Europe

In one of those interesting twists of bibliographic fate, before today's announcement about the new dates for the initial Upper Paleolithic at Kostenki, I happened to have been reading the chapter, "The beginning of the Upper Paleolithic on the Russian Plain," by L. B. Vishnyatsky and P. E. Nehoroshev.

I was reading it for a project that I will describe here soon.

The question addressed by the chapters in this volume (The Early Upper Paleolithic Beyond Western Europe, edited by Brantingham, Kuhn and Kerry) is a central one for evaluating evolution and population movements in Late Pleistocene Europe: What is "the" Aurignacian, how does it compare to other varieties of initial Upper Paleolithic and earlier Middle Paleolithic industries, and what are its origins?

Vishnyatsky and Nehoroshev address these questions with respect to the Upper Paleolithic north of the Black Sea, broadly the "Russian Plain," in present-day Russia and Ukraine. Contrary to press reports, Kostenki is not a single "site": instead there are an array of open-air sites within the Kostenki district, all of which are stratified into the terraces of the Don River. Distinct localities are labeled with an Arabic number and the "cultural layer" is given a Roman numeral, e.g., "Kostenki 12/III." These localities comprise a majority of the initial Upper Paleolithic sites on the Russian Plain, and the archaeological and the earliest occupation stages had been dated to between 39,000 and 34,000 years ago.

Vishnyatsky and Nehoroshev put the boundary between initial and later EUP at the date represented by the "ashfall" in the Kostenki chronology. According to their sources, this ashfall was the result of volcanic activity in Italy around 32,000 years ago. One of the major changes in the new dating is this ashfall, which is now supposed to be around 40,000 years old. With this redating, the initial EUP discussed by Vishnyatsky and Nehoroshev is in fact all older than 40,000 years ago.

The archaeological assemblages from the initial Upper Paleolithic localities fall into two apparently different traditions. Kostenki 12/III, Kostenki 6, and Kostenki 1/V, as well as several of the later localities, are Streletskian. The Streletskian also occurs at other post-32,000-year-old sites on the Russian Plain. As described by Vishnyatsky and Nehoroshev, the Streletskian includes many Middle Paleolithic elements, such as triangular bifacial points, many side scrapers, a high overall proportion of flake tools compared to few blades, and a very low proportion of prismatic cores.

Overall, the Streletskian is characterized by many Middle Paleolithic features, which are perceptible not only in the earliest sites (Kostenki 12/III, Kostenki 6, Kostenki 1/V), but also in those postdating 32,000 ka and situated far to the north and south of Kostenki.... Bone tools and ornaments are absent from initial Upper Paleolithic Streletskian assemblages, although they are well represented in some late early Upper Paleolithic examples (e.g., Sungir) (Vishnyatsky and Nehoroshev 2004:87).

After describing the Streletskian, which is widespread, early, long-lasting, and marked by Middle Paleolithic technical elements, Vishnyatsky and Nehoroshev turn to the other Kostenki-represented tradition, the Spitsyn:

The Spitsyn culture, in contrast to the Streletskian, is known only from Kostenki and only from under the ash horizon [this put it older than 32,000 years ago under the old dating]. There is one definitive assemblage representing this culture (Kostenki 17/II), and one candidate assemblage (Kostenki 12/II). The stone industry of Kostenki 17/II, containing about ten thousand items, is very distinctive against the background of contemporary Streletskian sites. At the same time, it has no peculiar tool types (fossiles directeurs), which would allow us to put the search for analogies on firmer ground. As a consequence, it is difficult to demonstrate convincingly that any other assemblage should be considered Spitsynian. Unlike the Streletskian, the Spitsynian at Kostenki 17/II lacks any "archaic" features. Despite its very early age, it looks to be a full-fledged Upper Paleolithic, with prismatic cores being the only form of nuclei and blades dominating among the blanks (Vishnyatsky and Nehoroshev 2004:87).

This passage goes on to describe other UP elements in the Spitsyn, such as retouched blades, blades made into endscrapers, burins, retouched microblades, a "few" bone tools, around 50 drilled pendants, shells and corals. They consider whether the industry is related to the Aurignacian:

It has recently been proposed that the Spitsynian may be considered one of the oldest Aurignacoid industries in Europe (Anikovich 1999). We are inclined to agree with Sinitsyn (2000), however, who argues that the term "Aurignacian" (in any form) to describe Kostenki 17/II is unwarranted (Vishnyatsky and Nehoroshev 2004:87).

In addition to these, Kostenki 14/IVb has a rich assemblage of worked bone tools, which are featured in the redating article. Vishnyatsky and Nehoroshev say only that it cannot be clearly assigned to either the Streletskian or Spitsynian -- it "has no parallels among contemporary sites," and is described by Sinitsyn (2000). I'll have to wait a bit to get my hands on this one, since my library doesn't subscribe to Stratum.

Vishnyatsky and Nehoroshev describe other initial Upper Paleolithic sites, which are mostly very sparse artifact accumulations that are difficult to diagnose, as well as the early Upper Paleolithic after 32,000 years ago. Included in the latter is Sungir, with a rich Streletskian artifact assemblage including bone tools, ornaments, and portable art. This site is apparently late, after around 25,000 years, which puts it as a contemporary of more similarly complex UP examples further to the west in the Danube basin.

Two other developments occur during the later EUP in this region. The first is the appearance of the actual Aurignacian, at a few sites, including Kostenki 1/III:

The collection consists of more than 4,500 stone and bone items. The technology is clearly blade-oriented. Tools (about two hundred) are dominated by retouched microblades, including those with alternate retouch (i.e., dorsal retouch on one edge and ventral on the opposite edge). There are also thick (carinated) end scrapers of typical Aurignacian appearance, end scrapers on large blades with retouched edges, various burins and scaled pieces, single perforators, and small side scrapers. Split-base bone points, characteristic of many Aurignacian industries, are absent; a surprising feature, given the rich bone inventory. It includes awls, polishers, a perforated pendant made from a fox canine, and engraved ivory rods and points. Of the thirteen radiocarbon dates obtained from different labs, eight are indicative of an age around 25-26 ka, whereas two dates suggest the assemblage may be as old as 32 ka. For the time being, it is impossible to choose between these two alternative age estimates, although palynological and stratigraphic data are thought to be more consistent with the earlier date. (Sinitsyn et al. 1997:29) (Vishnyatsky and Nehoroshev 2004:90).

Considering that these Aurignacian occurrences are late (even 32,000 is relatively late compared to the early Aurignacian), they had appeared contemporary with the later Aurignacian in central Europe, and may represent population expansion out of central Europe onto the Russian Plain. Vishnyatsky and Nehoroshev note that these Aurignacian sites are very "few in number and isolated" (90). But with the redating, Aurignacian is plausibly much earlier at Kostenki, as early as 40,000 years ago. In particular, Kostenki 14/III is apparently sealed at the ash horizon. Other Aurignacian occurrences may still be much later than this, however.

The other development is the appearance of a tradition called "Gorodtsovian" at Kostenki, around 30,000 years ago.

Despite their relatively late age, the Gorodtsovian, like the Streletskian, is characterized by a flake-oriented technology and contains many tools that would look more natural in the Middle Paleolithic. For example, Kostenki 14/II contains many retouched artifacts of Mousterian appearance, including diverse side scrapers, points, limaces, and knives, which altogether comprise about half of all tools (Sinitsyn 1996:282). Such tools are also well represented at Kostenki 15 and are still recognized at Kostenki 16, which is probably the latest known Gorodtsovian assemblage. In addition, all of the aforementioned sites contain diverse collections of scaled pieces and end scrapers, whereas burins and bifacially worked tools are either rare or absent. The Gorodtsov culture is famous for its bone inventory, consisting of many utilitarian and decorative objects, such as points (including one with a zoomorphic head), needles, pendants, and beads. Particularly characteristic are the so-called shovels with ornamented handles made on mammoth long bones or scapulae (Vishnyatsky and Nehoroshev 2004:89-90).

All in all, this leads to a complex and interesting situation. There are two plausible staging areas from which either populations, genes, and information can move into Central (and ultimately Western) Europe from Asia -- either here on the Russian Plain, or south of the Black Sea via Anatolia. Here, we see that the EUP on the Russian Plain includes at least four different industries before 25,000 years ago; there is no obvious sequence, with three different variants possibly occurring in the same time interval.

According to Vishnyatsky and Nehoroshev, the scarcity of Middle Paleolithic assemblages in the area makes it difficult to evaluate the origins of the industries with apparent technical similarities to Mousterian or other MP variants.

The later assemblages (post-32,000 in this context) are in some cases associated with skeletal remains of modern humans (e.g., at Sungir, Kostenki 14, Kostenki 15). The initial EUP has only a couple of isolated teeth. So there is no secure biological association for either the early Streletskian, the Spitsynian, or the Kostenki 14/IVb assemblage, whatever it represents.

Anikovich et al. (2007:225) argue that the appearance of worked bone tools represents "an intrusion of modern humans onto the central East European Plain several thousand years before their spread across western and eastern Europe." But with no apparent antecedents for this technology, it is increasingly difficult to see where these people were "intruding" from. With a date as old as 45,000 years ago or older, they surely weren't coming from the Caucasus, because there were Neandertals there then, as well as points further south. This leaves points further to the east across central Asia, or from the west out of Central Europe. But there is no evidence of UP in either of these areas early enough.

In my view, explaining the Streletskian is the central aspect of this problem. Anikovich et al. (2007) suggest that it may be an activity variant of the more "advanced" industry (they apparently ignore any possibility of distinction between Kostenki 14/IVb and Spitsynian Kostenki 17/II). Vishnyatsky and Nihoroshev (2004) cite Anikovich et al. (1999) as suggesting that the early Streletskian assemblages are a case of "acculturation" in which indigenous people using an MP variant observed and imported elements of a more advanced intrusive UP tradition.

After noting the lack of modern human remains in association with the early Aurignacian thorughout Europe, Vishnyatsky and Nehoroshev say this:

But, most importantly, all the Neanderthal eaerly Upper Paleolithic cutlures seem too original to have been simply borrowed. These observations necessarily exclude acculturation as a viable mechanism of culture change for the Neanderthal early Upper Paleolithic in Europe. On the Russian Plain, not only is there no reason to associated the "advanced" Spitsynian early Upper Paleolithic with anatomically modern humans and the "archaic" Streletskian early Upper Paleolithic with archaic humans, but there is also little evidence to suggest that the Spitsynian predates the Streletskian. As in western Europe, acculturation is thus a nonviable explanation for the genesis of te early Upper Paleolithic on the Russian Plain (Vishnyatsky and Nehoroshev 2004:96).

I think the presence of these different industries is important -- probably the best information we have about population dynamics. With respect to the origin of the "advanced" Kostenki 14/IVb or Spitsyn occurrences, it seems to me that we don't need to invoke an intrusive origin. The Russian Plain was evidently not inhabited very successfully by Neandertals, as reflected by the rarity of MP sites there. No plausible source population for non-Neandertals has similar ecological characteristics to this plain. In other words, if people came from Anatolia into the Russian Plain, they were not likely to arrive with tools that were already useful for the local ecology. To adapt successfully to this area, people had to innovate -- make new stuff. This innovation wouldn't be instantaneous, but there is no expectation that all the elements of an assemblage should have predecessors in some source population.

That might well include replacing an ancient wood technology with bone, since wood is not easily replaced on the plains, and bone is common. The use of bone in this way could be episodic in response to climatic changes, since sometimes trees would have succeeded in river drainages like the Don, while at other times the river flow or local temperatures might eliminate many trees.

With respect to "acculturation": I would like to see an argument clearly distinguishing "acculturation" from diffusion. Of course, it must be a type of diffusion, but all modern human material cultures have interactions with and pick up elements from their neighbors. The Streletskian may provide an interesting opportunity for comparisons considering its relatively long duration. Temporal changes are already known; how do these compare to the predictions of diffusion over time? Even similarities with earlier MP technological patterns may be relatively unsurprising, since these must to some extent represent highly stable technical patterns. If they hadn't been stable, they would not have lasted so long. A low-density population that conserves highly stable elements is in no sense surprising, no matter what its origin.

Anyway, this gives some background about the initial Upper Paleolithic at Kostenki and why the redating of the site has some relevance to the pattern of technological change in Europe. I don't think many of the interesting questions have good answers yet. But my impression is that answers depend on the dates only to the extent that they force better explanations than mass migration.

References:

Vishnyatsky LB, Nehoroshev PE. 2004. The beginning of the Upper Paleolithic on the Russian Plain. Pp. 80-96 in Brantingham PJ, Kuhn SL, Kerry KW, eds, The Early Upper Paleolithic beyond Western Europe. University of California Press, Berkeley CA.

Anikovich MV and 14 others. 2007. Early Upper Paleolithic in Eastern Europe and implications for the dispersal of modern humans. Science 315:223-226. doi:10.1126/science.1133376

Sinitsyn AA. 2003. A Palaeolithic 'Pompeii' at Kostenki, Russia. Antiquity 77:9-14.

I'm just finished with the Neandertal meeting in San Diego, so it's time to decompress a bit. And what better way to do it than some more Neandertal blogging!

It is worth mentioning the paper that finally came out this week about Pestera Muierii, Romania, by Andrei Soficaru, Adrian Dobos, and Erik Trinkaus. Here's the abstract:

The early modern human remains from the Petera Muierii, Romania have been directly dated to 30,000 radiocarbon years before present (30 ka 14C BP) (35 ka cal BP) ("calendrical" age; based on CalPal 2005) and augment a small sample of securely dated, European, pre-28 ka 14C BP (32.5 ka cal BP) modern human remains. The Muierii fossils exhibit a suite of derived modern human features, including reduced maxillae with pronounced canine fossae, a narrow nasal aperture, small superciliary arches, an arched parietal curve, zygomatic arch above the auditory porous, laterally bulbous mastoid processes, narrow mandibular corpus, reduced anterior dentition, ventral-to-bisulcate scapular axillary border, and planoconcave tibial and fibular diaphyseal surfaces. However, these traits co-occur with contextually archaic and/or Neandertal features, including a moderately low frontal arc, a large occipital bun, a high coronoid process and asymmetrical mandibular notch, a more medial mandibular notch crest to condylar position, and a narrow scapular glenoid fossa. As with other European early modern humans, the mosaic of modern human and archaic/Neandertal features, relative to their potential Middle Paleolithic ancestral populations, indicates considerable Neandertal/modern human admixture. Moreover, the narrow scapular glenoid fossa suggests habitual movements at variance with the associated projectile technology. The reproductive and scapulohumeral functional inferences emphasize the subtle natures of behavioral contrasts between Neandertals and these early modern Europeans. (Soficaru et al. 2006:17196).

The paper describes the provenience of the bones -- they are not newly found, but had been originally assumed to be Holocene in age. Recent radiocarbon dating placed them at around 30,000 years old, which makes them among the earliest modern Europeans.

The bottom line is that the bones are modern (i.e., not Neandertal), but they include features that are common in Neandertals. Almost all the other European bones of early Upper Paleolithic date also have Neandertal features. The number and frequency of such features in this earliest Upper Paleolithic sample are greater than in any later sample.

In other words, they look like they have genes from Neandertals. And those genes declined in frequency or effect over time.

Of course for any particular feature on any particular specimen, the story gets more complicated. Take the occipital bun on Muierii 1. It clearly is a projection of the posterior cranium, in the position of the occipital bun in Neandertals, it projects well posterior to inion and it has a fairly abrupt superior aspect. On the other hand, the projection is expressed on a much higher and shorter vault, and certainly doesn't look identical to a Neandertal bun.

But then, Neandertal buns are quite variable, which several Neandertals having no bun at all, and others exhibiting a variable morphology. The ontogeny of the trait probably relates to growth of the posterior brain, the timing of closure of the lambdoidal suture, and the relative bone growth rates of the parietal and occipital bones. Those developmental prerequisites almost certainly differed between skulls with a Neandertal-like cranial shape, and those with a higher, more rounded skull. So the same feature -- or at least, a result of the same developmental process -- may be manifested with different forms in different cranial contexts.

"Contextually archaic" is a nice phrase. It is describing anatomies that occur within modern humans, and that continue to occur within recent and (presumably) living people, but that have become very uncommon. They are far more common in archaic humans, but may have a slightly different pattern of expression, in many cases because the developmental process that generates such features depends on anatomical configurations or events that have themselves changed. So within the context of the sample, they are "archaic" -- reflections back upon earlier humans, in this case Neandertals.

"Neandertal features" certainly has a more intuitive meaning -- features that occur at their highest frequencies in Neandertals -- but it really doesn't convey a lot more information, except for the regional specificity of Neandertals versus all archaic humans elsewhere in the world. But of course since we have many more Neandertals than any other archaic specimens, these "Neandertal features" in some cases are simply "contextually archaic" features in the European context.

What is the point I am coming to? Many "Neandertal features" clearly are more common in early Upper Paleolithic people than in later Europeans, and they show a unidirectional trend toward lower frequencies over time. Some folks would argue that these features don't really demonstrate Neandertal-modern intermixture, because (a) you can't really prove that they are absent in archaic Africans, or they may even be there, although in lower frequencies than Europe; or (b) they are not really the same feature, but instead are consequences of different developmental processes or parallelism.

Why do I think these critiques have little force? Because at this point, we have enough early Upper Paleolithic specimens with such features to notice something very important about them: different specimens have different Neandertal features.

It's like a shotgun approach to Neandertal intermixture. These are not one or two things appearing in parallel, and they aren't chance resemblances in this small early Upper Paleolithic sample, when they almost all decline systematically in later samples.

So when we see each new specimen, like Muierii 1, carrying not only Neandertal features, but its own distinctive set of Neandertal features, that emphasizes the early role of genome-wide intermixture.

However, these traits co-occur with contextually archaic and/or Neandertal features, including a moderately low frontal arc, a large occipital bun, a high coronoid process and asymmetrical mandibular notch, a more medial mandibular notch crest to condylar position, and a narrow scapular glenoid fossa.

Each of these features occurs in other modern specimens, but not in the same combination. And every other specimen from the early Upper Paleolithic with Neandertal or archaic features has a different mix of them. If this phenomenon were the result of parallelism on modern humans entering Europe, or if it were a consequence of features retained from archaic Africans, we should not see this broad and altering mix of features in different specimens.

So bigger samples, adding specimens one at a time, really are important. They let us look at the pattern of variation in ways that test these evolutionary hypotheses.

References:

Soficaru A, Dobos A, Trinkaus E. 2006. Early modern humans from the Pestera Muierii, Baia de Fier, Romania. Proc Nat Acad Sci, USA 103:17196-17201. DOI link

The AP is reporting on the discovery of a double newborn burial near Krems, Austria. The remains are estimated at 27,000 years old, and were buried directly side-by-side along with a string of 31 beads and mammoth bones.

Not much detail in the story, although there is this:

Archaeologists are combing the area to see if the infants' mother is nearby, as giving birth to twins in that era would have been extremely difficult and potentially fatal.

Not to mention for the babies!

Mladec 1 (left) and 5 (right), lateral view

A new paper in Nature (May 19, 2005) by Eva Wild and colleagues reports new AMS dates from the Mladec hominid sample. This site has been considered to preserve one of the earliest modern human samples in Europe, but its date has been uncertain. A previous attempt to date a layer overlying the hominid sample resulted in a minimum date of 34,000 - 35,000 years ago (Svoboda et al. 2002), but that date has been questioned. The current paper begins with a great introductory paragraph that reviews the problem of early modern humans in Europe:

The Mladec site has significance for both human evolutionary and archaeological issues and the relevance of its remains has increased as a result of the recent dating of the purportedly Aurignacian-age modern human remains from Velika Pecina (Croatia), Hahnofersand (Germany) and Vogelherd (Germany) to the Holocene epoch, the remains from Koneprusy (Czech Republic) to the Magdalenian period, and those from Cro-Magnon (France) and La Rochette (France) to the Gravettian period. The only directly dated European modern human fossils of Aurignacian age are the Pestera cu Oase (Romania) mandible and cranium at ~35,000 ¹⁴C years before present (that is, ~35 ¹⁴C kyr BP), the Kent's Cavern (UK) maxilla at ~31 ¹⁴C kyr BP, the Pestera Muierii (Romania) remains at ~30 ¹⁴C kyr BP, and the Pestera Cioclovina (Romania) cranium at ~29 ¹⁴C kyr BP, none of which has a secure and diagnostic archaeological association. Moreover, at least the Oase fossils overlap in time with late Neanderthals from for example, Vindija (Croatia), which is at present dated to ~29 ¹⁴C kyr BP and Arcy-sur-Cure (France) at ~34 ¹⁴C kyr BP. The assessment of whether the Mladec fossils are indeed Aurignacian in age, and if so, their chronological position within the Aurignacian time span, has become central to understanding early modern humans in Europe (Wild et al. 2005:332, references omitted).

"Secure and diagnostic archaeological association" is the key element here. There were some modern humans in Europe early, although it is not yet clear that they coexisted in any one place with Neandertals. The Oase remains are sufficient to show the early appearance of the modern human anatomical pattern in Eastern Europe; the appearance in central Europe at Mladec is the subject of the present paper. What there isn't -- as yet -- is any evidence for the idea that modern humans spread new Upper Paleolithic industries into and across Europe.

The directly dated specimens include Mladec 1, 2, 8, 9a, and 25c. Mladec 25c is an ulna, the rest of the specimens were dated from teeth. The dates range from a high of 31,500 (for Mladec 9a) to a low of 26,330 (for Mladec 25c), with most of the specimens between 30,000 and 31,500 radiocarbon years. At this date, the Mladec sample is the oldest modern human sample associated with the later Aurignacian.

There is as yet no diagnostic hominid associated with the earliest Aurignacian. At 31,000 years, Mladec falls nearly 10,000 years after the earliest occurrence of "Aurignacian" assemblages, although what constitutes "Aurignacian" differs a lot between different archaeologists. Since "what is Neandertal" differs a lot between paleoanthropologists, I guess it's only fair.

References:

Svoboda JA, van der Plicht J, and Kuzelka V. 2002. Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic human fossils from Moravia and Bohemia (Czech Republic): some new ¹⁴C dates. Antiquity 76:957-962.

Wild EM, Teschler-Nicola M, Kutschera W, Steier P, Trinkaus E, and Wanek W. 2005. Direct dating of Early Upper Paleolithic human remains from Mladec. Nature 435:332-335. Nature online