Posted on 09/06/2007 2:17:33 PM PDT by blam
A New Paleolithic Revolution
Image Caption: The ‘Rangki Papa’ (‘Father of all Rafts’) built using Palaeolithic technology and approaching the coast of Komodo, Bali, having succeeded in crossing from Sumbawa, 7 October 2004. The vessel travelled 36.4km in 9 hours 22 minutes
Jerome M. Eisenberg, Ph.D. and Dr Sean Kingsley
July/August 2007
For decades archaeologists have rightly respected the Neolithic period c. 8500 BC as a revolutionary era of the most profound change, when the wiring of mankind’s brain shifted from transient hunter-gathering to permanent settlement in farming communities. Hearths, temples, articulated burials, whistling ‘wheat’ fields and security replaced the uncertain ravages of seasonal running with the pack. Or so stereotypes maintain.
Now, from the remote shores of Budrinna on Lake Fezzan in Libya, and Melka Konture on the banks of the River Awash in Ethiopia, a series of stunning discoveries are set to challenge the originality of the Neolithic Revolution. After 39 years of surveys and excavations, Professor Helmut Ziegert of Hamburg University presents his results as a world exclusive in Minerva (pp. 8-9). In both African locations he has discovered huts and sedentary village life dating between an astonishing 400,000 and 200,000 Before Present - if correct, literally a quantum leap in our understanding of man’s evolution. Near aquatic resources, and not alongside agricultural fields, Professor Ziegert contests that our ancestors settled down for the first time in small communities of 40-50 people.
This sensation just scratches the surface of one of prehistory’s most incredible revelations: from Choukoutien in China to Bilzingsleben in Germany, Ziegert claims to have identified 35 other Lower Palaeolithic villages with comparable huts and even cemeteries. A pattern prevails. After decades of fieldwork and contemplation, Helmut Ziegert is convinced that future discoveries will uphold his conclusions. His discoveries have nothing to do with luck, he maintains, but are a matter of applying problem-oriented research. Where evolutionary biologists have typically hunted ancestral humans bones exclusively to understand adaptations to mankind - missing links - as an archaeologist Professor Ziegert has asked more specific, holistic questions of the wider evidence.
At the heart of this new Lower Palaeolithic ‘out of Africa’ village theory are two world-changing ideas. First, that Homo erectus, Upright Man, had far more modernistic tendencies than previously believed; and second, that as unique as the farming villages of Jericho in the West Bank and Catalhoyük in Turkey are, their occupants were not the brains behind the origins of sedentism. The innovative capacity of Homo erectus has challenged scholars for decades and remains a scholarly cauldron. Anthropologists such as Richard Leakey have long insisted that Upright Man was socially more akin to modern humans than to his primitive predecessors because the increased cranial capacity coincided with more sophisticated tool technology. Other scientists contend that Homo erectus was sufficiently advanced to have even mastered maritime transport. Yet both this assertion and the very idea that he ever got to grips with controlled fire are still considered controversial.
Only three years ago, however, Nira Alperson of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem discovered the oldest evidence of fire management at Gesher Benot Ya’aqov on the banks of the Jordan River in Israel’s northern Galilee. The team analysed over 50,000 pieces of wood and nearly 36,000 flints from two hearths associated with a Homo erectus settlement dating back 790,000 years.
More contentiously, Robert Bednarik is convinced that Upright Man ushered in the dawn of trans-ocean travel between 900,000 and 800,000 years ago as part of a wider revolution, usually attributed to the anatomically modern Homo sapiens, that included communicating with a spoken language and eventually carving and painting art 400,000 to 300,000 Before Present. To test his theory, Bednarik built a 17.5m-long, 2.8-ton bamboo raft, Nale Tasih 4, and crossed the 29km-wide stretch of sea from the east coast of Bali to the neighbouring island of Lombok. The results have convinced Bednarik that ‘Between 400,000 and 200,000 years ago, hominins are also known to have crossed to at least two islands in Europe, Corsica, and Sardinia. This is soundly demonstrated, but in addition it is possible that much earlier they managed to cross the Strait of Gibraltar. Unfortunately, that cannot be proved conclusively, because the alternative of reaching Europe by land has always existed’. Stone Age ‘seafaring appears to have been possible’, agrees anthropologist Tim Bromage of Hunter College of the City University of New York, who has identified 30cm-wide South-east Asian bamboo as providing a versatile material for building rafts with simple stone tools.
So, Professor Ziegert’s ‘Out of Africa’ aquatic model for the rise of village life in the Lower Palaeolithic does not emerge out of a cultural and intellectual void. As a veteran of over 81 archaeological surveys and excavations from Germany to Ecuador, ranging in date from the Lower Palaeolithic to the Islamic period, Ziegert is nothing if not scientifically cautious, which makes the current revelation all the more exciting. Between 2007 and 2010 he will be back in the field, returning to Budrinna and Melka Konture to fine-tune his life’s work. To delve in greater depth into the mystery of the ecology, function, structure, and economy of these villages, he plans to search out cemeteries (complementary signs of fixed settlement) and use potassium argon isotopic dating, stratigraphy, and tool typology to measure the ebb and flow of village life in this dizzy, distant prehistoric past.
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Very interesting. I would like to see a more detailed and thoroughgoing analysis of his findings.
Makes sense. If you build fish traps then you have a stable food source with low energy expenditure.
This meshes with another idea that the first farmed crops were fruit and nut trees. Another stable food resource that also would not require a much energy expenditure.
Women with small children who had no man to hunt for them or men who were injured and could no longer take part in hunts were probably the first to realize this. Minnows might not be as tasty as fresh zebra meat but it beats dying of hunger by a wide margin.
I would love to see a book-length scientific version of these ideas!
All sorts of neat new findings being made lately. (Thanks Blam!)
This could actually reinforce the Aquatic ape theory of man's ascent. Humans have certain traits that no other primate do: Hair on the head that never stops growing, large pendulous breasts on females, no fur on skin, tear ducts, downward pointed nostrils shielded by a fleshy nose, innate ability to hold breath submerged--even in infants, subcanteaceous fat layer under the skin, and many more traits point to an aquatic past somewhere along the line for us. We're a strange kind of primate for sure.
Long hair for women, a remnant from long ago for kids to hang onto and float around with mom?
There are a lot of things which argue against this theory. Here is one website that examines such counterarguments: Aquatic Ape Theory: Sink or Swim.
Of course when hunters/gatherers found a steady food supply they stayed in one place, and even manipulated their environment. Doh.
No manner of flints and ancient wood (measured how???) or supposed maritime migrations can add up to the “quantum leap” that the Neolithic revolution represents: the change from managing food supply to controlling and creating it.
I don't see the 'contest'. Necessities for survival, in order: Water, food, shelter... And where you find water, you generally find food and rudimentary shelter. And a primo location is going to attract a crowd.
Our local Karuk and Yurok had seasons of lamprey, spring chinook, fall chinook and deer come to them. They didn’t have to move. They developed family “owned” fishing spots for dip net, rather than garden plots - although they did gather acorns and basket making materials. If the aquatic resources were plentifull year round in an area, it would seem to make sense that the tribe would be sedentary to secure their use.
For one thing, it pushes language back from the current thinking of 50,000 to 85,000 years ago. Really starts one to thinking.
...the team analysed over 50,000 pieces of wood and nearly 36,000 flints from two hearths associated with a Homo erectus settlement dating back 790,000 years. More contentiously, Robert Bednarik is convinced that Upright Man ushered in the dawn of trans-ocean travel between 900,000 and 800,000 years ago as part of a wider revolution...
i must contest the no fur on skin, my built in sweater vest pays homage to any other apes pelt!
Note: this topic is from . Thanks blam.
"Between 400,000 and 200,000 years ago, hominins are also known to have crossed to at least two islands in Europe, Corsica, and Sardinia. This is soundly demonstrated, but in addition it is possible that much earlier they managed to cross the Strait of Gibraltar. Unfortunately, that cannot be proved conclusively, because the alternative of reaching Europe by land has always existed." -- Robert Bednarik
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