core. A striking platform is formed at one end and then the core's edges are trimmed by flaking off pieces around the outline of the intended lithic flake. This creates a domed shape on the side of the core, known as a tortoise core, as the various scars and rounded form are reminiscent of a tortoise's shell. When the striking platform is finally hit, a lithic flake separates from the lithic core with a distin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anatomically Modern Humans
Early modern human (EMH) or anatomically modern human (AMH) are terms used to distinguish ''Homo sapiens'' (the only extant Hominina species) that are anatomically consistent with the range of phenotypes seen in contemporary humans from extinct archaic human species. This distinction is useful especially for times and regions where anatomically modern and archaic humans co-existed, for example, in Paleolithic Europe. Among the oldest known remains of ''Homo sapiens'' are those found at the Omo-Kibish I archaeological site in south-western Ethiopia, dating to about 233,000 to 196,000 years ago, the Florisbad site in South Africa, dating to about 259,000 years ago, and the Jebel Irhoud site in Morocco, dated about 315,000 years ago. Extinct species of the genus ''Homo'' include ''Homo erectus'' (extant from roughly 2 to 0.1 million years ago) and a number of other species (by some authors considered subspecies of either ''H. sapiens'' or ''H. erectus''). The divergence of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Archaic Humans
A number of varieties of ''Homo'' are grouped into the broad category of archaic humans in the period that precedes and is contemporary to the emergence of the earliest early modern humans (''Homo sapiens'') around 300 ka. Omo-Kibish I (Omo I) from southern Ethiopia ( 195 or 233 ka), the remains from Jebel Irhoud in Morocco (about 315 ka) and Florisbad in South Africa (259 ka) are among the earliest remains of ''Homo sapiens''. The term typically includes ''Homo neanderthalensis'' (430 ± 25 ka), Denisovans, ''Homo rhodesiensis'' (300–125 ka), ''Homo heidelbergensis'' (600–200 ka), ''Homo naledi'', ''Homo ergaster'', ''Homo antecessor'', and '' Homo habilis''. There is no universal consensus on this terminology, and varieties of "archaic humans" are included under the binomial name of either ''Homo sapiens'' or ''Homo erectus'' by some authors. Archaic humans had a brain size averaging 1,200 to 1,400 cubic centimeters, which overlaps with the range of modern ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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