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Following on from yesterday’s news in which it was revealed that a previously undiscovered cavern in Liang Bua cave contained animal bones, which despite displaying butchery marks were in pristine condition, giving hope to researchers onsite that hobbit bones may also be found there, and in good enough condition to enable the extraction of DNA, we now have a thought from Mike Moorwood to ponder.
In addition to conducting further research on Flores, Moorwood and his team plan to visit the nearby island of Sulawesi, described as being both much larger than Flores and nearer to mainland Asia, and therefore possibly more likely to have been visited by humans on their way to Flores or elsewhere.
“This island was the most likely source of the hobbits' ancestors. "My guess is that hominids arrived on Sulawesi a long time before a small group were somehow washed out to sea, to be deposited on Flores," he said. "It is now the place with real potential to surprise."
The oldest bones of these people found on Flores date back to 95,000 bp, so presumably Moorwood will be looking for remains even older than these on Sulawesi to give credence to his hypothesis - no signs of Homo floresiensis have been found on the mainland, or anywhere else to date, but who knows what discoveries still await.
image Sulawesi
This essay was prompted in part by Martin at Aardvarchaeology, who droppped a comment on a previous article, suggesting that the idea of Solutreans making it from Europe to America before the Clovis era, was untenable, leading me to the linked essay. So this prompted me to look again at some of the available online content regarding this puzzle, so thanks to him for pointing out this article, without which this essay would not exist.
Although I've written at some length about a few of the ideas that have been offered over the last few years as alternatives to the Clovis First paradigm, I haven't really dealt with a paper or report that specifically challenges the claims of those who propose an early Solutrean incursion to the New World, dating to around 20,000 bp., although I am aware that such ideas have traditionally generated antipathy amongst those in the field.
This linked essay by Jason Colavito makes it clear from the outset that the author favours a traditional Clovis First approach, detailing how everyone from Atlantean demi-gods and their friends, to aliens beaming in from outer space, has at one time or another been considered as potentially the original progenitors of a New World that still bears that ancient soubriquet to the present day. He goes on to lament the notion that Native Americans are being denied their rightful heritage of representing the first settlers, by any claims suggesting people from other ancient races could have got there before them.
We are then introduced to Dennis Stanford and Bruce Bradley, both of whom featured prominently in the BBC Horizon documentary, called "Stone Age Columbus", in which Bradley travelled over to France in order to observe and compare stone tools dating back 20,000 years, and check them for similarities with the much later Clovis industry that suddenly appeared around 11,500 bp, artifacts of which are today found in all 48 states of North America, strong testament indeed to its popularity of the time. There is a suggestion that these two are yet more people determined to give a European dimension to early America, borne of some spurious desire misrepresent American prehistory. From my point of view, I consider the Solutrean idea to be feasible, but I don't think they were the first people to arrive there, and any long-term influence they may have exerted, assuming they were on the ground in sufficient numbers, was but part of a constellation of new ideas and cultural innovation derived from many influences.
Considering matters from a positive viewpoint, America has in the modern era been one of the most dynamic nations ever to arise on Earth, the hallmark of which has been an influx of people and ideas from all over the globe. There can scarcely be a nation on Earth that has not contributed to the current American population, while in turn the American population has come up with technologies and cultural innovations that have in many ways been of great benefit to those nations. It is my contention that America has from its beginnings been visited by folks coming in from every direction, and that there is no one single external influence that has driven American culture, now or in the past.
Clovis
It was the ubiquity and abundance of these stone tools that originally suggested to archaeologists 80 years ago or more that this represented evidence of a sudden influx of humanity, and one which additionally appeared to coincide with the mysterious die-off of huge numbers of mega-fauna as part of a poorly understood extinction event. This was latterly assumed to have occurred as a result of these arrivistes embarking on a hunting and killing spree that only stopped because there was nothing else left to kill.
Ancient kill sites were discovered along with Clovis implements which had clearly been used in both the killing and processing of the meat, and the Clovis people were assumed to have been specialised hunter-gatherers who had specialised a little too far. But as we saw in a recent post on the Gault site, there is evidence to show that not only were Clovis people more sedentary, but they also relied on other food sources than big game, their diet being supplemented by small game and possibly some plant derivatives.
The "Solutrean Solution' apologists contend that Clovis tools were an adaptation of the European lithic set, whilst conservative opinion held that Clovis was invented in situ on the American continent, and that the apparent visual similarities were no more than coincidental. Moreover, they noted that a chipped out groove running from the bottom on both sides of Clovis bifacial points, known as fluting, clearly distinguished them from their putative Euro-derived counterparts. This was countered with an idea that this merely represented a modification of an extant technology, and offered no specific proof of independent innovation and development for Clovis technology.
However, when discussing the various aspects of stone tool industries, especially those of the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic, it's important to remember that many types and styles of different tools are incorporated into the typographic whole, and so is the case with both Clovis and Solutrean industries - they both embrace a wide distribution of content over time and geographical space, as the landscapes and environments of the manufacturers changed, presenting new challenges and opportunities for the knappers of yore.
The idea of a European origin for Clovis technology appeared to be supported in that there was no clear precedent for this tool type in Siberia, or indeed Asia, lands where it was shown that the ancestral Indians had originated, although this fact alone does not mean that Clovis could not have been invented by people once they had arrived in North America. After all, even if Clovis was Solutrean-derived, someone in Europe had managed to invent this technology, and it's difficult to prove that it derived from a specific previous industry. And if a human in Palaeolithic Eurasia could invent and adopt new tool technologies, the same ought to hold true for humans resident in North America, living in broadly similar environments that supported the hunter-gatherer life-style.
In looking at the question of whether a group of Europeans brought with them a stone technology that subsequently evolved into another, as a result of uptake by the indigenous population, the dates and places where these technologies occurred should be taken into account. In the case of the Solutrean industry, this seems to have manifested itself across western Europe around 20,000 bp, apparently disappearing during the Magdalenian, about 14,500 bp., around the time that the 20,000 year era of cave painting was drawing to a close. Oneo f the objections to the idea of Solutrean influence is that there appeared to be a 5,000 year gap between its use in Europe and the appearnace of Clovis in North America.
One of the objections to the Solutrean theory is that although the lithic culture may have been exported to North America, the artistic tradition is claimed to have remained in Europe. For example, there are no known limestone caves in North America displaying anything similar to the parietal art of the European Upper Palaeolithic. However, amongst the Clovis artifacts found at Gault were a small quantity of pebbles that had been incised with line patterns, thought to have been drawn by applying another sharp stone to the surface - a trait also found on similar stones found at Magdalenian sites in Europe.
In 'Stone Age Columbus', much is made of a 20,000 bp bone needle, which looks identical to those used today by Eskimo women, and is used to indicate that Solutreans with the same sewing technology would have had at least some of the means with with to construct clothing that offered real protection against the ferocious weather conditions that confronted them daily. It is suggested that this was another aspect of imported technology, although again, there is nothing to preclude indigenous Americans from inventing the same.
The first indication of a similar tool type to Solutrean existing in pre-Clovis North America came in around 1973, when Jim Adovasio began excavating at Meadowcroft Rock Shelter near the Ohio River, a site that had originally been discovered in 1955 by Albert Miller. Having dug below the Clovis layer, Adovasio claimed to have found similar stone tools dating back to 16,000 bp. But instead of inspiring a new debate considering the who might have arrived pre-Clovis, the finds were largely ignored and dismissed - the dating of the site was called into question because it was suspected that a localised coal deposit had become partly integrated with the archaeological layers, thus giving a set of radiocarbon dates that could not be relied upon, and the idea of it being a pre-Clovis site was duly consigned to the spoil-heap.
As a result, Adovasio joined a list of other archaeologists who found themselves marginalised or ignored, largely for proposing that anyone could have been in North America at dates considered incompatible with the idea that the first and only immigrants of the time had wended their way though an ice corridor leading back into Asia. Clovis First retained its place at the head of the line of contenders for the primary American culture and lithic industry, believed to have been pioneered by the incoming hunter-gatherers from the North.
Another site, Cactus Hill, seemed to offer another clue in favour of the Solutrean-first people. The pre_Clovis proponents needed to find a similar tool type in North America that was dated to after a possible Solutrean incursion, but before there was widespread evidence of Clovis material. This they believed would show that Solutrean technology had been introduced, remained the same for a while, before being adapted as a Clovis technology, with added and localised embellishments such as the fluting, a feature entirely absent from Solutrean bifaces. This fluting is believed to have facilitated an easier and more stable environment for points to be hafted on wooden spear shafts, although whether this made them 'better' or more efficient than non-fluted equivalents hasn't been stated.
The assemblage was located several inches below a known Clovis level, and the dates derived were...
"15,070 ± 70, 16,670 ± 730, and 16,940 ± 50. Additional dates obtained through luminescence were presented but, while consistent in being pre-Clovis, need more evaluation before their relation to the radiocarbon dates is understood."
However, having seen an image of these tools, they seem a far cry from anything Solutrean, and don't really look as if they would have inspired someone to go ahead and invent Clovis. If anything, they seem similar in appearance to the two stone tools recently excavated in Minnesota, and indeed date to roughly the same time, around 15,000-16,000 bp. But as an untrained archaeologist looking at images on a web page, I don't feel overly qualified to make definitive or qualitative judgements, and it is up to more qualified others to determine their relevance or otherwise.
However, the fact that most of the tools found, 90% of which were blades, were shown by microwear analysis to have been hafted, led Larry Kimball at the time to declare them a logical precursor to Clovis.
About the first archaeological site across both the Americas which eventually came to be recognised as being genuinely pre-Clovis, was the Chilean site of Monte Verde, a settlement near the coast, which was subsequently believed to have been reached by people coming in from the Pacific and travelling down the western coastline from North America.
Kennewick
We are then told that the next big event in the saga came with the discovery of Kennewick Man, found in Washington State, and with a morphology that bore little resemblance to present day Indians or their predecessors. This apparently led some to revive the idea that Europeans had been amongst the earliest settlers in the New World, although it was subsequently proposed that this human may well have been genetically similar to the Ainu people, and had come from across the Pacific to the American North West.
This discovery in turn apparently caused Stanford and Bradley to reiterate their views that other races of people had been in the New World at early dates, although I don't recall them being mentioned in the context of Kennewick at the time. Most of that debate centred on whether Jim Chatters and other scientists would be allowed to examine the skeletal remains, or whether instead they would be handed over to nearby Indian tribes-people who would then have taken them for burial at a location only known to them.
Although the American courts eventually came down in favour of Chatters et al, ruling that there was no clear link between Kennewick Man and the tribes who were claiming him as one of their own, the fossils themselves had in the meantime languished in protective care. This meant that suitable material was unavailable to anyone who wished to examine or genetically analyse them further - and although Chatters and his colleagues had casts to work from during Kennewick Man's posthumous spell of incarceration, it was a number of years before they returned to the lab.
It was recently shown that fossil remains unearthed and stored in controlled conditions, tend to deteriorate 50 times quicker than when in the ground, so in a way, it might have been better to have re-interred them during this period of argument over their rightful place in the world.
There have since been ideas put forward that any archaic Indian remains found in the future would be automatically handed over to them for subsequent burial, regardless of whether or not it could be demonstrated that they were ancestral to the tribes-people of today. This doesn't bode well for any Neanderthals or other archaics who may have been quietly fossilising away these past few thousand years, but for the time being, this proposal hasn't been become law, a situation that it is hoped will endure.
While it is clear that Native Americans should be able to re-inter their own ancestors, it is also apparent that the discovery of ancient fossils dating back to and beyond the Clovis era will be about the only opportunity science gets to examine and glean specific genetic data from the remains of people who were around at the time. Barring time travel, a technology that may continue to elude us well into the unforeseeable future, human remains will be the best source of such data. However, the notion that someone who lived 9, 10 or more thousands of years ago, can in the modern day become someone else's property, whether it be private individuals, corporate entities or even the State, is a rather bizarre notion.
All that time wasted having pointless arguments over who gets to do what with the remains seems remarkably immature for a human race that prides itself on having come so far, technologically and culturally from our Stone Age forebears. How many cinematic and fictional portrayals must there have been of hairy old cave-men battering each other with clubs and fists as they fought over food, women or anything else to hand, whereas in fact, that cliche might be more appropriately applied to ourselves in the present day.
The public bickering and general squabbling that accompanied Kennewick Man through the 1990s was a prime example of this, whereas more effort could have been made to share responsibility both for the care of the fossils, with all parties being mindful of the cares and concerns of each other.
Returning to the essay, the author makes the point that even if there was a transfer of technology from western Europe over to the Americas, such a situation would not necessarily mean that Europeans had gone over and settled, although it could mean that Europeans had travelled there, passed on their 'overshot outre passe' flaking techniques to the indigenous population before turning round and paddling back whence they had come.
Travel
At this point, although late in the essay, it's worth taking a quick look at what a trip from Upper Palaeolithic Europe to North America would have involved, what problems would need to be overcome, as well as possible motives of people who were essentially from what is now the Basque Country, known for their enthusiasm for travel across the world, as evidenced by recent research that seems to indicate that the first settlers in Britain immediately following the end of the last Ice Age, had in fact hailed from precisely that region.
The first items on the list would be an ability to conceive of a trip involving long distance travel, to decide the means and design of transport, which members of any given society would have been chosen to make the trip, as well as planning how to feed, water and shelter those embarking on such a journey.
In his essay, Colavito states that the Solutreans 'had no boats', but of course we have no direct archaeological evidence to prove or disprove this. For the sake of argument, I'm going to assume that Europenas, as well as other peoples around the world, had been putting to sea for many thousamds of years. Humans, then as now, are thought to have been largely coastal-dwelling, or at the very least people who explored the world by travelling pricipally aloong coastlines. This was presumably because of a better mix of resources, as well the benefits such an environment offered to travellers. A coastline was like a geographical ball of string - you could never get really lost on the coast, as it was possible to simply retrace one's footsteps in the vent of unsurmountable obstacles or to revisit somewhere that offered better resources.
It is this constant proximity to the sea that would given early and observant humans clues as to how winds, tides and currents operated in concert - and if floating platforms such as rafts or boats could be used to exploit those factors, the food resources from the sea alone would make seemingly dangerous deep-sea fishing missions worthwhile. In time, sea journeys that followed the coast would have been undertaken, though how and where people took it upon themselves to go sailing over the horizon isn't known - Flores at 840,000 bp is my favourite example, but whether this was a deliberate effort on the part of those early humans who reached the island, we'll probably never know.
It has been suggested that for humans travelling across the Atlantic along the bottome of the ice sheet, there would have been plenty of food available, which as long as they liked fish and other marine mammals, was fine. It occurred to me to wonder how they would have dealt with an illness that blighted many sailors closer to our own period of history, namely scurvy. To combat this, at least in the past few centuries, it was discovered that foods with high vitamin C content - citrous fruits and fresh vegetables were the most effective way of staving off such illness. But food items such as these would not have been available on the frozen wastes, which indeed would have been incapable of supporting much in the way of vegetation of any sort. In act I'm not even sure how humans living on land in Ice Age Eurasia would have had much access to vitamin C rich vegetation, though presumably they managed somehow.
If there was an ice sheet extending all the way across the North Atlantic, Europe and North America would have effectively been joined together on the same land-mass, so the idea of small boats battling valiantly against maritime storms on the open seas, hundreds or thousands of miles from land, would not have been the case.
However, such a journey would not have been without significant dangers. In those days, it is believed there were icebergs afloat as far south as the Bay of Biscay, the very starting point for such trans-Atlantic journeys. These icebergs would indicate that it would have been no simple matter to head for the southern extremities of the ice sheet and simply paddle along its periphery. Navigating around and through fields of floating ice would have presented formidable problems, adding much time to an undertaking whose speed of execution would have been crucial factors in the survivability of the crews, as the more time spent at sea meant a greater demand for resources.
It may have been more practicable to take a landward route across the ice sheet, but again, resources would have been few and far between. It's possible that a combined assault on the North Atlantic could have been launched from both land and sea, with some travelling by boat, whilst others of their companions took the land route - by staying in contact with each other, the two parties would be able to get resources from land and sea simultaneously, acting as mutual support groups for each other.
A big problem would have been in finding suitable material from which to build fires - no trees or vegetation would have been available, meaning that animal fat and bones would have been about the only fuels to hand. Keeping warm would have been absolutely crucial, especially when holed up in a storm. We see in 'Stone Age Columbus' how modern eskimos find shelter n a storm - one method is simply to take their canoes out of the water, turn them upside down and crawl inside. Snow caves and igloos are also contructed, and it's likely that Ice Age people exploited similar ideas - it has been suggested elsewhere that the invention of snow-shoes could well have originated from these times.
A lack of available stone and rock resources would have meant that plenty of spare stone tools would need to be taken along, and woe betide anyone who lost or dropped their tool-kit - the importance of people having this resource cannot be underestimated, as without this technology they would find it difficult to eat or carry out any task that required the applcation of a stone or bone tool.
That Solutreans would have had the necessary tools is beyond doubt, and we know they had the barbed harpoon type of implement that would have been necessary for them to catch fish, unless they were using baited lines or nets.
Illness and injury would have been constant dangers, both capable of suddenly bringing matters to a grinding halt. However, the intense cold would presumably have prevented injuries from becoming infected or gangrenous, although the cold itself would have depleted bodily resources rapidly.
The terrible weather, boredom and fatigue would be some of the hidden dangers, each capable of lowering the morale of one or members of the expeditions. Trekking for 5,000 km of ice and snow, or paddling through endless ice floes would have been very daunting environments, capable of testing the will of even the most gung-ho of travellers, so if people did make the trip, they must have had great single-mindedness and determination to enable them to do so.
It is unlikely there was one initial trip that made it all the way across the first time out; it's not as if a band of intrepid travellers awoke one fine morning, announced to their fellows 'Right, we're of to discover a new continent - see you when we get back", whereupon they leapt into a fleet of well stocked and constructed boats and promptly disappeared for a few years.
More likely there would have been a case of "mission-creep", with a succession of expeditions making it further along the ice sheet on successive occasions. It would have made sense for a series of way stations or base camps to have been constructed, and at fairly close intervals, wherein supplies and stores could be kept - the freezing conditions meant that fresh meat or fish could be stored safely for long periods of time,
In conclusion, although it would have been the ultimate 'Journey of a Thousand Nightmares', there remains the distinct possibility that some Europeans could eventually have made a sea-crossing along the edges of the ice sheet into the New World. What happened when they reached the Americas is unknown, but it is likely that the later they arrived, the more chance they would have had of meeting other people who were already there, having arrived from Asian points of departure, allowing for the possibility of a lithic industry of European origin to be passed on to the indigenous population, and latterly modified into Clovis.
However, a lack of artifacts in any abundance from the proposed transition period, between the arrival of Europeans to the time when Clovis became established, has thus far failed to confirm the opinions of Stanford and Bradley, although this does not mean that further discoveries will not be made.
In the end, it doesn't really matter to me who was first, second or even third to America - what interests me is the idea that prehistoric people may have arrived there at very early dates, and to have done so must have involved some those humans making epic journeys, travelling for thousands of miles, at periods in time that we would imagine no such globe-trotting aspirations. As I mentioned at the top of this essay, I think America has acted as a kind of magnet from the get-go, pulling people in from all corners of the world, over a length of time spanning tens of thousnds of years. We don't know exactly which influx of humans influenced contemporary or later cultures and technologies - many sets of different arrivals may have simply died out, leaving no permanent legacy in the traditional sense, while others live on to this day through their genetic heritage.
Early New World Settlers Rise in East
Cactus Hill
Cactus Hill Update
Cactus Hill stone tools image
The Gault Site, Texas, and Clovis Research
Winds Of Change: North America's Wind Patterns Have Shifted Significantly In The Past 30,000 Years
Intriguing news from the island of Flores, and more specifically Liang Bua Cave, the site made famous in 2003 for having yielded up the fossil remains of what might turn out to be an entirely new species of human.
"The chance discovery of an enormous chamber beneath the Indonesian cave where hobbit-like creatures were discovered promises to settle the debate about who - or what - the tiny creatures were.
Scientists are confident the mystery will be solved if they can extract DNA from hobbit remains they expect to find among the rubble of 32,000- to 80,000-year-old bones and stone tools littering the cavern floor."
I had assumed that because further digging in the cave had been prohibited, the entire site would have been closed down, but it now appears the cave was open to an Australian and Indonesian team, of whom Mike Gagan, a palaeoclimatologist was a member.
For his part, Mike Moorwood is hoping that the pristine conditions of animal remains found so far bode well for the potential discovery of any hobbit bones, particularly as these might well yield DNA, and give some definitive idea of what or who exactly these creatures or people really were. The remains recovered so far have been in a very poor state of preservation, from which no genetic data could be gleaned, and it will be the obtaining of such material that will ultimately help to precisely describe them.
Hobbit Human Is A New Species
Hot on the heels of the discovery of a previously unknown cavern at Liang Bua, Dean Falk and colleagues have published their findings in the latest edition of 'Procedures of the National Academy of Sciences', as described here...
Professor Falk's analysis used the skulls of 10 normal humans, nine microcephalics, one dwarf and the Hobbit.
The brain leaves a mirror image imprinted onto the skull, from which anatomists can reconstruct its shape. The resulting brain cast is called an endocast.
Professor Falk's team scanned all 21 skulls into a computer and then created a "virtual endocast" using specialist software.
Then, they used statistical techniques to study shape differences between the brain casts and to classify them into two different groups: one microcephalic, the other normal.
The dwarf's brain fell into the microcephalic category, while the Hobbit brain fell into the normal group - despite its small size.
However, as mentioned before, this analysis has only been carried out on a single skull specimen, and it won't be until others are recovered that the hobbits will be accepted as a new species - and as discussed below, the recovery of remains in good enough condition to yield DNA, could be crucial in either confirming or refuting current opinion.
More from Mars, and following on from the previous posts discussing the missing water and atmosphere, and whether life could have existed in a warmer and wetter past. The lack of a substantial atmosphere would seem to preclude the existence of life at or near the Martian surface, as it would be unable to survive in the face of what is described as an intense and ionizing radiation. However, a research team at University College London believe that life could exist at depths greater than a few meters.
The problem here is that none of the current Mars missions have the capability of digging down deep enough into the planet's surface to search for extant life. According to Lewis Dartnell...
"These missions - such as Europe's ExoMars rover - could find hints that life once existed there - such as proteins, DNA fragments or fossils, explained Mr Dartnell; and that "would be a major discovery in itself".
But he added: "The Holy Grail for astrobiologists is finding a living cell that we can warm up, feed nutrients and reawaken for study.
"It just isn't plausible that dormant life is still surviving in the near-subsurface of Mars - within the first couple of metres below the surface - in the face of the ionizing radiation field.
"Finding life on Mars depends on liquid water surfacing on Mars, but the last time liquid water was widespread on Mars was billions of years ago."
Bearing in mind the recent announcements by NASA, that there is water on the surface of Mars right now, his assertion that water has not been present on the surface there for billions of years, is a little puzzling.
And although they may well be correct in assuming that features such as the frozen Elysium sea near the Martian equator might well have harboured recent life, the presence of water in other locations on Mars should alert them to the possibility of life also being there now. It is pointed out that it's much easier for those searching for signs of life to drill through ice rather than rock.
Apparently, water is additionally important, not only in that it facilitates life, but the hydrogen component within it acts as an effective radiation shield, enabling life to thrive and survive, meaning, or at least indicating, that if life was present in the past near the surface, it might still be there today in areas where water can be shown to be present.
Some researchers point to the lack of "ground truth" about the radiation environment on Mars' surface to assess life's chances there.
I'm not sure exactly what that last statement means, but it may be an indication that radiation on the surface of Mars is not as intense, (or may be even more intense) than current estimates or measurements would infer - and again, I'm not aware which of the current missions is responsible for measuring that radiation, but it sounds as if someone should be on the case as a matter of urgency. It will be such factors that will ultimately determine the survivability of Mars with regard to humans who may in the future decide to visit the place in person.
This follows on directly from the post below, this time concentrating on the missing water on Mars, as opposed to the missing atmosphere. By calculating the amount of carbon dioxide and water lost each year to solar winds ripping them off into space, astrophysicists have deduced that only about 1% of that previously suggested from data collected by the Phobos II mission.
This has created something of a dilemma for Stas Barabash and his colleagues as they attempt to discover the whereabouts of a large volume of material that seems to have simply vanished into the thin Martian air, and as he says...
Either some other process removed the water and CO2 or they are still present and hidden somewhere on Mars, probably underground. "We are talking about huge amounts of water. To store it somewhere requires a really big, huge reservoir."
Barabash is not sure what form this reservoir – or reservoirs – would take, but he points to findings from NASA's now lost Mars Global Surveyor (MGS). This data provided evidence that water had gushed down slopes on Mars in recent years, possibly originating from beneath the surface before our very eyes. "So there might be some possibilities for water existing in liquid form even now," he says.
Alternative ideas to help explain the missing atmosphere include one theory that magnetic storms may have increased the rate at which the atmosphere had been stripped away in past, although it isn't mentioned whether such storms should or would have had a similar effect on this planet.
But in the meantime, there remains the tantalising suggestion of a possibility that Mars could some day be quite easily terraformed, making it fit for man, beast and plant to co-exist on a planet that was so recently declared a cold, dead world, incapable of ever having supported life of any kind.
Here's an item I caught in passing listening to George Noory the other day - and I'm surprised to find a relative dearth of articles covering this, especially as it brings back memories of 'Total Recall', a film starring the current Governor of California. The premise of the film was to depict a future version of Mars, inhabited by humans who lived under the impression that due there being no breathable atmosphere on the Red Planet, everyone necessarily had to live in sealed domes that in the event of trouble from the citizenry, could be cut off from the supply. As we know, the end of the film shows a Mars that has an atmosphere after all, it had been hidden all along - and further, that some unidentified aliens had built a subterranean power system that was capable of booting up the atmosphere, more or less at the flick of a switch.
"Rather than having had its air knocked out into space, Mars might just be holding its breath.New findings suggests the missing atmosphere of Mars might be locked up in hidden reservoirs on the planet, rather than having been chafed away by billions of years' worth of solar winds as previously thought."
Today, Mars is estimated to have an atmosphere that is so weakly pressurised that it represents a mere 0.7% of that on Earth, making it a necessity for humans to plod around the place in cumbersome space suits. A big mystery is that it appears the ancient surface of Mars was once home to a great deal of water, and for that to be the case, there must have been a sufficiently dense atmosphere to hold it place.
However, as we can plainly see, there is little evidence of large bodies of water on the Martian surface, leading scientists to consider that the water and atmosphere may have been stripped away by some calamitous event in the past, with the favourite theory describing a collision with a rock at least 6 miles in diameter. As yet, there is no suggested time-frame for this event, and neither does there appear to be a matching impact site of anything approaching the correct size.
And while this is one of the ideas presented by Stas Barabash, of the Swedish Institute of Space Physics in Kiruna, Sweden, his other theory is more intriguing still...
"There are different alternatives. One is that it is still stored somewhere on Mars in some hidden reservoir we cannot find."
He doesn't elaborate further, and for his more detailed analysis of this current thinking, a subscription to Science is required, although it's likely that the story will be picked up by other agencies, and disseminated in due course.
But of course the real story behind this is that a younger Mars, that was both warm and wet, could very possibly have supported life, which itself may not have been restricted to merely existing at the microbial level. As for the future, we'll have to wait and see if this putative atmosphere can be revitalised to the extent that humans would be able to roam freely across Martian landscapes, or whether we'll merely view the sunsets through the slightly scratched surface a perspex bubble.
image from Mars Society
Three broadly similar articles, which between them chart the discovery of a cave, originally found in 2002, on the Nullarbor Plain in Australia, wherein have been found an astonishing variety of fossil skeletons, many belonging to species of fauna that have long since disappeared from this Earth, victims of yet another extinction event that remains largely unexplained.
And although there are two main theories currently doing the rounds, neither sits quite square with the available data, with climate and the incursion of modern humans still the ongoing favourites amongst people who consider these things as part of their daily routine. Apparently there are no other ideas being forward to explain this event, although that may change in the future when the existing theories fall from favour.
The geological age of the cave isn't discussed, but animals have been falling into it since 800,000 years ago, and according to which account you read, continued doing so up until 400,000 bp or 200,000 bp. They apparently fell into steep shafts that ran down to the subterranean cavern, oblivious to its presence until they were inside it and unable to escape, which although bad for them, turned out to be very good news for palaeontologists, as the the sheltered environment has helped preserve the fossil remains, in some cases with the skeleton completely intact. As we see,
"The cache, found in the Nullarbor Plain in south-central Australia, contains fossils of 69 species of mammal, bird and reptile, and includes many complete skeletons, including the first of a marsupial lion (see right). There are also eight species of kangaroo that had never been recorded before."
In all, 23 species of kangaroo were found, including some which could climb trees, as well as a wombat with heavy brow-ridges, which must have looked somewhat unusual, but the most notable find was that of the 9ft. marsupial lion, which like some of the kangaroo it probably hunted, carried its young in a pouch.
By analysing the oxygen and carbon content of the tooth enamel from some of the fossils, Dr. Gavin Prideaux and Tim Flannery were able to determine that the kangaroo of yesteryear existed on a diet broadly similar to that of their modern-day descendants, indicating a similarly arid climate, although there was a great deal more vegetation present in the area back then, as evidenced by kangaroos that could climb trees, of which there currently none to be seen.
"Australian megafauna died out roughly 40,000 years ago, and Prideaux says the discovery that they survived in an arid environment undermines one of two popular theories for what killed them off - namely, that ice-age aridity was responsible. That leaves the second theory, which suggests that the giant kangaroos and wombats were wiped out by the actions of humans, either through habitat destruction or hunting, says Prideaux."
This is a similar way in which the mega-faunal event in the Americas is said to have occurred at the end of the last Ice Age, but in neither case is it clear that there were sufficient numbers of humans present at either location, able to perpetrate such a wholesale slaughter.
Not everyone is convinced, however. "You can say that a species was arid-adapted 200,000 years ago, but you can't then extrapolate to 40,000 years ago and say 'So humans must have done it,'" says Judith Field of the University of Sydney. "It's far too simplistic."
So if it wasn't humans or the climate, that only leaves possibilities such as disease that was mainly lethal to mega-fauna other than mankind - although it isn't known for sure that many humans didn't also die en masse, we might expect to see a die-off if they had been heavily reliant on these animals for their subsistence.
Caverns Give Up Huge Fossil Haul
Marsupial Lion Among Finds In Treasure Trove Of Fossils
In life, there are many mysteries so deep and intrinsically unfathomable, that it's probably best not to think about them at all - for example, why should a perfectly serviceable and snappy Nokia mobile be fine one minute, then unable to accept mp3s via Bluetooth or even allow the camera to function, the next? How can it be that this piece of shi...mmering technology has so quickly lost its lustre, and yet still cost so much to replace that its owner is going to be stuck with it for the foreseeable future?
And then there's the kind of mystery that's not quite as opaque, but nevertheless doesn't seem to offer any easy answers, asking how it can be that the intransigence of anthropology related officials, seemingly intent on banning indefinitely any further enquiry into one of the biggest palaeoanthropoligical puzzles of the past few decades, suddenly melt away quicker than you can say 'warranty expired', with the announcement that investigations at Liang Bua Cave, can after all, resume.
Well, I don't know, is the short answer, but for the moment, such details are mere side issues to the main event, which in this case is the news that Liang Bua Cave is due to be re-opened in the next few months, in order that further excavations can take place, in an effort to decide once and for all whether we really do have a new species of human to add to the galaxy of archaic stars that have lit up prehistory for the past few million years.
As readers of these pages at remote central will be aware, Liang Bua cave is located on the Indonesian island of Flores, and it was there that the famous 'hobbit' remains were found, sparking up a furore as to whether these were a new, and completely unsuspected species of miniature human, unparalleled in all of human evolutionary prehistory - or merely diseased individuals suffering from microcephaly, a claim made by Teuku Jacob, and hotly disputed by Professor Mike Moorwood, who led the excavation.
All the controversy has raged around a single skull, and it has been apparent for some time that more skulls and postcranial material needed to be excavated and analysed for a a fuller and more accurate assessment of the finds - and it was precisely this gathering of more data that was put in jeopardy by the closure of the cave, due to what are described as 'political sensitivities' - though what we are to make of that claim, I don't know.
And although there will be sceptics out there, wondering whether in the time that the cave has been closed, unofficial excavations have been taking place, such thoughts are far from the minds of those who will be resuming digging operations, hopefully within the next few months.
"It's now a matter of getting everything organised so we can start digging again," said Professor Richard Roberts.
"You've got to get there in the dry season; in the wet season you can hardly drive to the site and when you are there, there are puddles of water all over the floor - so it's got to be dry to sensibly dig holes."
For his part, Professor Moorwood has apparently been optimistic that operations would resume, even before this latest news release.
"This particular discovery seems to have prompted people to rethink what it is to be human, the relationship between brain size and behaviour, and whether hominin populations have been insulated from environmental factors. This indicates that they haven't.
"It also raises questions about the colonisation capabilities of early hominids. What are they doing on Flores and what are they almost certainly doing on other islands in South-East Asia."
And that is still one of the biggest paradoxes surrounding this discovery - how did such creatures, with tiny frames and brains, happen to be on an island that could only have been reached by traversing the open seas - and what connection, if any, is there between the hobbits, and the previous occupants of this enigmatic island, Homo erectus, who similarly arrived across the open seas, some 840,000 years ago.
We'll leave the final say at this stage to Professor Moorwood, who assures us that,
"South-East Asia and East Asia is going to yield an awful lot of surprises"
and although he might well be correct, I think there are plenty more surprises awaiting us from all over the palaeo-world, wherein it would seem that humans of all shapes and sizes in the past had scant regard for the idea of staying in locations where we would expect them to be, instead choosing to pitch up wherever and whenever they so desired, by means that are still beyond our ken.
"A New Human: The Strange Story of the 'Hobbit': How the Biggest Discovery in Anthropology Since Lucy Shattered More Than a Century" by Mike Moorwood & Penny van Oosterzee, due out in May, 2007.
image Liang Bua Cave
This follows on from the post below, and looks in greater detail at some of the work done by Dr. Michael B. Collins as part of his work to show the Clovis-first paradigm is more of a Clovis-first myth, albeit one that had endured for at least 70 years. This article deals more with times nearer the Clovis boundary, in an attempt to define the exact nature of the Clovis technology, whether it represented a single industry, as well as looking for other industries that may have preceded it, along with comparisons to other earlier tool assemblages in the broader context of the Upper Palaeolithic.
The essay begins by describing the context of the Gault site, about 40 miles north of Austin, Texas, which reads thus:
"Gault is a large site, more than 800 m long and 200 m across (~16 ha) with abundant archaeological evidence for human occupations spanning the entire local prehistoric record of 11,000 RCYA. It occupies the constricted head of the valley of a small stream where reliable springs flow and abundant chert of extraordinary quality crops out. Today the locality is well watered and supports a diverse array of trees and other vegetation on deep soils in stark contrast to sparse xeric vegetation on thin, rocky soils on the immediately surrounding uplands.
At a larger scale, this setting is in the Balcones Ecotone (a transition zone between two distinct habitats) where resources of limestone uplands mingle with contrasting landscapes occurring on adjacent coastal plains (fig.1). The Edward’s Plateau differs in its geology, soils, flora, and fauna from the Black Prairie region of the Gulf Coastal Plains. Gault today is a special place and evidently has been for a very long time."
The author then lists the various periods of time through which Gault was occupied by early Americans, working backwards from the most recent inhabitants - the dates are given as RCYA - radiocarbon estimates, and as far as I can tell, 2,000 years need to be added to give an estimate in real-time years.
These estimates of occupation for the site are based on flint artifacts and animal remains found onsite, although the stratigraphic levels in which they have have been found are themselves extremely disrupted. There are apparently few if any organic remains which could be radio-carbon dated, such as charred plant or animal remnants or charcoal fragments, making it difficult to read much into the daily lives of those present at the site over an astonishing 8,000 years. Not only has the site been disturbed in modern times, not least by looters, but repeated local flooding has also played its part in churning up ancient deposits, inevitably complicating the process of trying to interpret the chronology.
Having read through separate reports on this site, I'm finding it difficult to get a handle on exactly what is to be found in which location relative to the whole, and as it's inconveniently located several thousand miles away from where I'm sitting, I can't pop down the road to see for myself to get a clearer idea. So although I'll write this up as I see it, it might be best to refer to the three linked articles in order to gain a more accurate assessment, or even better, of course pay a visit to the site itself.
Veering briefly off-topic, I've recently been wondering about the possibility of a future application along the lines of something like a Google Palaeo-Earth, whereby it would be possible to look at the Earth as it appeared in the past, with particular reference to prehistoric sites, their stratigraphies and contents, and just as importantly, enable the viewer to see exactly what the climate was up to at any given time. I'm thinking here about the 22 different Ice Ages we've had in the last 2 million years - it's a lot more difficult to work out where humans were, or could have been, without having a working knowledge of whether ice sheets were present in the high northern latitudes at various points in prehistory - this is particularly important when trying to work out, for example, when the Beringia Land Bridge was available as a transit route for humans and other fauna into the New World, at times other than its most recent incarnation and subsequent demise, around 14,000 bp.
Although when considering early humans in the Americas we concentrate on the lower 48 States, and all points south from there to places like Chile and Brazil, there must have been times when Canada was also ice-free, and could easily have been home to early modern or archaic humans coming in from Asia and elsewhere. But because of the 2 mile-high ice sheets that formed there in the last Ice Age, as well as previous glaciations, any traces of human activity in Canada immediately preceding a glaciation would have been ground to dust by the billions of tons of ice scouring away the clues - all that might remain would be a few stone tools and butchered animal bones, scattered hither and thither, but lacking any meaningful context in time and place in which to usefully analyse them.
The same goes for sea-levels, which over the course of prehistory have fallen and risen with surprising frequency and extent - as we know, at the end of the last Ice Age, sea levels rose globally from between 150 ft. and 450 ft., inundating some 10 million square miles of previously dry land - of which ancient humans almost certainly visited a fair proportion - this in part refers to the idea that ancient migration routes out of Africa, may well have involved people walking along the coast for thousands of miles, eventually ending up in places such as the furthers shores of Asia and down into Australia.
By being able to see ancient coastlines on reconstructed maps or atlases of the time, we could predict where to look under present day oceans for signs of human activity which might provide signs of early migrations or sea-faring folks , from probable departure points on long-haul voyages across the ancient seas, en route to destinations as yet unsuspected by us in the present day.
In Britain, investigations have been under way for some time, by archaeologists and others to peer below the murky depths of the North Sea, and map out what had been dry land during the last Ice Age and into the Mesolithic, before being inundated at around 8,400 bp. This land bridge would have enabled people to walk from Britain clear across to Scandinavia, and presumably back again, if they so wished. The area, referred to as 'Doggerland', named after the Dogger Bank, has yielded a wealth of information pointing to human activity, but more of that another time - I can't really justify writing up a report on the North Sea peoples and their world under a headline referring to Gault, Texas, but worth mentioning, nonetheless.
A notable aspect of early humanity appears to be an inordinate fondness for navigating the open seas, possibly stretching back to 840,000 years at Flores, possibly Timor, and a very faint possibility of ocean-going people at 1.3 million years, as witnessed by the early occupants of southern Spain, hopping over the Straits of Gibraltar from Morocco, as detailed here a couple of posts back.
Considering that deep seas represent an environment that's extremely hazardous to mankind, even in the present day, we can only wonder at the ingenuity, planning abilities and sheer courage of our ancient forebears, as well as wondering how on earth they were able to conceive of journeying to places, and plotting a course to those places that frequently lay out of sight, far beyond the horizon.
Wandering back in the direction of the Gault site, here's some further description regarding the finds and what they can tell us about the people who left them.
For a start, there are reportedly 600,000 finds coming from just 3% of the excavated site, the vast majority of which are flint tools and cores, reflecting the abundance of high quality chert present at the site, one of the key ingredients that would have attracted early hunter gatherers to such a location - one of the others of which is a constant supply of spring water that has never been known to fail in historic times.
The site itself is unusual in that its immediate environment is quite different from its surroundings. The Edwards Plateau on which it stands is limestone country, with the site itself being in a woodland valley at the point where three brooks meet to make a stream. Three hours walk away from this place leads to the Black Prairie, an area of completely different geology, soils, plants and varieties of animals. In this respect, the Gault site could be seen as a localised Garden of Eden, and the fact that it was probably occupied, or at least visited regularly over a period of 13,000 years, bears testament to that idea. Here's a fuller description of its modern incarnation, from Texas Beyond History...
"...the Gault site itself sits on a smaller scale ecotone that is still obvious today even to the casual visitor. The road to the site leads through the typical rocky limestone rolling hills with very little soil and lots of cedar (juniper), live oak, mesquite and prickly pear. As you approach the site, the road drops off into the valley—only about 45 feet lower, but what a difference. The deep, well-watered soils provide habitat for huge hardwood trees—burr oaks, walnuts, pecans, ash, elm, bois d' arc, and a dozen more species including willow and cottonwood. In a word, it is lush. While we don't have an accurate idea of what the local vegetation was like in Clovis times, the contrast between valley bottom and the surrounding uplands would have been just as stark."
Gault also differs from other and relatively near sites, in that all these other sites, Like Lehner, Murray Springs or Domebo were kill sites, meaning that Clovis lithics found in situ indicate where mammoth bones have been disarticulated and butchered. Gault on the other hand appears to have been a base camp, from which hunters sallied forth, to return later with the meat they had bagged during the course of their travails.
And this brings us to an important point, as it is the first indication that rather than all Clovis folk being gung-ho mammoth and other big-game hunters, they were in fact rather more sedentary in aspect, and derived their food resources from a much broader range of sources than large prey animals, as we see here...
"Among the bones found in the Clovis deposits are turtle bones, burned frog bones, burned bird bones, and small mammals yet to be identified. In Clovis faunal assemblages across North America, the most commonly identified animals are not elephants (mammoth)—they are turtles. And the Clovis diet was not based on animals alone."
The deposits at Gault also seemingly record an extinction event - in the lower levels are to be found reamins of mammoth, horse and bison, whereas the upper and younger levels contain only bison - Collins points out that if Clovis people were specifically mammoth hunters, their stone tool kit should have changed once there were no mammoth alive - but there is no apparent change in the tool kit that has been observed.
This idea of a settled people, familiar with their own landscapes suggests to Collins that these settlements should be considered against a backdrop of humans having been in North America for long periods of time, presumably many millennia, before the Clovis industry became the assemblage of choice for the discerning early American. It is thought that the levels at Gault, spanning such a great length of time, may represent the entire Clovis time-span, up until it was succeeded by the Folsom industry.
However, at this point it should be borne in mind that the Clovis industry itself is an extremely diverse set of artifacts, both in design and application, and this is especially so at Gault, as described here...
"Base camps, (i.e. Gault) as the name implies, are places where people stayed for a while and ventured out from, repeatedly. One characteristic they have is "assemblage diversity"—lots of different kinds of artifacts. The diversity already recognized at Gault is astonishing. There are Clovis points—finished points, worn out points, half-made points, resharpened points, and lots of fragments. And Clovis bifaces—big heavy bifaces, small thin bifaces, bifaces broken in manufacture, and several kinds of specialized bifaces. There are also Clovis blade cores and blades—hundreds of them—large ones, small ones, crested outer blades, thin inner blades, broken blades, and used blades. Then there are the blade tools—end scrapers made on blades, serrated blades, blades with sharp graver-like beaks, and blades with incredible use-wear traces. The finding of several adzes or wood-working tools was quite unusual—this tool form was not known previously from other Clovis sites, although it occurs more commonly at later sites. Another odd artifact from Gault is a bone or ivory rod, found in the ancient gravel deposits of the creek amid definite Clovis artifacts. It is very similar to specimens found in other Clovis sites."
Additionally, discoveries have been made of limestone rocks that have been incised, thought to have been marked by the application of sharp flint tools capable of drawing the lines that comprise the designs - a phenomena that is thought to be one of the oldest examples of representational art in North America.He further motes the similarity of some Clovis traits with those of the European Solutrean and Magdalenian, even including the engraved limestone rocks as further proof of a distant past for the makers of Clovis assemblages in America.
As this has been a long and rambling essay, it seems only fit to end on a related note, in this case the subject of frequent travellers living in and between, as well as far removed from, the majority of sedentary populations in the Stone Age America of yore, so here we go...
"John, you've been on the go ever since you were born and I
imagine few people in the world today have travelled as much
as you have. Now why?"
"Well, I dunno - I suppose some of us are cave-dwellers, some of us live in houses, some of us like to be loose footed....I'm a ramblin' man."
Thus goes the opening line of "Rambling Man", (Lemon Jelly, 'Lost Horizons', 2002), and it's worth bearing in mind when we consider how although a society as a whole might appear to be sedentary, like Clovis as suggested here by the author, elements of that, and indeed others, will comprise folk who unable to find contentment by staying home, feel compelled to embark on a life of travel, or work that necessitates same, involving trips of varying lengths and distances, as well as visits to different communities and races along the way. It was people such as these, that through their constant movement across the prehistoric landscape, allowed for the dynamic transmission of both ideas and material culture between distant communities that were so geographically remote from each other that they would almost never meet in person.
Gault-Clovis Reconsidered
Clovis Occupation in Central Texas
image Gault Creek
Although many are now disputing the idea that the First Americans didn't arrive in their new home before 12,000 bp, archaeologist Michael Collins at the University of Texas has been ploughing a lonely furrow for nigh on 30 years, and this article goes some way to redressing that situation, particularly as I recently wrote a longish piece about the First Americans, without once even referring to him.
Having worked at Monte Verde, the Chilean site now thought to date to 14,000 bp, Collins is no stranger to controversy in these matters, although it was as early as 1967 that he came to the conclusion that humans had been present at the site of Cueva Quebrada in Val Verde County, Texas, in 14,000 bp. Today, however, he includes other older sites that will bolster his earlier musings...
" Collins himself believes America was likely peopled on two fronts. Coastal communities in both Asia and Europe likely made their way to the New World on boats, sticking close to ice shelves to fish and hunt sea mammals. Though no ancient boats have been found, Collins points to evidence that Asians traveled to Australia 50,000 years ago, presumably in boats, since the island continent has never been connected to a land mass."
And further that...
" Collins also points to evidence from Japan that suggests prehistoric humans 30,000 years ago ate deep-sea fish and possessed obsidian found only on distant Japanese islands, which also suggests the use of boats."
It has been suggested on another website, whose name and url currently elude me, that until we begin to take account of the idea that humans have for tens of thousands of years, at least, been putting out to sea, and venturing not only beyond the safety of coastlines, but frequently over their local horizons, we will not be able to fully comprehend the long-distance trips across the world that allowed humans to reach places that have until now thought to have been inaccessible to them.
What prompted people to make these early journeys isn't clear, any more than when people first made ocean-going craft, or how they came up with successful designs. In the previous post we looked at how Homo habilis, as well as other fauna, had made the sea-crossing from north Africa to southern Spain at least as far back as 1.3 million bp. It was noted that at least one species of hippo had made this crossing, which isn't too surprising as hippo are adept and graceful swimmers, but apes, humans and bears are a different kettle of fish, so to speak. Although we might expect some archaic humans to have been strong swimmers, such as Homo erectus, it's unlikely that habilis would have been anything like strong enough, whilst apes and bears are rarely spotted practicing their back-stroke or butterfly techniques.
There is the possibility that some crossings could easily have been made as a result of creatures hanging onto storm debris like tree trunks that would have enabled them to stay afloat by hanging on to such flotsam, but although this might happen in isolated incidents, it's difficult to imagine such events happening on a regular enough basis for viable populations to be established on faraway shores.
Next up, we'll be looking into Michael Collins' work at the Gault site, learning how he deciphered the finds there to suggest that Clovis people were much more sedentary than the highly mobile dynamic hunter society they are popularly supposed to have been.
Monte Verde
Monte Verde Revisited
image Monte Verde site from here
News from the print edition of CWA, which takes us on a mini-tour of southern Spain, during which we encounter evidence of human occupation dating back to 1.3 million years, making this much earlier than the fossil remains from Atapuerca, to the north, at which early humans have been dated to 800,000 and 300,000 years respectively.
The authors of the article are Josep Gibert Clols and Lluis Gibert Beotas, a father and son team, who have been excavating at Orce and Cueva Victoria in the south-east region of the Iberian peninsular, where a dried out lake by the name of Baza has preserved 600m of sedimentary layers dating back 6 million years. The authors were more concerned with excavating the layers dating between 2.1 bp million and 1 million bp, as it is within these layers that the signs of early human activity are to be found.
They begin by describing the site of Orce, from where the fossilised remains of a skull fragment, dubbed 'Orce Man', dating from 1.3 million bp were recovered by J. Gibert in 1976 at Venta Micena, along with a host of other finds including various other fossil remains and stone tools. These were made in the area of what had been the edges of the ancient Lake Baza - early humans hunting or scavenging for prey would have known that animals would need to frequent such locations in order to sate their thirst, making them something of a more stationary target that could more easily be be ambushed or otherwise attacked.
However, there is considerable doubt that such early humans engaged in hunting, and it is more likely they scavenged the carcasses of animals that had been attacked and killed by (other) predators. Even this activity would have presented early humans with problems, in that there was likely to have been keen competition for freshly killed meat, not least from the predators that had made the kill, as well as form other scavengers such as hyena, who were not only adept at arriving at a kill site with great alacrity, but by working as a pack would have had sufficient strength in numbers to deter even the predatory killer from its hard-won meal.
And while it isn't known how early humans went about arranging their scavenging missions, it might be worth considering that they had watched how hyena and other pack scavengers would have gone about their business, and began to organise themselves in like fashion. It might be tempting to theorise as to whether these early competitions between social animals that would one day bestow on mankind the domestic dog, and the early humans themselves, involved any sort of cooperation between the two species, but it seems unlikely. Instead its probably safe to assume that for hundreds of thousands of years, humans and other scavengers fought a constant battle, from which many casualties on both sides were borne. Even so there might be a case for arguing that the dog family was even back then of benefit to mankind in that it forced him by natural selection to be a leaner, fitter scavenger - I'm tempted to write 'and enabled him to in time become a top line hunter', but I'm not sure of the process by which a human or other animal moves from scavenger to predator status.
Meanwhile, our hosts back at Velez Canyon are patiently waiting for me to get back on-topic, in order that they may describe the place in more detail. There are 5 quarry sites, the oldest of which is Fuentenueva 1, (2002), Barranco del Paso (1991), Venta Micena (1982), Barranco Leon 5 (1995) and Fuenteneueva 3, spanning an age of 1.6 million bp to 1.2 million bp. No traces of humans have yet been found at the 1.6 million bp levels.
The previously mentioned fossil remains include ' a piece of an infant's skull that included two parietal and the occipital bones, two humeral fragments and part of a molar.'
The Barranco Leon site yielded an extraordinary find of 100 Oldowan-type tools surrounding the remains of a hippopotamus. This lithic industry, the oldest known, or at least recognised, derives its name from Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, and according to the text, were in use there between 2.4 to 1.5 million bp, "making it reasonable to find them in the slightly younger deposits of Barranco Leon-5 or Fuentenueva-3 sites"
This brings us to the question of what type of humans that were making these tools and eating the local wildlife in modern-day Andalucia, and the candidate here seems to be that surprisingly well-travelled species, Homo habilis, about whom, I'm sorry to say, precious little has been written in this blog, partly because they are relatively few sites and fossils that bear testament to their existence, but the intention is to give them a little more coverage in the future. However, for the time being it's worth bearing in mind that these archaic creatures seem to have somehow made it all the way up to Dmanisi, Georgia, by 1.7 million years, i.e. several hundred thousand years earlier than the Spanish sited we're discussing here - once again, the idea of 'multi-regionalism' springs to mind, but that's for another time.
This part of the article concludes with the sorry news that Andalucian authorities have denied further digging permission in the Orce area since 2003, which to me is about the most surprising element of this entire story. What is it with people closing down sites that can tell us more in a few digs than an entire lifetime of speculation could ever accomplish - and here I'm also referring to the Liang Bua cave site in Flores, where again, extensive excavation would resolve once and for all the bewildering questions that surround that site. In both cases, there seems no date set for a resumption of activities, a situation that can only be to the detriment of all those concerned, and one can only wonder at the motivations of those behind such prohibitive mind-sets.
Next stop is in Murcia, near the Spanish Mediterranean coast, and specifically the town of El Estrecho de San Gines, home to the mountain of the same name, and wherein lies a vast cave, with 3km of galleries, part of which is described here as
" ...literally filled with sediment and mammal bones during Early Pleistocene times. Over 60 different species of vertebrates have been identified in this site including fragmentary human remains of a similar age to those in the Orce region."
Although mining activity within the cave around a hundred years ago effectively removed most of the material and thus its true context, there are sufficient remains for a glimpse of the past to be reconstructed. From the reports of human remains being found in situ, it might be tempting to think of our archaic ancestors as having been cave-dwellers, but this activity has only been undertaken by humans much more recently, probably starting with, or slightly before, the Neanderthal era.
In the case if Cueva Victoria, the archaeologists noticed that many of the the animal remains bore the tooth marks of hyena, leading them to suggest that the cave was principally a home to these scavengers, who likely dragged the body parts of their prey back to base in order to feed their offspring.
Surprisingly, other remains in the cave were from animals of direct African descent,
including "the ape Theropithecus oswaldi and Hippopotamus antiquus", although as we learn, this faunal transfer also occurred in reverse with Ursus etruscus, a type of bear, heading down into Morocco from its former home on the Iberian peninsular.
This last finding has prompted the authors to ask how these creatures, and the early humans, had made these early crossings over what we assume to have been over open sea, and as they say, the palaeogeographical data-set for this place and era is incomplete, though they do note that if other animals made the crossing, it can't have been the fact these early humans had more intelligence than other animals that allowed them to make the overseas trip. Moreover, if anything, the Straits of Gibraltar would have been wider than the present day, as tectonic activity is believed to be slowly pushing North Africa closer towards Southern Spain.
In a way it might be easier to explain these early sea crossings had they only been made by humans, although proposing ancient mariners even further back in time than the possible Homo erectus crews who made it to Flores at 840,000 bp, seems at best a stretch. Unless there were temporary land bridges which appeared and disappeared for reasons unknown, there remains the seemingly impossible idea that humans as early as 1,3 million bp, not only constructed craft to take them across the water to Spain, and possibly back again, but on occasion took some animals along for the ride, for reasons, and by means, I cannot at present imagine or explain.
And although I mentioned the earlier site of Dmanisi, the route to which wouldn't have needed a sea crossing, as migration could have taken place through the Levant, the implication here is that these Andalucian humans definitely hailed from Africa, though of course it's not impossible that these people may also have been descendants from the Georgian habilis contingent, and had simply travelled back down south, but by a more westerly route that took them into Spain. Maybe.
Earthwatch - Early Man In Spain
Orce Basin - Spain
Orce image from here, which although in Spanish, looks like a pretty impressive resource.
Following on from yesterday’s news in which it was revealed that a previously undiscovered cavern in Liang Bua cave contained animal bones, which despite displaying butchery marks were in pristine condition, giving hope to researchers onsite that hobbit bones may also be found there, and in good enough condition to enable the extraction of DNA, we now have a thought from Mike Moorwood to ponder.
