ASIA, CENTRAL, STEPPES

Jeannine Davis-Kimball , in Encyclopedia of Archaeology, 2008

Hominids arose in central Asia around 750  000   years ago and subsequent increasingly developed populations, influenced by climatic and geological atmospheric condition, continued to inhabit the vast steppe regions and contiguous mountain ranges throughout the millennia. Nearly notable are the Bronze Age peoples who skilful hunting, farming, and fishing along with rudimentary animal husbandry. With the advent of horse riding, a nomadic life style arose, which marks the starting time 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 cracking nomadic confederacies arose culminating in the infamous Genghis Khanite era. Every bit nomads in general accept no written language, much of their civilization, lifestyle, and conventionalities 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 Human being are known only from East and Southward Africa. A central feature of hominids is the development of bipedalism, which of course leaves the hands gratis for other activities, such as the gathering of food or the use of tools and other implements. Three genera with characters intermediate betwixt chimpanzees and hominids, but known just from rather fragmentary fossils, are Sahelanthropus, found in Chad and dated to nearly vii million years ago, Ardipithecus, which lived in Ethiopia between near 6.0 and 4.4 1000000 years ago, and Orrorin from Kenya, which lived at about six   Ma. Even so, the earliest well-known hominid is their likely descendant Australopithecus, which lived between 4.ii and 2.4 million years ago (Figure 1). Possibly the best-known relatively complete specimen of Australopithecus is the ane named 'Lucy', which was found at Hadar in Ethiopia and dated to three.two   Ma. Modern chimpanzees have an average brain size of 390   c.c., Lucy's species a size of about 400   c.c. and modernistic humans about i,300   c.c., and Lucy would accept looked more like an ape than a homo, 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 (ii.4 to 1.9   Ma).

Effigy 1. Reconstruction by the belatedly Maurice Wilson of Australopithecus afarensis, based on the 3.two   Ma specimens of 'Lucy' and other individuals from Federal democratic republic of ethiopia.

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ASIA, CENTRAL AND NORTH, STEPPES, DESERTS, AND FORESTS

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

The Lower Palaeolithic

Discovery of early hominids at the site of Dmanisi (ane.8  MYA) in the Caucuses and finds in Northeast Asia approaching i   MYA has greatly strengthened the understanding and possible explanations of Lower Palaeolithic finds in Central Eurasia. With the exception of the skull fragment discovered at the site of Salkhit (northeastern Mongolia) in 2006 and now under intensive study, no other early homined fossils have nonetheless been found in the steppe lands. Nonetheless, the antiquity sites of the earliest steppe inhabitants accept been discovered, demonstrating that the range of early hominids expanded to include almost of Eurasia. The antiquity tape is not without issues. Questions arise as to whether antiquity assemblages claimed every bit evidence for Middle Pleistocene manufacture are not in fact the results of geological processes. In other cases, lithic assemblages may exist indisputable, but were plant from geological contexts which make their periodization uncertain. In south Tajikistan, Lower and Centre Pleistocene pebble industries at the sites of Kuldara and Karatau represent the early evidence of hominid dispersals along the edges of Inner Asia. Early sites in Siberia at Ulalinka, Mokhovo I, and Diring Yuriakh take flaked stone assemblages thought to date prior to 300   000   years ago, however, whether these assemblages are actually human-made has been disputed. The electric current evidence for hominid entry into Siberia is younger than 200   000   years and is marked past 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 written report of hominids, hominins, and humans ( Table i ) in the Quaternary catamenia is an interdisciplinary endeavour that combines the expertise of the biological, physical, human, and natural sciences ( Figure 1 ). Scientific advances in this commonage enterprise accept been most marked in the past 50 years. They can be summarized by the appearance of a new subdiscipline, paleoanthropology, that emerged in the 1970s. The title includes, at a minimum, the following specialists: archaeologists, physical anthropologists, molecular geneticists, geochronologists, and paleoecologists. Paleoanthropologists are non but interested in investigating well-dated sequences that contain environmental and hominin data but also in using these archives to written report 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 empathise changing adaptations in the diverse hominin lineages, and using the continuous records of climatic change, especially those from the ocean and ice-core athenaeum, to examine whether a forcing machinery existed that explains both anatomical and behavioral evolution. More than recently, the field has developed an interest in the biogeography of hominins and in detail the timing of major dispersals and their explanation (Straus and Bar-Yosef, 2001).

Table one. Three important 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, however, is not yet ubiquitous

Human being 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 in a higher place, and the African great apes: chimpanzee, bonobo, and gorilla, and their fossil ancestors.

Figure 1. 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 section address these and other themes in paleoanthropology on a geographical footing. The evidence 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 show. This corresponds to the beginning of MIS8 in the marine record. This cold stage does not in itself mark an abrupt change either in hominin archaeology or anatomy, but subsequently this engagement significant technical, cultural, and social changes occurred cumulatively, and especially during the Upper Pleistocene (MIS5-ii).

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PALEOANTHROPOLOGY

Ian Tattersall , in Encyclopedia of Archaeology, 2008

Hominid Emergence

H. sapiens is today the only hominid on Earth ( see MODERN 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 variety from the very outset (see Figure i). Both the fossil record and molecular genetic analyses of homo beings and their closest living relatives bespeak to an origin of the hominid family in the period between about 7 and 8 million years (Myr) ago. This was a time in which climatic and topographic changes in Africa (where Hominidae originated) were starting time to fragment that continent's formerly monolithic forests and to create new woodland and somewhen grassland environments. There are many variants on the precise scenario, just it is mostly agreed that the arboreal hominid forerunner, a member of the hominoid group that also included the ancestor of today's great apes, was forced to take up at least a semi-terrestrial existence by the shrinking of its ancestral habitat. Once on the ground this ancestor, dissimilar the forerunner of today'south quadrupedal 'knuckle-walking' apes, adopted a bipedal mode of locomotion. In that location has been extensive debate over what the 'critical advantage' of 2-legged locomotion might take been to the hominid ancestor. Among many other suggestions are more efficient terrestrial locomotion, better shedding of the dominicus's heat in the open away from the copse, freeing up the hands to carry and manipulate objects, and seeing dangers further away over alpine grass. Most plausibly, though, the hominid ancestor was virtually comfortable walking upright over the ground considering it already favored belongings its trunk cock when moving in the trees. In one case information technology had adopted this way of getting around in the open, all of the associated advantages – and disadvantages – followed.

Effigy 1. I possible phylogeny (evolutionary tree) of the family Hominidae, showing time on the vertical axis. Solid blackness 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 betwixt nigh 7 and iv   Myr ago. Three genera of early hominids – Sahelanthropus, Orrorin, and Ardipithecus – have been described from this catamenia. All of them are pretty fragmentary, only each has been described as a biped, even if on less-than-ideal evidence. They make upwardly a rather heterogeneous assemblage, just if they were all upright hominids – rather than indicating, for example, that a variety of different hominoids experimented with bipedalism on the footing in response to similar ecology pressures – they provide eloquent support for the idea that, from the very first, Hominidae has typically shown an evolutionary blueprint involving experimentation with the many means that there plain are to be a hominid.

The genus Australopithecus – first represented in northern Kenya past a species (A. anamensis) that shows definitive signs of upright bipedalism at over 4   Myr ago – is the best known of the early on hominids. Its most famous representative is the fossil popularly known as Lucy, a partial skeleton of the species A. afarensis from 3.2-Myr-erstwhile deposits at Hadar in Federal democratic republic of ethiopia. Lucy and similar fossils are brusque-statured (females were not much over 3   ft alpine, males not much over four   ft), and retained many features that would have aided climbing in the copse (narrow shoulders, long artillery relative to legs, long and somewhat curved hands) just show structures of the pelvis and leg that clearly betoken upright posture and locomotion. Although their dentitions have features, such every bit reduced canine teeth, that recollect afterward hominids rather than apes, their skulls are very ape-like in structure, with large, protruding faces in front end of tiny braincases that contained ape-sized brains with volumes no more than well-nigh a third of the modern human average. Indeed, many palaeoanthropologists like to refer to these archaic hominids every bit functionally 'bipedal apes'. Fossils commonly allocated to Australopithecus species are establish in eastern and southern African sites (and i in Chad, in central-west Africa) that are dated to beween about 4 and 2   Myr ago. Near sediments containing them appear to take been laid down in wood-edge or woodland contexts, to which such creatures announced to accept been largely bars, though occasionally there is evidence of conditions ranging from closed forest to grassland. By about two   Myr ago, hominids of this kind had largely disappeared, with the exception of a 'robust' group, allocated to the genus Paranthropus, which lingered until about 1.4   Myr ago.

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From Foraging to Agriculture

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

Food Safe

For the vast majority of fourth dimension early hominids and humans existed they did and then without the benefit of regular cooking fires. Throughout this lengthy time flow hunting-gathering groups had to determine what was prophylactic to eat. One consideration could take been to focus on wild institute products that were sweet and to reject bitter items. Still, some sweet found products (berries, leaves, roots) can be toxic, and some bitter plants/plant parts can be safe to consume.

Regarding meat and creature products earliest hominids and humans would have been scavengers and only rarely would take killed big game (Shipman, 1983). They would have consumed smaller animals, scavenged carrion, and eaten the digestive stomach 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 safety or toxic to swallow. Identifying what was condom to consume in a specific ecology niche remained the first problem that had to be solved, one that has continued into historic times as well. If food rubber was learned only through basic trial and error, then untold numbers of hunting-gathering band members would have died periodically considering of toxic plant poisoning.

In solving this problem early hominids might accept observed what birds or mammals ate and followed such patterns? Eating carrion from fresh or older kills made by carnivorous predators too 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 confronting the practise 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 bachelor plant spectrum, consumed large quantities of ripe and unripe fruits, dug for tubers, and stripped and ate a broad range of grass seeds (Hamilton et al., 1978). These baboons, however, regularly vomited as they foraged for food. Further, they ate big quantities of clay throughout the day (Hamilton, personal communication, 1990). Such a pattern of eating clay along with wild bush plants could have been an unconscious mechanism that protected these hominid consumers. Given that the practice (geophagia) can lessen the absorption and physiological effects of certain categories of institute toxins (Halstead, 1968). Farther, contemporary studies document that if consumers vomit afterward eating, this event tin pb to future rejection of the offending products (Garb and Stunkard, 1974; Stockhorst et al., 2006). Perhaps through such methods and through basic trial and error, the hominid consumers could accept learned and ultimately differentiated betwixt 'safe' and 'toxic.'

Determination of nutrient prophylactic might also have come about through potential 'selective filters' consciously or unconsciously that led earliest hominids and early humans to initially place and repeat consumption of rubber foods. Although dogs were domesticated c. 30   000 BP canines accept served more than recent hunter-gatherers to determine which bush plants are condom to consume. The Gwembe Tonga of southern Africa, a contemporary agro-pastoral-hunting-gathering club, allow their children to forage in bush-league lands without adult supervision where they search for and experiment with dissimilar plants as potential foods. When a questionable species is encountered, presumed edible portions initially are fed to their companion dogs. The children observe the canine's behavior and afterwards a reasonable menstruation of time – if the dogs exercise not vomit and survive – then the audacious children may taste and swallow the new plant (Scudder, 1971).

Might human 'tasters' also have been used in early artifact to exam the safety of new plants or suspicious items? Could they take been adults captured from rival bands; peradventure women across childbearing years; aged men who had lost their hunting acuity; or maybe the sick or the infirm? (The tertiary century Egyptian-Greek writer Athenaeus addressed the effect of the ancients using elderly women every bit food tasters (Athenaeus, IV:172:A) and regular reports document that Southeast Asian immigrants to the US have been poisoned subsequently incautious foraging and consuming what they believed to be species safety to consume (Fischer, n.d.).) Although such suggestions pose moral and ethical considerations when examined through contemporary xx-commencement century prisms, would such cultural niceties have characterized earliest hunting-gathering groups?

Learning the rubber plant foods in i niche, still, would not necessarily extend safety into other ecological zones, as the botanical assemblages might contain items that only appeared similar to prophylactic items. Identical species that abound in two unlike environmental niches can pose problems: plants safe to eat in one ecological zone, but poisonous in some other niche, are called 'toxic analogs.' Toxic analogs look nearly identical to species already accepted equally safe foods and illness and/or death from such plants has remained a perpetual problem 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 man geographical range into global subarctic and chill zones. In addition, consider massive homo 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 mode. Recent evidence suggests that the people of the Americas occurred in multiple pulses from Asia and peradventure from Europe (Bradley and Stanford, 2004; Fagundes et al., 2008). Moving from n to s through what is now Alaska to what is now southern Chile, many dozens of ecological zones would have been negotiated and food safety problems solved. From twenty-first century vantage points we may merely speculate how safety was learned and transmitted throughout the millennia.

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MOLECULAR Archeology

David Yard. Reed , in Encyclopedia of Archaeology, 2008

Human bequeathed genetic history

Resolving the genetic affinities of Neandertals and gimmicky hominids is central to two competing theories of modern human origins – the replacement model and the multiregional model. Under a theory of replacement, mod humans quickly replaced archaic hominid forms such equally Neandertals every bit they spread from Africa throughout western Asia. Alternatively, under the multiregional model, genetic commutation occurred and continuity existed between primitive hominids and modernistic humans. mtDNA segments amplified from Homo neanderthalensis remains shows them to exist genetically distinct 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 mod humans appears to exist less than 25% and very likely Neandertals went extinct without contributing mtDNA to living humans. The mtDNA lineage that leads to Neandertals diverged about 500   000   years BP, while the mutual maternal antecedent of Homo sapiens sapiens probably lived effectually 170   000   years BP. Thus, from the mtDNA prove, a recent African origin and little genetic intermixing is supported.

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Biodiversity, Cultural Diversity and Infectious Diseases

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

2.5 Genetic diversity and human migration

During their migrations to Eurasia, modern 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 11]. Importantly for human genetic diversity associated with infectious diseases, the genes involved in immunity were the chief beneficiaries of these crosses, which would have allowed the species to colonize Eurasia as well equally new epidemiological environments in which the Neanderthals and Denisovans co-evolved with their pathogens for many millennia. Thus, allelic variants of the HLA genes found in Neanderthal and Denisovan bone 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 variety of amnesty genes and diverseness of pathogens in the environment was confirmed past Prugnolle et al. [PRU 05]. They showed that high polymorphism in the HLA gene circuitous is observed in tropical regions where viral multifariousness is high. Parasites are a factor in the diversification of immunity genes. It tin be assumed that a loss of parasites is not without issue on the performance 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 Archeology, 2008

Eurasia

Like Africa, Eurasia suffered relatively few losses of big mammals, and hominids and extinct fauna coexisted for an extended period 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 large mammals than Asia where mega-herbivores, like Asian elephants and rhinoceroses, survived to the present in tropical Southeast Asia. Unlike Africa, which sustained a hominid presence across most of the continent throughout the Pleistocene, large portions of high-latitude Eurasia remained uncolonized by Homo until the Tardily Pleistocene, providing refuge for many now-extinct taxa until the end of the terminal Ice Age. During the Pleistocene, continental glaciers expanded and contracted over virtually of northern Europe many times causing dramatic ecological shifts (see PALEOENVIRONMENTAL RECONSTRUCTION, METHODS). Hominids and animals underwent repeated range shifts in response to glacial oscillations.

The genus Human first migrated out of Africa and into the southerly latitudes of Eurasia approximately 1.viii   million years ago, or slightly earlier. It is unclear whether hominids maintained a consequent presence in Eurasia during the Early Pleistocene (1.8–0.78 meg years ago), but by the commencement of the Middle Pleistocene c. 0.78   meg years ago, Human being was likely to stay in Eurasia. Past 50   000–45   000   years ago, mod Homo sapiens had spread through most 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 ago, but numerous now-extinct animals coexisted with hominids for hundreds of thousands of years earlier suffering extinction. Although numerous mammalian extinctions occurred throughout the Quaternary in Europe, extinction rates amidst large mammals increased substantially in the Tardily Pleistocene between c. fifty   000 and x   000   years agone with extinctions perhaps occurring in two pulses.

Straight-tusked elephant and hippopotamus, species common in temperate fossil assemblages, were the first to suffer extinction, around fifty   000–40   000   years ago. At this time, not simply were continental glaciers expanding pushing these species due south, just modern humans fabricated their first incursions into Europe. Chill species like woolly rhinoceros and mammoth, well adjusted to cold glacial conditions survived through the Last Glacial Maximum (c. 20   000 years agone) only to suffer extinction equally the climate warmed c. x   000   years ago. Information technology is also later the Concluding Glacial Maximum that major human influxes into chill regions occurred. A case can be made of overkill and/or climatic change as the extinction causes for Europe since extinctions seem to occur at times when both humans and climate are on the move. At present-extinct mammal species did survive into the Holocene in isolated geographic pockets. For example, dwarfed mammoths survived until 4000   years ago on Wrangell Island in high arctic northeast Asia, and the giant deer, Megaloceros survived into the Early Holocene in western Siberia and the Ural mountains.

Although human associations with extinct animal, like rhinoceros, elephant, and mammoth, are fairly common in Lower and Middle Palaeolithic assemblages, directly associations are considerably less common in the Upper Palaeolithic when the majority of extinctions occurred. At that place are more than a dozen archaeological sites showing subsistence use of proboscideans (Elephas and Mammuthus) throughout Eurasia spanning more 600   000 years of prehistory. These sites gradually increase in latitude with age, perchance reflecting dull homo northward range expansion with concomitant proboscidean range contraction. Nonetheless, the causes of Eurasian mammalian extinctions remain every bit unresolved as on whatever 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 ancestor has an increase in cranial base of operations flexure, and reduction in nuchal plane inclination, articular tubercle, eustachian process, and longus capitis insertion. The basioccipital is reduced in length. Foramen magnum is located more anteriorly and is inclined in a more horizontal position. There is an increment in the frequency of the occipitomarginal sinus. In terms of upper facial features, glabella is broad only not inflated, and the supraorbital sulcus is reduced. Interorbital breadth has increased and nasal bones are projected and expanded. The palate has as well increased in breadth. The nasal clivus has increased in length, and its height and the incisive canal are more than developed. Upper male canines are reduced in size and there has been an increase in upper tooth size. The buccal cusps tend to crowd the occlusal surface. The mandibular symphysis is more robust and the P 3 mesiobuccal expansion has decreased.

At this point in human development, nosotros meet increased flexure of the cranial base of operations. 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 tendency for male canines to be smaller in size and less daggerlike, while the molars accept increased in size. Ardipithecus has 2 apomorphies—the auditory meatus is now aligned to porion (suggestive of increased cranial base of operations breadth?), and the digastric muscle insertion is now deep and narrow. So far all we tin 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.

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