> well into the last million years when a broader geographic range of sites start to become important.
I think statistics for Eurasian fossils began to pick up after 1.5 mY ago, and stays on par with the African one for any large time period, and after 500 kY leads the African one. At least if one too quantify the list from here, for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_evolution_fossils
It is not complete, of course, but I think it represents the trend reasonably well
Certainly within the last 350,000–500,000 years, the European record is disproportionately large due to exploration and recovery biases. I expect much more to come from Africa and Asia broadly from those periods. For the earlier time periods, a big factor in all parts of the world is more intensive current habitation and development, which means roads, houses, and commercial properties are being built into Pliocene or Pleistocene deposits. Better education and awareness of possible discoveries in these places is so important, and makes a big difference—recent discoveries from Kantis, Kenya, and continuing work in the Sangiran area of Indonesia are great examples.
In one of the previous discussions on here you mentioned that the Levallois/Middle Paleolithic toolkit likely originated in Eurasia and spread to Africa. Do you have any papers handy on the topic that go into this a bit more? A quick Google search found this paper which claims the technology grew out of the Kenyan Acheulean- https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/catryon/files/tryon_etal_aar.pdf
I include a map of Levallois sites by time periods (MIS) which shows wide predominance of early European finds of MIS 9 (340-310 kY) compared to African ones. It partially reflects the research density in Europe, but still L. technique is most likely of Eurasian origin
I will give you some references a bit later (right now I don’t have electricity). It is hard to pinpoint where Levallois originated, but there are many more early Eurasian sites (>300 ky) than African ones, particularly very early sites in Armenia, in India and E Europe.
> well into the last million years when a broader geographic range of sites start to become important.
I think statistics for Eurasian fossils began to pick up after 1.5 mY ago, and stays on par with the African one for any large time period, and after 500 kY leads the African one. At least if one too quantify the list from here, for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_evolution_fossils
It is not complete, of course, but I think it represents the trend reasonably well
Certainly within the last 350,000–500,000 years, the European record is disproportionately large due to exploration and recovery biases. I expect much more to come from Africa and Asia broadly from those periods. For the earlier time periods, a big factor in all parts of the world is more intensive current habitation and development, which means roads, houses, and commercial properties are being built into Pliocene or Pleistocene deposits. Better education and awareness of possible discoveries in these places is so important, and makes a big difference—recent discoveries from Kantis, Kenya, and continuing work in the Sangiran area of Indonesia are great examples.
@Kirill
In one of the previous discussions on here you mentioned that the Levallois/Middle Paleolithic toolkit likely originated in Eurasia and spread to Africa. Do you have any papers handy on the topic that go into this a bit more? A quick Google search found this paper which claims the technology grew out of the Kenyan Acheulean- https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/catryon/files/tryon_etal_aar.pdf
@Scott,
a few pointers to early Levallois tools:
Armenia, finds in the range 350-300 kY: "Early Levallois technology and the Lower to Middle Paleolithic transition in the Southern Caucasus"
Central Europe ~300 kY: "The beginnings and diversity of Levallois methods in the early Middle Palaeolithic of Central Europe"
India: "Early Middle Palaeolithic culture in India around 385–172 ka reframes Out of Africa models".
These are article titles that are easily googled.
In my post
https://kirillpankratov.substack.com/p/two-million-years-of-human-history
I include a map of Levallois sites by time periods (MIS) which shows wide predominance of early European finds of MIS 9 (340-310 kY) compared to African ones. It partially reflects the research density in Europe, but still L. technique is most likely of Eurasian origin
I will give you some references a bit later (right now I don’t have electricity). It is hard to pinpoint where Levallois originated, but there are many more early Eurasian sites (>300 ky) than African ones, particularly very early sites in Armenia, in India and E Europe.
Great article! Thanks for your insights. It’s difficult for an enthusiast to keep up with everything going on in your field.