Human Prehistory (3.3 million years BC – 3500 BC)

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Yuli Ban
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Re: Human Prehistory (3.3 million years BC – 3500 BC)

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And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
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Yuli Ban
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Re: Human Prehistory (3.3 million years BC – 3500 BC)

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And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
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caltrek
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Re: Human Prehistory (3.3 million years BC – 3500 BC)

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Fossils That "Clearly Foreshadow" Modern Humans are 30,000 Years Older Than We Thought
by Tara Yarlagadda
January 12, 2022

https://www.inverse.com/science/ancient-man-timeline

Introduction:
(Inverse) FIXING THE TIMELINE of human history has been one of archeology’s most exciting — and frustrating — endeavors. In part, that’s because scientists have limited fossil evidence to help them put a pin on when the earliest Homo sapiens arose in eastern Africa. But new archaeological methods let us re-examine existing fossils with a fresh perspective — leading to new discoveries. And this latest one completely defies what we thought we knew about the oldest humans.

THE DISCOVERY — The Omo I and Herto fossils, found in East Africa, are the oldest known Homo sapiens fossils yet discovered in the region — but a new study shows they are tens of thousands of years older than we thought. Older studies had dated the Omo I and Herto fossils to 197,000 years old and between 155,000 to 160,000 years old, respectively. They are, in fact, far older.

“The Omo I and Herto specimens are the oldest Homo Sapiens that have been found so far [in the region], so their discovery and their age are critical to understanding the emergence of our species,” Céline Vidal, lead author on the study and a volcanologist at Fitzwilliam College, tells Inverse.

Vidal and her team use ancient volcanic eruptions to date the human fossils. In a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, they re-examine the Omo I and Herto fossils in Ethiopia. The findings push back the starting point for human history in eastern Africa by some 36,000 years.
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Re: Human Prehistory (3.3 million years BC – 3500 BC)

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Earliest human remains in eastern Africa dated to more than 230,000 years ago
https://phys.org/news/2022-01-earliest- ... dated.html
by University of Cambridge

The age of the oldest fossils in eastern Africa widely recognized as representing our species, Homo sapiens, has long been uncertain. Now, dating of a massive volcanic eruption in Ethiopia reveals they are much older than previously thought.

The remains—known as Omo I—were found in Ethiopia in the late 1960s, and scientists have been attempting to date them precisely ever since, by using the chemical fingerprints of volcanic ash layers found above and below the sediments in which the fossils were found.

An international team of scientists, led by the University of Cambridge, has reassessed the age of the Omo I remains—and Homo sapiens as a species. Earlier attempts to date the fossils suggested they were less than 200,000 years old, but the new research shows they must be older than a colossal volcanic eruption that took place 230,000 years ago. The results are reported in the journal Nature.

The Omo I remains were found in the Omo Kibish Formation in southwestern Ethiopia, within the East African Rift valley. The region is an area of high volcanic activity, and a rich source of early human remains and artifacts such as stone tools. By dating the layers of volcanic ash above and below where archaeological and fossil materials are found, scientists identified Omo I as the earliest evidence of our species, Homo sapiens.

"Using these methods, the generally accepted age of the Omo fossils is under 200,000 years, but there's been a lot of uncertainty around this date," said Dr. Céline Vidal from Cambridge's Department of Geography, the paper's lead author. "The fossils were found in a sequence, below a thick layer of volcanic ash that nobody had managed to date with radiometric techniques because the ash is too fine-grained."
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caltrek
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Re: Human Prehistory (3.3 million years BC – 3500 BC)

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New Research Suggests Modern Humans Lived in Neanderthal Territories in Europe 10,000 Years Earlier than Previously Thought
by Ludovic Slimak, Clément Zanolli, Jason E. Lewis, and Laure Metz

https://theconversation.com/new-researc ... ies-176648

Extract:
(The Conversation) Human origins researchers have generally agreed that between 300,000 and 40,000 years ago, Neanderthals and their ancestors occupied Europe. From time to time during that period, they had contact with modern humans in the Levant and parts of Asia. Then around 48,000 to 45,000 years ago, modern humans – essentially us – expanded throughout the rest of the world, and Neanderthals and all other archaic humans disappeared.

In the journal Science Advances, we describe our discovery of evidence that modern humans lived 54,000 years ago at Mandrin. That’s some 10 millennia earlier than our species was previously thought to be in Europe and over a thousand miles west (1,700 kilometers) from the next-oldest known site, in Bulgaria. And fascinatingly, Neanderthals appear to have used the cave both before and after the modern human occupation.
Last edited by caltrek on Wed Feb 23, 2022 4:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Human Prehistory (3.3 million years BC – 3500 BC)

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Earliest evidence of ear surgery 5,300 years ago
https://phys.org/news/2022-02-earliest- ... years.html
by Bob Yirka , Phys.org
A team of several researchers from the University of Valladolid, in Spain and one from the Spanish National Research Council in Italy, has found evidence of the earliest ear surgery performed on a human being. In their paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, the group describes their study of a human skull found at the Dolmen of El Pendónis back in 2018 and what they learned from it.

Dolmen of El Pendónis is a dig site near Burgos, Spain. Prior research has shown that the site was once used by early people as a funerary chamber. Prior research has also shown that the site was used for approximately 800 years, between 3,800 and 3,000 BC.

In the summer of 2018, a skull was found at the site and was put into storage. More recently, the researchers with this new effort retrieved the skull and took a closer look at it. In so doing, they found it bore evidence of a type of cranial surgery meant to cure an ear ailment. They also found evidence showing that the patient, a woman between the ages of 35 and 50, had survived the surgery—at least for a few months. There was evidence of bone regrowth in the holes that had been bored through her skull. The skull was dated to 5,300 years ago, making it the earliest known example of ear surgery.
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caltrek
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Re: Human Prehistory (3.3 million years BC – 3500 BC)

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Ancient DNA Reveals Surprises About How Early Africans Lived, Traveled and Interacted
February 23, 2022

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/944328

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) A new analysis of human remains that were buried in African archaeological sites has produced the earliest DNA from the continent, telling a fascinating tale of how early humans lived, traveled and even found their significant others.

An interdisciplinary team of 44 researchers outlined its findings in "Ancient DNA reveals deep population structure in sub-Saharan African foragers." The paper was published today in Nature and reports findings from ancient DNA from six individuals buried in Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia who lived between 18,000 and 5,000 years ago.

“This more than doubles the antiquity of reported ancient DNA data from sub-Saharan Africa,” said David Reich, a professor at Harvard University and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute whose lab generated the data in the paper. “The study is particularly exciting as a truly equal collaboration of archaeologists and geneticists.”

The study also reanalyzed published data from 28 individuals buried at sites across the continent, generating new and improved data for 15 of them. The result was an unprecedented dataset of DNA from ancient African foragers — people who hunted, gathered or fished. Their genetic legacy is difficult to reconstruct from present-day people because of the many population movements and mixtures that have occurred in the last few thousand years.

Thanks to this data, the researchers were able to outline major demographic shifts that took place between about 80,000 and 20,000 years ago. As far back as about 50,000 years ago, people from different regions of the continent moved and settled in other areas and developed alliances and networks over longer distances to trade, share information and even find reproductive partners. This social network helped them survive and thrive, the researchers wrote.
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Re: Human Prehistory (3.3 million years BC – 3500 BC)

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BDI researchers create largest ever human family tree

24 February 2022

https://www.bdi.ox.ac.uk/news/bdi-resea ... amily-tree


weatheriscool
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Re: Human Prehistory (3.3 million years BC – 3500 BC)

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Origin of the 30,000-year-old Venus of Willendorf discovered
https://phys.org/news/2022-02-year-old- ... ndorf.html
by University of Vienna

The almost 11-cm-high Venus figurine from Willendorf (Austria) is one of the most important examples of early art in Europe. It is made of a rock called oolite that is not found in or around Willendorf. A research team led by the anthropologist Gerhard Weber from the University of Vienna and the two geologists Alexander Lukeneder and Mathias Harzhauser as well as the prehistorian Walpurga Antl-Weiser from the Natural History Museum Vienna have now found out with the help of high-resolution tomographic images that the material from which the Venus was carved likely comes from northern Italy. This sheds new light on the remarkable mobility of the first modern humans south and north of the Alps. The results currently appear in Scientific Reports.

The Venus von Willendorf is not only special in terms of its design, but also in terms of its material. While other Venus figures are usually made of ivory or bone, sometimes also of different stones, oolite was used for the Lower Austrian Venus, which is unique for such cult objects. The figurine found in the Wachau in 1908 and on display in the Natural History Museum in Vienna has so far only been examined from the outside. Now, more than 100 years later, anthropologist Gerhard Weber from the University of Vienna has used a new method to examine its interior: micro-computed tomography. During several passes, the scientists obtained images with a resolution of up to 11.5 micrometers—a quality that is otherwise only seen under a microscope. The first insight gained is: "Venus does not look uniform at all on the inside. A special property that could be used to determine its origin," says the anthropologist.
weatheriscool
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Re: Human Prehistory (3.3 million years BC – 3500 BC)

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7,000-year-old grains hints at origin of Swiss pile dwellings
https://phys.org/news/2022-03-year-old- ... -pile.html
by University of Basel
No place have researchers found more Neolithic pile dwellings than around the Alps. It is a mystery, however, how this "building boom" came to be. Researchers at the University of Basel have now uncovered new clues and say that settlers at Lake Varese in northern Italy may have played a leading role.

When workers discovered the first pile-dwelling settlement on Lake Zurich in the mid-19th century, a whole new area of archaeological research was born. Since then, 111 pile-dwelling villages in the Alpine region have been made UNESCO World Heritage Sites, but it has so far been unclear where this unique construction method came from. Experts assumed until a few years ago that it was a local phenomenon.

Researchers led by Professor Ferran Antolín from the subject area of Integrative Prehistory and Archaeological Science (IPAS) at the University of Basel, however, have found new clues as to how pile-dwelling culture came to the areas north of the Alps. Prehistoric plant remains from a settlement from Lake Varese in northern Italy show the same composition as the crops from the oldest Swiss pile-dwelling settlements in Zurich and Egolzwil, Canton Lucerne. The researchers have reported their findings in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.
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