ASIA, Central, STEPPES

Jeannine Davis-Kimball , in Encyclopedia of Archeology, 2008

Hominids arose in central Asia effectually 750  000   years ago and subsequent increasingly developed populations, influenced by climatic and geological atmospheric condition, continued to inhabit the vast steppe regions and face-to-face mountain ranges throughout the millennia. Most notable are the Bronze Age peoples who good hunting, farming, and fishing forth with rudimentary animal husbandry. With the appearance of equus caballus riding, a nomadic life style arose, which marks the beginning of the Early on Iron Age. These Early Nomads, the Scythians, Sauromatian, Sarmatians, and Saka, exploited the grasslands while interacting with certain sedentary populations. From these cultures great nomadic confederacies arose culminating in the infamous Genghis Khanite era. As nomads in general have no written language, much of their culture, lifestyle, and belief systems has been gleaned from the excavations of their kurgan burials.

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FOSSIL VERTEBRATES | Hominids

L.R.M. Cocks , in Encyclopedia of Geology, 2005

Hominids other than Homo

All hominids apart from Homo are known merely from E and South Africa. A primal feature of hominids is the development of bipedalism, which of course leaves the hands gratis for other activities, such as the gathering of nutrient or the employ of tools and other implements. Three genera with characters intermediate between chimpanzees and hominids, but known only from rather bitty fossils, are Sahelanthropus, found in Republic of chad and dated to nearly seven million years ago, Ardipithecus, which lived in Federal democratic republic of ethiopia betwixt virtually half-dozen.0 and four.4 million years ago, and Orrorin from Republic of kenya, which lived at nigh 6   Ma. However, the primeval well-known hominid is their probable descendant Australopithecus, which lived betwixt 4.ii and two.4 million years ago (Figure 1). Possibly the best-known relatively complete specimen of Australopithecus is the one named 'Lucy', which was found at Hadar in Ethiopia and dated to iii.2   Ma. Modernistic chimpanzees have an average encephalon size of 390   c.c., Lucy's species a size of most 400   c.c. and modern humans about 1,300   c.c., and Lucy would have looked more than like an ape than a human, walking upright, but with an ape-shaped body. Other hominid genera which have been named are Paranthropus (2.half dozen to 1.4   Ma) and Kenyanthropus (2.iv to ane.9   Ma).

Figure 1. Reconstruction past the late Maurice Wilson of Australopithecus afarensis, based on the 3.2   Ma specimens of 'Lucy' and other individuals from Ethiopia.

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ASIA, Fundamental AND NORTH, STEPPES, DESERTS, AND FORESTS

William Honeychurch , Joshua Wright , in Encyclopedia of Archaeology, 2008

The Lower Palaeolithic

Discovery of early on hominids at the site of Dmanisi (i.8  MYA) in the Caucuses and finds in Northeast Asia approaching ane   MYA has greatly strengthened the understanding and possible explanations of Lower Palaeolithic finds in Fundamental Eurasia. With the exception of the skull fragment discovered at the site of Salkhit (northeastern Mongolia) in 2006 and now nether intensive study, no other early homined fossils have nonetheless been found in the steppe lands. Withal, the antiquity sites of the earliest steppe inhabitants have been discovered, demonstrating that the range of early hominids expanded to include most of Eurasia. The antiquity record is not without bug. Questions ascend as to whether antiquity assemblages claimed as show for Middle Pleistocene industry are not in fact the results of geological processes. In other cases, lithic assemblages may be indisputable, but were found from geological contexts which brand their periodization uncertain. In south Tajikistan, Lower and Middle Pleistocene pebble industries at the sites of Kuldara and Karatau represent the early evidence of hominid dispersals forth the edges of Inner Asia. Early on sites in Siberia at Ulalinka, Mokhovo I, and Diring Yuriakh take flaked stone assemblages idea to appointment prior to 300   000   years ago, however, whether these assemblages are actually human-made has been disputed. The current show for hominid entry into Siberia is younger than 200   000   years and is marked by Middle Palaeolithic technologies (see SIBERIA, PEOPLING OF).

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ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECORDS | Overview

C. Gamble , in Encyclopedia of Quaternary Science (Second Edition), 2013

Introduction

The study of hominids, hominins, and humans ( Table 1 ) in the Quaternary menses is an interdisciplinary try that combines the expertise of the biological, physical, homo, and natural sciences ( Effigy 1 ). Scientific advances in this collective enterprise have been most marked in the past 50 years. They tin be summarized past the appearance of a new subdiscipline, paleoanthropology, that emerged in the 1970s. The title includes, at a minimum, the post-obit specialists: archaeologists, physical anthropologists, molecular geneticists, geochronologists, and paleoecologists. Paleoanthropologists are not only interested in investigating well-dated sequences that contain environmental and hominin data but also in using these athenaeum to study the behavior of our earliest ancestors. They work in the wider framework of evolutionary models and principles. Their primary interests lie in using the current wealth of paleoenvironmental data to understand irresolute adaptations in the various hominin lineages, and using the continuous records of climate alter, specially those from the ocean and ice-cadre athenaeum, to examine whether a forcing machinery existed that explains both anatomical and behavioral development. More recently, the field has adult an interest in the biogeography of hominins and in particular the timing of major dispersals and their explanation (Straus and Bar-Yosef, 2001).

Table 1. Iii of import terms in paleoanthropology. Hominin replaced hominid in the 1990s when the genetic nomenclature of extant apes and humans caused a rethink of their ancestral relations. The use of the term, withal, is not yet ubiquitous

Homo All living people and their recent Pleistocene ancestors
Hominin The above, and all the Pliocene and Pleistocene fossil ancestors (genera and species) of humans
Hominid The above, and the African nifty apes: chimpanzee, bonobo, and gorilla, and their fossil ancestors.

Figure i. The interdisciplinary relationships involved in paleoanthropology. Foley (nd) with permission. Prepared for the NERC, Environmental Factors and Chronology in Human Evolution and Dispersal programme 2003.

The papers in this department accost these and other themes in paleoanthropology on a geographical basis. The prove is presented and assessed and a flavour of the common but distinctive traditions of regional and national research is provided. The date of 300   ka has been used to organize the archaeological evidence. This corresponds to the beginning of MIS8 in the marine record. This cold stage does non in itself mark an abrupt modify either in hominin archaeology or anatomy, but after this engagement significant technical, cultural, and social changes occurred cumulatively, and especially during the Upper Pleistocene (MIS5-2).

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PALEOANTHROPOLOGY

Ian Tattersall , in Encyclopedia of Archaeology, 2008

Hominid Emergence

H. sapiens is today the only hominid on Earth ( come across Mod HUMANS, EMERGENCE OF). In the past this self-evident fact encouraged the view that our species is the culmination of a single progressively evolving lineage. However, extensive additions to the hominid fossil record over the past half-century or so have made it increasingly clear that, in contrast, the hominid story was one of evolutionary multifariousness from the very start (see Figure 1). Both the fossil record and molecular genetic analyses of human beings and their closest living relatives point to an origin of the hominid family unit in the period between about 7 and eight 1000000 years (Myr) agone. This was a time in which climatic and topographic changes in Africa (where Hominidae originated) were kickoff to fragment that continent's formerly monolithic forests and to create new woodland and eventually grassland environments. There are many variants on the precise scenario, simply it is generally agreed that the arboreal hominid precursor, a member of the hominoid grouping that as well included the ancestor of today'southward slap-up apes, was forced to take up at least a semi-terrestrial existence by the shrinking of its ancestral habitat. One time on the ground this ancestor, dissimilar the forerunner of today'south quadrupedal 'knuckle-walking' apes, adopted a bipedal style of locomotion. There has been extensive debate over what the 'critical advantage' of two-legged locomotion might have been to the hominid ancestor. Amongst many other suggestions are more than efficient terrestrial locomotion, better shedding of the sun's heat in the open away from the trees, freeing up the hands to comport and manipulate objects, and seeing dangers farther away over tall grass. Most plausibly, though, the hominid antecedent was nigh comfy walking upright over the basis because information technology already favored holding its body erect when moving in the trees. Once it had adopted this way of getting around in the open, all of the associated advantages – and disadvantages – followed.

Figure ane. Ane possible phylogeny (evolutionary tree) of the family Hominidae, showing fourth dimension on the vertical axis. Solid black bars indicate documented time ranges; dotted lines indicate possible relationships, many of them highly speculative. ©2008 Dr. Ian Tattersall. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The notion that terrestrial uprightness was the key to hominid identity has been strengthened by fossil discoveries in eastern Africa that date to between well-nigh 7 and 4   Myr ago. Three genera of early hominids – Sahelanthropus, Orrorin, and Ardipithecus – have been described from this flow. All of them are pretty fragmentary, but each has been described as a biped, even if on less-than-ideal evidence. They make upwards a rather heterogeneous aggregation, but if they were all upright hominids – rather than indicating, for example, that a diverseness of different hominoids experimented with bipedalism on the ground in response to similar environmental pressures – they provide eloquent back up for the idea that, from the very kickoff, Hominidae has typically shown an evolutionary pattern involving experimentation with the many ways that there patently are to be a hominid.

The genus Australopithecus – first represented in northern Republic of kenya by a species (A. anamensis) that shows definitive signs of upright bipedalism at over 4   Myr ago – is the best known of the early hominids. Its most famous representative is the fossil popularly known as Lucy, a partial skeleton of the species A. afarensis from 3.two-Myr-old deposits at Hadar in Ethiopia. Lucy and similar fossils are curt-statured (females were non much over 3   ft tall, males not much over 4   ft), and retained many features that would accept aided climbing in the trees (narrow shoulders, long artillery relative to legs, long and somewhat curved hands) simply prove structures of the pelvis and leg that clearly indicate upright posture and locomotion. Although their dentitions take features, such as reduced canine teeth, that recall later hominids rather than apes, their skulls are very ape-like in structure, with large, protruding faces in front of tiny braincases that contained ape-sized brains with volumes no more than than about a third of the modernistic human average. Indeed, many palaeoanthropologists like to refer to these primitive hominids as functionally 'bipedal apes'. Fossils usually allocated to Australopithecus species are found in eastern and southern African sites (and ane in Chad, in central-west Africa) that are dated to beween well-nigh 4 and 2   Myr ago. Most sediments containing them appear to have been laid down in woods-border or woodland contexts, to which such creatures appear to have been largely confined, though occasionally in that location is evidence of conditions ranging from closed wood to grassland. Past virtually ii   Myr ago, hominids of this kind had largely disappeared, with the exception of a 'robust' group, allocated to the genus Paranthropus, which lingered until nearly 1.iv   Myr ago.

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From Foraging to Agriculture

L. Grivetti , in Encyclopedia of Agriculture and Food Systems, 2014

Nutrient Rubber

For the vast bulk of time early on hominids and humans existed they did then without the benefit of regular cooking fires. Throughout this lengthy time menstruation hunting-gathering groups had to make up one's mind what was prophylactic to eat. Ane consideration could have been to focus on wild constitute products that were sweet and to reject biting items. Still, some sweet found products (berries, leaves, roots) can be toxic, and some bitter plants/constitute parts can be rubber to consume.

Regarding meat and fauna products primeval hominids and humans would have been scavengers and only rarely would take killed large game (Shipman, 1983). They would have consumed smaller animals, scavenged carrion, and eaten the digestive breadbasket contents of animals previously killed by predators. Scavenging from kills made by larger savannah predators, hunting smaller game, gleaning berries and fruits, nuts, and pods, and digging for and washing/stripping tubers would have presented options that were either safe or toxic to consume. Identifying what was safe to consume in a specific environmental niche remained the first problem that had to exist solved, one that has continued into celebrated times every bit well. If food prophylactic was learned just through basic trial and error, so untold numbers of hunting-gathering band members would take died periodically because of toxic plant poisoning.

In solving this problem early hominids might have observed what birds or mammals ate and followed such patterns? Eating carrion from fresh or older kills fabricated by carnivorous predators likewise could have been an early hominid food pattern. (Although Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religious texts decry and condemn the consumption of carrion, the baTlokwa ba Moshaweng of southeastern Botswana have no taboos against the exercise and regularly practiced carrion consumption (Grivetti, 1976). Some minority societies in Europe regularly have feasted on carrion (Petrovic, 1939).) William Hamilton and his research team studied free-ranging baboons in the Okavango region of northern Botswana and reported that members of the troop ate widely across the available plant spectrum, consumed large quantities of ripe and unripe fruits, dug for tubers, and stripped and ate a wide range of grass seeds (Hamilton et al., 1978). These baboons, all the same, regularly vomited equally they foraged for nutrient. Further, they ate large quantities of clay throughout the day (Hamilton, personal advice, 1990). Such a blueprint of eating dirt along with wild bush plants could take been an unconscious mechanism that protected these hominid consumers. Given that the practise (geophagia) tin can lessen the absorption and physiological furnishings of sure categories of plant toxins (Halstead, 1968). Farther, gimmicky studies certificate that if consumers vomit subsequently eating, this result tin pb to hereafter rejection of the offending products (Garb and Stunkard, 1974; Stockhorst et al., 2006). Perhaps through such methods and through bones trial and error, the hominid consumers could have learned and ultimately differentiated between 'safe' and 'toxic.'

Determination of nutrient safety might besides have come nearly through potential 'selective filters' consciously or unconsciously that led earliest hominids and early humans to initially place and echo consumption of rubber foods. Although dogs were domesticated c. 30   000 BP canines have served more recent hunter-gatherers to determine which bush-league plants are safe to consume. The Gwembe Tonga of southern Africa, a gimmicky agro-pastoral-hunting-gathering society, allow their children to forage in bush lands without developed supervision where they search for and experiment with different plants equally potential foods. When a questionable species is encountered, presumed edible portions initially are fed to their companion dogs. The children discover the canine's behavior and after a reasonable period of time – if the dogs practice not vomit and survive – then the adventurous children may sense of taste and eat the new plant (Scudder, 1971).

Might human being 'tasters' also have been used in early artifact to test the safety of new plants or suspicious items? Could they accept been adults captured from rival bands; mayhap women across childbearing years; aged men who had lost their hunting acuity; or perhaps the sick or the infirm? (The third century Egyptian-Greek writer Athenaeus addressed the issue of the ancients using elderly women as food tasters (Athenaeus, IV:172:A) and regular reports certificate that Southeast Asian immigrants to the Usa accept been poisoned afterwards incautious foraging and consuming what they believed to be species safe to eat (Fischer, n.d.).) Although such suggestions pose moral and ethical considerations when examined through contemporary twenty-beginning century prisms, would such cultural niceties have characterized earliest hunting-gathering groups?

Learning the condom plant foods in ane niche, however, would not necessarily extend condom into other ecological zones, every bit the botanical assemblages might comprise items that simply appeared similar to condom items. Identical species that grow in two different environmental niches can pose problems: plants safe to eat in one ecological zone, but poisonous in another niche, are chosen 'toxic analogs.' Toxic analogs look virtually identical to species already accepted as safe foods and illness and/or death from such plants has remained a perpetual trouble facing hunting-gathering groups in antiquity and sometimes even modern societies today (Gadd et al., 1962; Scudder, 1971; Beug, 2005).

Ultimately hunting-gathering bands would accept expanded their territorial ranges leaving the warm, moist tropical regions of eastern Africa to explore and exploit more temperate and colder climes and ultimately extended the early on human being geographical range into global subarctic and arctic zones. In addition, consider massive human movements such as the peopling of the Americas, crossing the Bering Sea land bridge, and how hunting-gathering bands worked their way southward toward the equator – eating along the way. Recent testify suggests that the people of the Americas occurred in multiple pulses from Asia and perchance from Europe (Bradley and Stanford, 2004; Fagundes et al., 2008). Moving from n to south through what is at present Alaska to what is now southern Chile, many dozens of ecological zones would have been negotiated and food safety issues solved. From twenty-first century vantage points we may only speculate how safety was learned and transmitted throughout the millennia.

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MOLECULAR ARCHAEOLOGY

David M. Reed , in Encyclopedia of Archaeology, 2008

Homo ancestral genetic history

Resolving the genetic affinities of Neandertals and contemporary hominids is central to two competing theories of mod human origins – the replacement model and the multiregional model. Nether a theory of replacement, modern humans speedily replaced archaic hominid forms such equally Neandertals as they spread from Africa throughout southwest asia. Alternatively, under the multiregional model, genetic exchange occurred and continuity existed between primitive hominids and modern humans. mtDNA segments amplified from Human being neanderthalensis remains shows them to be genetically singled-out from contemporary humans and phylogenetically outside the mtDNA variation of living humans. As estimated from the population genetic analysis of mtDNA sequences retrieved from Neandertal specimens, their genetic contribution to early on modern humans appears to be less than 25% and very probable Neandertals went extinct without contributing mtDNA to living humans. The mtDNA lineage that leads to Neandertals diverged about 500   000   years BP, while the common maternal ancestor of Man sapiens sapiens probably lived around 170   000   years BP. Thus, from the mtDNA evidence, a recent African origin and niggling genetic intermixing is supported.

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Biodiversity, Cultural Diverseness and Infectious Diseases

Serge Morand , Claire Lajaunie , in Biodiversity and Health, 2018

two.5 Genetic diversity and human migration

During their migrations to Eurasia, modernistic humans encountered other hominids that had previously left Africa: the Neanderthals and the Denisovans. Genomic analyses show that crossbreeding occurred between these different species [ABI eleven]. Chiefly for human genetic diversity associated with infectious diseases, the genes involved in immunity were the main beneficiaries of these crosses, which would accept allowed the species to colonize Eurasia as well as new epidemiological environments in which the Neanderthals and Denisovans co-evolved with their pathogens for many millennia. Thus, allelic variants of the HLA genes constitute in Neanderthal and Denisovan os genes were found in modern humans in Europe and Asia, whereas they are absent from current African populations, confirming the "Out of Africa" crossbreeding hypothesis.

The link between genetic diversity of immunity genes and diversity of pathogens in the environs was confirmed by Prugnolle et al. [PRU 05]. They showed that high polymorphism in the HLA gene circuitous is observed in tropical regions where viral diversity is high. Parasites are a factor in the diversification of immunity genes. It can be assumed that a loss of parasites is not without consequence on the functioning of an immune system that was built under the pressure of parasite diversity (see Affiliate 5).

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EXTINCTIONS OF BIG GAME

Todd A. Surovell , in Encyclopedia of Archaeology, 2008

Eurasia

Like Africa, Eurasia suffered relatively few losses of large mammals, and hominids and extinct animal coexisted for an extended flow of time. The Eurasian landmass lost two genera of proboscideans including mammoths, at least three species of rhinoceros, hyenas, cave bears, hippopotamus, giant deer, and others. Europe lost proportionately more than large mammals than Asia where mega-herbivores, like Asian elephants and rhinoceroses, survived to the nowadays in tropical Southeast Asia. Unlike Africa, which sustained a hominid presence across nearly of the continent throughout the Pleistocene, large portions of loftier-latitude Eurasia remained uncolonized past Homo until the Late Pleistocene, providing refuge for many now-extinct taxa until the end of the concluding Ice Historic period. During the Pleistocene, continental glaciers expanded and contracted over most of northern Europe many times causing dramatic ecological shifts (come across PALEOENVIRONMENTAL RECONSTRUCTION, METHODS). Hominids and animals underwent repeated range shifts in response to glacial oscillations.

The genus Homo first migrated out of Africa and into the southerly latitudes of Eurasia approximately 1.8   million years ago, or slightly earlier. Information technology is unclear whether hominids maintained a consistent presence in Eurasia during the Early Pleistocene (1.8–0.78 1000000 years agone), but past the kickoff of the Middle Pleistocene c. 0.78   million years ago, Homo was likely to stay in Eurasia. Past 50   000–45   000   years ago, modern Homo sapiens had spread through about of Eurasia. Precise extinction dates for many Eurasian species are poorly known, especially for Asian species and those species which suffered extinction prior to 50   000   years agone, but numerous now-extinct animals coexisted with hominids for hundreds of thousands of years earlier suffering extinction. Although numerous mammalian extinctions occurred throughout the 4th in Europe, extinction rates among big mammals increased substantially in the Late Pleistocene betwixt c. 50   000 and 10   000   years ago with extinctions possibly occurring in two pulses.

Straight-tusked elephant and hippopotamus, species common in temperate fossil assemblages, were the offset to suffer extinction, around 50   000–forty   000   years agone. At this time, non only were continental glaciers expanding pushing these species southward, but modern humans made their first incursions into Europe. Arctic species similar woolly rhino and mammoth, well adjusted to common cold glacial weather condition survived through the Last Glacial Maximum (c. twenty   000 years agone) simply to suffer extinction as the climate warmed c. 10   000   years ago. Information technology is also later the Last Glacial Maximum that major homo influxes into arctic regions occurred. A case can be made of overkill and/or climate change every bit the extinction causes for Europe since extinctions seem to occur at times when both humans and climate are on the move. Now-extinct mammal species did survive into the Holocene in isolated geographic pockets. For case, dwarfed mammoths survived until 4000   years ago on Wrangell Island in loftier arctic northeast Asia, and the behemothic deer, Megaloceros survived into the Early Holocene in western Siberia and the Ural mountains.

Although human being associations with extinct animate being, like rhinoceros, elephant, and mammoth, are fairly mutual in Lower and Middle Palaeolithic assemblages, directly associations are considerably less common in the Upper Palaeolithic when the majority of extinctions occurred. There are more than than a dozen archaeological sites showing subsistence use of proboscideans (Elephas and Mammuthus) throughout Eurasia spanning more than 600   000 years of prehistory. These sites gradually increase in latitude with age, possibly reflecting wearisome human northward range expansion with concomitant proboscidean range contraction. Nonetheless, the causes of Eurasian mammalian extinctions remain every bit unresolved equally on any continent.

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A Systematic Scheme for the Pliocene and Early Pleistocene Hominids

David W. Cameron , Colin P. Groves , in Bones, Stones and Molecules, 2004

Node 4

This node represents that last common ancestor to Ardipithecus and the other more derived hominids. This hypothetical antecedent has an increase in cranial base flexure, and reduction in nuchal aeroplane inclination, articular tubercle, eustachian procedure, and longus capitis insertion. The basioccipital is reduced in length. Foramen magnum is located more than anteriorly and is inclined in a more horizontal position. There is an increase in the frequency of the occipitomarginal sinus. In terms of upper facial features, glabella is broad but not inflated, and the supraorbital sulcus is reduced. Interorbital breadth has increased and nasal bones are projected and expanded. The palate has besides increased in breadth. The nasal clivus has increased in length, and its height and the incisive culvert are more than adult. Upper male canines are reduced in size and there has been an increase in upper molar size. The buccal cusps tend to crowd the occlusal surface. The mandibular symphysis is more robust and the P three mesiobuccal expansion has decreased.

At this indicate in human evolution, we come across increased flexure of the cranial base. This may be associated with the foramen magnum now moving in a more inductive position and a reduction in lower facial prognathism (and increased palate breadth). At the same time, we see a trend for male canines to be smaller in size and less daggerlike, while the molars have increased in size. Ardipithecus has ii apomorphies—the auditory meatus is now aligned to porion (suggestive of increased cranial base latitude?), and the digastric musculus insertion is now deep and narrow. And so far all nosotros can say is that in its preserved morphology, Ardipithecus appears to reflect a distinct pattern of digastric muscle development to that observed in the outgroup, which may also be associated with the differential evolution of its broader(?) cranial base of operations.

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