http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ mirrored file For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== Journal of Archaeological Research © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007 10.1007/s10814-006-9008-1 Original Paper The Emergence of Ornaments and Art: An Archaeological Perspective on the Origins of ?Behavioral Modernity? João Zilhão^1 Contact Information <#ContactOfAuthor1> (1) Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Bristol, 43 Woodland Road, Bristol, BS8 1UU, United Kingdom Contact Information *João **Zilhão*** *Email: *Joao.Zilhao at bristol.ac.uk *Published online: *30 January 2007 Abstract The earliest known personal ornaments come from the Middle Stone Age of southern Africa, c. 75,000 years ago, and are associated with anatomically modern humans. In Europe, such items are not recorded until after 45,000 radiocarbon years ago, in Neandertal-associated contexts that significantly predate the earliest evidence, archaeological or paleontological, for the immigration of modern humans; thus, they represent either independent invention or acquisition of the concept by long-distance diffusion, implying in both cases comparable levels of cognitive capability and performance. The emergence of figurative art postdates c. 32,000 radiocarbon years ago, several millennia after the time of Neandertal/modern human contact. These temporal patterns suggest that the emergence of ?behavioral modernity? was triggered by demographic and social processes and is not a species-specific phenomenon; a corollary of these conclusions is that the corresponding genetic and cognitive basis must have been present in the genus /Homo/ before the evolutionary split between the Neandertal and modern human lineages. Keywords Art - Modern humans - Neandertals - Ornaments ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Introduction Over the last quarter century, it has become clear that the ancestry of present-day human populations can be traced back to African people of the late Middle Pleistocene. In this context, the long-lasting geographical segregation between Neandertals and African ?moderns? and the ultimate replacement of the former by the latter have led many scholars to accept the notion that the two taxa should be given species status. This view has been challenged in recent years, especially by the finding of early European modern human fossils bearing archaic traits, which suggests extensive admixture with Neandertals at the time of contact (Trinkaus, 2005 <#CR203>). This suggestion is consistent with recent genetic studies of the nuclear genome of living populations, which indicate that we carry genetic material inherited from Eurasian (in particular, east Asian) populations that had differentiated hundreds of thousands of years before the mid-Late Pleistocene out-of-Africa dispersal of early modern humans (Templeton, 2002 <#CR194>, 2005 <#CR195>). Given that hybridization between closely related species is well known among mammals in general and primates in particular, the evidence for admixture does not necessarily imply, however, that significant biological differences, perhaps at the species level, did not exist between Neandertals and modern humans. Moreover, under the paradigmatic view that species must differ in behavior as much as in morphology (Henshilwood and Marean, 2003 <#CR89>), that evidence also does not suffice to exclude the possibility that significant behavioral differences, with attendant cognitive implications, separated anatomically ?modern? people from coeval ?archaic? humans. In fact, the notion that such a separation existed underlies speculations that certain features of complex human culture that are undocumented in the archaeological record of the Middle Pleistocene?such as art or ritual burial?must have emerged as a by-product of the biological processes involved in the speciation of the African /sapiens/ (Klein, 1998 <#CR105>, 2003 <#CR106>; Mellars, 2005 <#CR141>; Stringer and Gamble, 1993 <#CR185>). The assumption is that the absence of those features reflects the lack of the required cognitive capabilities and that it is only after the acquisition of the latter by the first ?modern humans? that the corresponding behavioral correlates could be externalized in archaeologically visible ways. At the empirical level, this approach initially tended to date such an acquisition to the time of the transition from the Middle to the Upper Paleolithic, the latter being defined as a package of cultural traits appearing rather suddenly and at about the time when, in Europe, Neandertals were replaced by moderns. Among the listed traits, aspects of subsistence, settlement, and lithic technology used to feature prominently in different versions of the definition of the Upper Paleolithic (for instance, Mellars, 1973 <#CR137>; White, 1982 <#CR225>). Recently, however, a wide consensus seems to have been achieved that logistically organized hunting, as well as the reliance on blade technology or the long-distance procurement of raw materials, are to be found at different times and places during the Middle Paleolithic, and in unquestionable association with ?archaic? humans (Bar-Yosef, 2004 <#CR10>; Bar-Yosef and Kuhn, 1999 <#CR12>; Burke, 2004 <#CR33>; Marean and Kim, 1998 <#CR126>; Révillion and Tuffreau, 1994 <#CR161>). On the other hand, the first evidence for carefully shaped bone tools, shell ornaments, and abstract markings is now known to come from the Middle Stone Age (MSA) of southern Africa, not from the Upper Paleolithic of Europe (Henshilwood /et al./, 2001 <#CR90>, 2002 <#CR91>, 2004 <#CR92>). In this context, Henshilwood and Marean (2003 <#CR89>), following up on Wadley (2001 <#CR218>), argued for a modern human behavior different from that of the Neandertals, to which they proposed the designation of ?fully symbolic /sapiens/ behavior?; in the archaeological record, it would manifest itself ?when artifacts or features carry a clear symbolic message that is exosomatic?for example, personal ornaments, depictions, or even a tool clearly made to identify its maker.? In this review, I use Henshilwood and Marean?s definition to assess the distribution in space and time of the earliest evidence for behavioral ?modernity? (ornaments and art), and the extent to which the human groups involved in the production of such early evidence were biologically ?modern? or ?archaic.? In particular, I discuss the different explanations that have been proposed for the fact that both ornaments and art are known among such unquestionably anatomically ?nonmodern? populations as the late Neandertals of Europe. In the following, calendar dates derived from the oceanic or ice-cap records or obtained by thermoluminescence (TL), electromagnetic spin resonance (ESR), and uranium?thorium (U?Th) methods are given in years or thousands of years (ka) BP, and radiocarbon dates are expressed in years or thousands of years (ka) ^14 C BP. The recognition that oscillations in the production of atmospheric ^14 C at this time were not as dramatic as once thought makes preliminary calibration possible, and it is now well established that, in this time range, radiocarbon underestimates true calendar ages by three to five millennia (Fairbanks /et al./, 2005 <#CR61>; Hughen /et al./, 2004 <#CR99>; Shackleton /et al./, 2004 <#CR169>; Weninger and Jöris, 2005 <#CR223>). Because the relative ordering of the events is not affected, and to keep the discussion of chronological issues within reasonable limits, only uncalibrated ages are used here for the 30?45 ka ^14 C BP interval. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Temporal and geographical patterns Africa As shown by different authors (Barham, 2002a <#CR16>, b <#CR17>; Henshilwood /et al./, 2001 <#CR90>; McBrearty and Brooks, 2000 <#CR135>; Villa /et al./, 2005 <#CR215>), many of the innovations traditionally associated with the European Upper Paleolithic are now known to appear significantly earlier in Africa. This is the case in particular with bone tools (such as the harpoons from Katanda, Congo, and the awls from Blombos, South Africa), but it also applies to such features of lithic technology as the manufacture of geometrics (the lunates of the South African Howieson?s Poort industry) and the production of bladelets from prismatic cores (documented in level RSP of the Sibudu rockshelter, South Africa). Enough reliable dating evidence is now available to place these developments before c. 50 ka BP and, in some cases, even before c. 70 ka BP. However, these innovations did not form a package of co-occurring traits and did not become a stable feature of human culture once they appeared. Instead, for many thousands of years thereafter, they were abandoned as piecemeal and suddenly as they were first introduced, and the same applies to ornaments and abstract markings. Where the latter are concerned, the key evidence comes from the seaside cave site of Blombos, southern Cape (d?Errico /et al./, 2003a <#CR46>, 2005 <#CR48>; Henshilwood /et al./, 2002 <#CR91>, 2004 <#CR92>). This site features a sequence where the uppermost MSA level (M1) belongs to the Still Bay culture, characterized by foliate points, and is separated from the surficial Late Stone Age (LSA) deposits by a thick sterile sand dune. This stratigraphic configuration precludes contamination from overlying, later occupations as an explanation for the presence of personal ornaments and decorated pieces of ochre in level M1, dated to 74.9 ± 3.8 ka BP by optically stimulated luminescence (OSL), and to 74 ± 5 ka BP by TL (Tribolo /et al./, 2005 <#CR201>). The number of utilized pieces of ochre is in excess of 8000, and two of them, in the shape of crayons, bear unequivocal abstract designs (engraved cross-hatched motifs) on one of the facets. Level M1 also yielded personal ornaments, all perforated shells of the marine mollusk /Nassarius kraussianus/ (Fig. 1 <#Fig1>). Forty-one such items have been described so far; all were found in clusters of 2?17 beads showing similar size, color, wear, and perforation type, suggesting that each cluster may correspond to a single beadwork item. ........................................................................ MediaObjects/10814_2006_9008_Fig1_HTML.gif Fig. 1 African personal ornaments: (*a*) modern /Nassarius kraussianus/ shell; (*b*) /N. kraussianus/ shell bead from MSA level M1 of Blombos (after Henshilwood /et al./, 2004 <#CR92>, modified); (*c*) ostrich eggshell bead from the MSA site of Loiyangalani (after Hathaway, 2004 <#CR86>, modified). Marine shells used as ornaments in the IUP and the Early Ahmarian of the Near East: (*d?f*) perforated /Nassarius gibbosula/ beads from layer H of Üça?izli (after Kuhn /et al./, 2001 <#CR115>, modified) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ In the South African culture-stratigraphic scheme, the Still Bay is replaced by the Howieson?s Poort industry, which Tribolo /et al./ (2005) <#CR201> TL-dated to 56 ± 3 ka BP at Klasies River Mouth (southern Cape) and to 55?65 ka BP at Diepkloof (western Cape). These results are consistent with the AAR (amino acid racemization) and ESR ages in the c. 60?70 ka BP interval obtained for the corresponding levels of the Border Cave sequence, northern Kwazulu-Natal, by Miller /et al./ (1999) <#CR144>, Grün and Beaumont (2001 <#CR76>), and Grün /et al./ (2003) <#CR78>. The latter also discuss (and reject) the possibility that the securely provenanced human remains found in this cave?the near complete infant skeleton BC3, and the largely complete lower jaw BC5?could represent intrusions of later Pleistocene or even Holocene age. Indeed, direct ESR dating of an enamel fragment from BC5 yielded a result of 74 ± 5 ka BP, which is consistent with similar results for faunal samples from the same levels. This evidence in turn strengthens the hypothesis that the BC3 burial?whose grave pit is reported to have been entirely cut into the underlying MSA deposits and to have had its lip lying below an ash horizon at the very base of the Howieson?s Poort levels?also was /in situ/. Given its stratigraphic position and accompanying dating evidence, it is thus quite possible that this burial was broadly contemporary with the Still Bay occupation of Blombos. A perforated /Conus bairstowi/ sea shell was reportedly associated with the BC3 skeleton and may have been a bead worn by the dead infant, in which case Border Cave would add a further ritual dimension to the use of personal ornaments at this time. For the next 30,000 years, however, no similar finds are known in either Howieson?s Poort or post-Howieson?s Poort, later MSA contexts. Secure evidence for ornaments turns up again only in eastern Africa, where the rockshelter of Enkapune ya Muto, Kenya, yielded ostrich eggshell beads in an early LSA context, with fragments from bead manufacture directly dated to c. 37?40 ka ^14 C BP (Ambrose, 1998 <#CR2>). McBrearty and Brooks?s (2000 <#CR135>) review of the African evidence mentions similar finds in Boomplaas, in association with statistically identical (in the range of 42 ka ^14 C BP) dates on charcoal, but in an MSA not LSA context, as is also the case at the recently reported but as yet undated Tanzanian site of Loiyangalani (Hathaway, 2004 <#CR86>). An ostrich eggshell fragment (but no beads) was found in the burial pit containing skeleton 1a from Nazlet Khater, in Upper Egypt, dated on associated charcoal to c. 38 ka ^14 C BP (Vermeersch, 2002 <#CR214>). These sites are all located far from the coast, which could explain the absence of marine shell beads in the inventories. However, at least where Boomplaas is concerned, the distance in question (c. 80 km) is identical to that which separates Border Cave from the sea. The scant evidence available indicates that only perforated marine shells were in use c. 75 ka BP, and only ostrich eggshell beads were in use c. 40 ka BP; thus, changes through time in mobility patterns, exchange systems, or cultural preferences also may have been involved. In a secure Howieson?s Poort context from Diepkloof, Parkington /et al./ (2005) <#CR157> found abstract markings on small fragments of ostrich eggshells thought to have been used as water flasks. They noted that, although the fainter marks could result from use wear, the deeper ones were clearly intentional and, in a few cases, formed compositions akin to the abstract designs made on the Blombos ochre crayons. The patterns, however, are said to be more suggestive of intentional marking to denote ownership than of ?artistic? decoration. ........................................................................ MediaObjects/10814_2006_9008_Fig2_HTML.gif Fig. 2 /Top/: slab from the late MSA levels of Apollo 11 cave (Namibia), representing a predatory big cat. /Bottom/: stratigraphic sequence in the 1972 extension to the main trench excavated in 1969; the provenience of the radiocarbon samples collected in this extension is indicated (dotted contours; note that sample Pta-1040 corresponds to a single, large piece of wood charcoal), as is the exact location of the three painted slabs found /in situ/ during its excavation (black filled contours); layer 3 = layer D of the main trench (Early LSA), layer 4 = layer E of the main trench (Latest MSA) (after Wendt, 1974 <#CR221>, modified) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ In Africa, the earliest figurative art is represented by the much later painted slabs from Apollo 11 Cave in Namibia (Vogelsang, 1998 <#CR216>; Wendt, 1974 <#CR221>, 1976 <#CR222>; Fig. 2 <#Fig2>). As argued by Wendt, these hand-sized slabs are not exfoliated fragments of wall paintings but mobiliary art. Their diverse geological nature and their shape are not consistent with the local bedrock, although similar slabs can be found in nearby slopes. Moreover, in at least two instances, the representations occupy the center of the slab, implying a pre-existing frame, and, in some cases, traces of color also could be observed on the face opposite that containing the figures. On three of the slabs, such figures can be identified and portray what seem to be a rhinoceros, a zebra, and a large animal, probably a feline with ?human?-like hind legs. The site features an approximately 2-m-thick MSA-to-LSA sequence, and the slabs were recovered toward the upper part of the deposits, some 50 cm below the surface, at the interface between the latest MSA and the earliest LSA level. Conventional radiocarbon results for associated charcoal samples date these slabs to c. 26?28 ka ^14 C BP, with the Pta-1040 result (26,300 ± 400 BP)?obtained on a single large piece of carbonized wood?representing in all likelihood the best approximation of their chronology. In any case, the stratigraphic consistency of the series leaves no doubt that the slabs date to between c. 18 and c. 34 ka ^14 C BP [only sample Pta-1032 is anomalous, probably due to the incorporation of younger material brought down by rodents nesting in adjacent sediments (Wendt, 1974 <#CR221>, p. 36)]. McBrearty and Brooks (2000 <#CR135>) remark that the dates are anomalously young for an MSA context and argue that the Apollo 11 art is significantly older based on the 59 ka BP ostrich eggshell AAR age obtained by Miller /et al./ (1999) <#CR144> for the site?s MSA deposits, in agreement with a direct AMS radiocarbon date of >41 ka ^14 C BP for a single ostrich eggshell fragment. As Miller /et al./ caution, however, this apparent discrepancy does not invalidate the radiocarbon chronology, because the ostrich eggshell samples they analyzed were collected in deposits from the mouth of the cave, where the MSA sequence may be abbreviated by comparison to that observed in the area further inside from where the slabs came. Moreover, as Miller /et al./?s dating work also shows, individually dated eggshell fragments moved up and down the sequence as a result of intensive human occupation combined with very slow sedimentation rates (?2 cm/millennium); thus, they cannot be relied on as a tool to date, by association, the different archaeological levels. Finally, the radiocarbon results obtained for the immediate context of the painted slabs are not ?unexpectedly young?; in the region, the MSA lasts until c. 20 ka ^14 C BP (Deacon and Deacon, 1999 <#CR51>), and the ?anomaly? diagnosed by McBrearty and Brooks (2000 <#CR135>) most likely resides in their expectations, not in any real problems with the dating of the site. The only securely provenanced human remains from this time range in southern Africa are those recovered from the SAS member of Klasies River Mouth, dated to c. 100 ka BP. Their taxonomic affinities are controversial. As Trinkaus (2005 <#CR203>) sums up, the problem is that the dearth of comparable material precludes adequate assessment of whether the Klasies River Mouth remains are ?modern? or simply a southern African equivalent of late archaic humans, antedating the dispersal into the region of the anatomically ?modern? populations that had differentiated in eastern Africa during the later Middle Pleistocene. The more complete Border Cave material, however, compares well with the present-day San (Rightmire, 1984 <#CR164>). If BC3 and BC5 are indeed /in situ/ finds, then people who were fully modern in their anatomy had evolved in (or dispersed into) southern Africa by c. 75 ka BP, and the personal ornaments and abstract designs from Blombos level M1 are indeed representative of their behavior. Asia The Near East before c. 50 ka BP Although conceivable, the notion that two shell beads from the cave of Skuhl in northern Israel (Vanhaeren /et al./, 2006 <#CR213>) are of oxygen isotope stage (OIS) 5 age is controversial and, as discussed in the following section, at present is not the most parsimonious reading of the evidence. McBrearty and Brooks (2000 <#CR135>) also mention the presence of perforated shells in association with /Homo sapiens/ in nearby Qafzeh Cave, c. 100 ka BP. However, as recently shown by Taborin (2003 <#CR192>), the perforations in these items (/Glycymerys/ shells) are natural, and they were used as recipients for ochre, not as ornaments. Processing of ochre at the site is particularly important in level XVII, which contained five intentional burials. On the basis of this context, Hovers /et al./ (2003) <#CR95> argue that the Qafzeh ochre reflects color symbolism, but use wear analyses of broadly contemporary South African MSA material show that ochre could have served more practical functions (e.g., in the tanning of hides and the production of hafting pastes), and that even when the abandoned pieces have a crayon shape, symbolism (for instance, related to body painting) is not necessarily involved (Wadley, 2005 <#CR219>; Wadley /et al./, 2004 <#CR220>). The occupation of the Near East by early modern humans at that time is part of a northeastern extension of African environments and ceases with the return of cold conditions during OIS-4, after c. 75 ka BP. Human remains dated to OIS-4 and to the earlier part of OIS-3 (after c. 59 ka BP) come from the sites of Amud and Kebara in Israel and Dederyieh in Syria, and all are of Neandertals; the youngest in chronology is the nearly complete adult skeleton buried in level B1 of Amud. The level is dated by TL and coupled ESR/U-Th to c. 53 ka BP (Kaufman, 2002 <#CR104>; Rink /et al./, 2001 <#CR165>; Valladas /et al./, 1999 <#CR208>), which provides a /terminus post quem/ for the burial itself and, hence, for the replacement of Neandertals by modern humans in the region. From the point of view of lithic technology and adaptation, the cultural remains associated with OIS-5 moderns and OIS-4 Neandertals in the Near East are virtually indistinguishable (Shea, 2003 <#CR170>). Where symbolic artifacts are concerned, if unambiguous evidence for personal ornaments is lacking, the regional evidence for ?art? and abstract design before the Upper Paleolithic is equivocal at best: a ?figurine? from Berekhat Ram, an Acheulian open air site in the Golan Heights, and two engraved cortical faces of flint artifacts from Qafzeh and Quneitra, another Golan Heights open air site of late Middle Paleolithic age. The Berekhat Ram figurine is a 3.5-cm-long piece of basalt whose shape evokes the female body and is vaguely reminiscent of the well-known Venus figurines of the Gravettian (Soffer /et al./, 2000 <#CR181>). A recent study by d?Errico and Nowell (2000 <#CR44>) confirms some level of deliberate human modification (abrasion and grooving) but does not reject the hypothesis that it served mere utilitarian purposes. In any case, the object dates to >200 ka BP and, therefore, if symbolic, it relates to ?archaic? not ?modern? people (the same applies to the natural pebble from the Middle Acheulian site of Tan Tan, Morocco, described as a figurine by Bednarik, 2003a <#CR18>). The Qafzeh piece is part of the c. 100 ka BP context of the site?s early /Homo sapiens/ burials and consists of a broken Levallois core, 6.2 cm long, that bears a set of incised lines on its cortical face. The analysis of these lines by d?Errico /et al./ (2003a <#CR46>) concluded that they could not be a simple by-product of tasks performed on that surface with cutting tools (such as butchering), but it produced no evidence that they represent a deliberate composition or part of some abstract design. The same applies to the Quneitra object, a tabular piece of flint cortex of broadly the same size and aspect and bearing four concentric semicircles surrounded by vertical lines (Marshack, 1996 <#CR134>); the site is ESR-dated to 40?55 ka BP, which means that, depictive or not, this ?image? could relate to either the latest Neandertal or the earliest ?modern? OIS-3 populations of the region. The Near East after c. 50 ka BP From level 1, at the bottom, to level 4, at the top, the Israeli open air site of Boker Tachtit in the Negev desert (Marks, 1983 <#CR128>; Marks and Ferring, 1988 <#CR129>) provides a detailed picture of the regional technological transition from the Middle to the Upper Paleolithic. Level 4 is identical to levels XXI?XXV of the long sequence at the Lebanese rockshelter of Ksar ?Akil, the other key site for the transition in the Levant (Bergman and Stringer, 1989 <#CR21>; Marks and Ferring, 1988 <#CR129>). Typologically, these assemblages are characterized by the Emireh point??elongated,? triangular, morphologically ?Levallois? items that, in the southern Levant, often bear ventral, thinning retouch of the base. In the northern Levant, the so-called chamfered pieces also are index fossils of this assemblage type. For lack of a better term, these occurrences at present are considered part of a single Near Eastern ?transitional? technocomplex designated as Initial Upper Paleolithic (IUP) (Bar-Yosef, 2000 <#CR9>; Kuhn, 2002 <#CR112>, 2003). Two conventional charcoal dates for basal level 1 of Boker Tachtit place it at approximately 47 ka ^14 C BP, in spite of their large standard deviations, but no precise chronology is available for uppermost level 4. The latter must in any case date to >35 ka ^14 C BP given the radiocarbon result of 35,055 ± 4100 ^14 C BP (SMU-579), obtained on a charcoal sample from which humates could not be extracted, which means the result is probably a minimum age only (Marks, 1983 <#CR128>) (Table 1 <#Tab1>). No dates are available for levels XXI?XXV of Ksar ?Akil, but the contemporaneity with the Negev site suggested by the lithics is consistent with a conventional result of c. 44 ka ^14 C BP obtained for the immediately underlying Middle Paleolithic level XXVI (Bergman and Stringer, 1989 <#CR21>). Table 1 Radiocarbon dates for the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition in the Near East [deleted] The southern Turkish cave site of Üça?izli (Kuhn, 2002 <#CR112>, 2003 <#CR113>; Kuhn /et al./, 2001 <#CR115>) provides a better fix on the chronology of the Near Eastern IUP. Levels G and H, with a lithic industry identical to that in Ksar ?Akil level XXI, yielded a consistent series of accelerated mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon results on charcoal, placing their deposition in the 36?41 ka ^14 C BP interval. At Üça?izli, as elsewhere in other stratified Near Eastern occurrences, the IUP is followed by the Early Ahmarian, a fully Upper Paleolithic technocomplex. At Ksar ?Akil, such Early Ahmarian assemblages are found in levels XVI?XX, which are stratigraphically and technologically very close to the preceding IUP (Kuhn, 2003 <#CR113>). These indications of continuity are further strengthened by the resemblance between the industry from uppermost level 4 of Boker Tachtit and that contained in the nearby single-level site of Boker A, which is clearly of Early Ahmarian affinities (Jones /et al./, 1983 <#CR102>; Monigal, 2003 <#CR146>). Two conventional charcoal results of >33.5 ka ^14 C BP are available for Boker A, which agree with the single finite date of 37,920 ± 2810 ^14 C BP (SMU-578), also on charcoal. Given the large standard deviation of the latter, the three results are consistent with the stratigraphic evidence that places the Early Ahmarian after the IUP and, hence, with a radiocarbon age approximately in the 36?35 ka ^14 C BP range or younger. Technologically, the Early Ahmarian features a single platform, soft-hammer production of blades and bladelets extracted from prismatic cores in the framework of a continuous reduction system, and typologically it is characterized by the so-called El-Wad points, which are made on long, slender bladelets or small blades and laterally bear direct inverse or alternate retouch extending along at least one of the blank?s edges. At Kebara Cave in northern Israel, the Early Ahmarian levels (Units III?IV) yielded somewhat older dates (as early as c. 43 ka ^14 C BP) (Bar-Yosef, 2000 <#CR9>; Bar-Yosef /et al./, 1996 <#CR14>). However, the results are widely scattered, and only one (of 35,600 ± 1600 ^14 C BP, OxA-1567; Hedges /et al./, 1990 <#CR87>) was obtained on a hearth sample (in Unit IIIBf); significantly, it agrees well with the chronometric and stratigraphic evidence from Üça?izli, Boker A, and Ksar ?Akil. The excavators report problems with the integrity of the charcoal lenses from where the Kebara samples came, and the dated material may well include a significant component derived from underlying Middle Paleolithic Unit V. This hypothesis is consistent with the fact that in the western part of the south profile the Upper Paleolithic levels fill a 1.5-m-wide erosional channel cut into the Mousterian deposits; such a major unconformity may also explain why no IUP contexts were recognized at Kebara. The available chronostratigraphic evidence therefore places the IUP of the Near East approximately in the 36?44-ka ^14 C BP interval and the Early Ahmarian in the subsequent two millennia, c. 36?35 ka ^14 C BP. It was at some time during these ten millennia that personal ornamentation, abundantly documented in the corresponding levels of the key sites of Ksar ?Akil and Üça?izli (Fig. 1 <#Fig1>), first appeared in the region; the earliest actual evidence is that from level H of Üça?izli, for which available dates average c. 39 ka ^14 C BP. According to Kuhn /et al./ (2001) <#CR115>, all such items, in both sites and in both the IUP and the Early Ahmarian, are perforated marine shells, mostly from only three species?/Nassarius/ (/=Arcularia/) /gibbosula/, /Columbella rustica,/ and /Glycymeris/ sp., although the latter, as discussed for Qafzeh, are more likely to represent containers rather than actual ornaments. Excluding them from the counts, 194 beads were recovered in IUP levels XXI?XXIV of Ksar ?Akil, 75% /N. gibbosula/ and 11% /C. rustica/; the corresponding figures for Early Ahmarian levels XIV?XVIII are 364, 53%, and 36%, respectively. The published count for the IUP levels of Üça?izli is 108, but the total is now several hundred, 90% of which belong to a single species, /N. gibbosula/ (Kuhn, personal communication, 2005). The only evidence concerning the authorship of the IUP and the Early Ahmarian is ?Egbert,? a juvenile modern human skeleton uncovered in 1938 at Ksar ?Akil, at a depth of 11.46 m below datum; this elevation indicates that the bones pertain to the Early Ahmarian strata between level XVI and the base of level XVIII (Bergman and Stringer, 1989 <#CR21>). The skeleton is now lost (only a cast of the skull is preserved in the Natural History Museum of London), so direct dating is impossible, and the hypothesis that this was an intrusive burial from overlying occupations cannot be tested. As pointed out by Mellars (2004 <#CR140>), however, the thickness of the deposits (the bones appear to have come from more than 1 m below the surface of the uppermost unquestionable Early Ahmarian deposits, level XVI) argues against that possibility. No counterparts of the Ksar ?Akil human remains exist for the IUP, but it is not unreasonable to assume, on the basis of the apparent continuity in lithic technology between the latest IUP and the Early Ahmarian, that the people who manufactured the latter also made the former. However, it cannot be excluded that Neandertals also were involved; the lesson from the Near Eastern record of OIS-5 and OIS-4 is that no necessary correlation exists between archaeological culture and physical ?types,? and this caveat must hold as well when interpreting the evidence from early OIS-3. Vanhaeren /et al./ (2006) <#CR213> argue that the two perforated /N. gibbosula/ found at Skhul are from layer B (which contained the remains of ten anatomically modern humans) and, therefore, that their age should be in the range of 100?135 ka BP. They further argue that another such bead from Oued Djebbana (Algeria), the type site of the North African Aterian, is of similar age. If their arguments are correct, personal ornamentation emerged at least 25,000 years earlier than suggested by the evidence from Blombos. As they acknowledge, however, the chronology of the Aterian and Skhul?s layer B is controversial. The Aterian is currently estimated to fall in the 35?90 ka BP range (Debénath, 2000 <#CR52>; Wrinn and Rink, 2003 <#CR230>), whereas the U-Th chronology (Grün /et al./, 2005 <#CR79>) and the morphology of the skeletons (Stringer, 1998 <#CR184>) indicate that two periods are represented in layer B of Skhul, which yielded several dates in the 30?50 ka BP interval. Because an overlap with the chronology of the IUP is clear in both cases, and because the IUP features large amounts of the bead type in question, it is quite possible, and at least cannot be excluded at present, that the perforated /N. gibbosula/ from Skhul and Oued Djebanna, instead of being of the proposed OIS-5 age, are in fact contemporary with those from Üça?izli and Ksar ?Akil. Russia and central Asia IUP-like assemblages are known in the Altaï and other parts of central Asia in association with dates as early as c. 43 ka ^14 C BP. Given the arguments in favor of an association of the Near Eastern IUP with modern humans, it is conceivable that such occurrences represent a further range extension of the latter into more northern latitudes, but the issue remains controversial (Krivoshapkin and Brantingham, 2004 <#CR111>; Rybin, 2004 <#CR166>). Because the directly dated human material (mandible and postcrania) from Tianyuandong (near Beijing, China) documents people with a modern anatomy in the Far East c. 35 ka ^14 C BP (Trinkaus, 2005 <#CR203>), in broad contemporaneity with Ksar ?Akil?s ?Egbert,? it makes sense to assume that the intervening regions of central Asia and the Altaï also were settled by modern humans at that time. Conversely, if Neandertals still inhabited the Near East c. 50 ka BP, as suggested by the Amud data, any spread of modern humans into central Asia via a Near Eastern route can have occurred only at a later date. In sum, the replacement process must have taken place in central Asia somewhere between c. 50 and c. 35 ka BP but, as in the Near East, constraining it with greater precision is impossible at present. In any case, one can certainly expect modern human groups dispersing out of Africa to have carried with them the social organization and corresponding sociofacts that their ancestors had developed. A rather convincing indication that an influx of ultimate African origin is involved in the East Asian process is provided by the presence of ostrich eggshell beads in the Mongolian site of Dörölj 1 (Jaubert /et al./, 2004 <#CR101>), dated to c. 32 ka ^14 C BP. A clear connection with cultural developments in the Near East also is apparent a few millennia earlier in sites west of the Urals. For instance, a perforated /Columbella/ shell, modern representatives of which are confined to the Mediterranean basin, was recovered in cultural layer IVb (well dated by AMS on charcoal samples to c. 36.5 ka ^14 C BP) of Kostenki 14 (Markina Gora), now situated more than 700 km from the shores of the Black Sea (Sinitsyn, 2003 <#CR173>, 2004 <#CR174>). Although the technological and typological features of the lithic assemblage recovered therein are of a full Upper Paleolithic nature, its cultural affinities remain unclear, and an isolated tooth is reportedly of modern human affinities. Sinitsyn also describes an apparently shaped piece of mammoth ivory recovered in this level as ?the head of a female figurine?; he acknowledges, however, that ?the surface is covered with traces of natural damage? and that the object is ?an obviously unfinished product broken during manufacture.? Thus, as with the Berekhat Ram figurine, the art may well be ?in the eye of the beholder.? At an even earlier date, bone tools and ornaments are reported by Derevianko and Rybin (2003 <#CR58>) from IUP-like contexts in Denisova cave (layer 11) and Kara-Bom (Horizon 5), but the actual anatomical affinities of the manufacturers of these assemblages are unknown, and the ornaments (animal tooth pendants and bone beads) are not of the kind seen in the Near East at that time (when only marine shell beads were in use). Moreover, the exact stratigraphic provenience of the finds is not devoid of ambiguity. A major discontinuity separates OIS-3 layer 11 of Denisova from the immediately overlying OIS-2 level 9, and the contact between the two is significantly disturbed. Because the range of ornaments from level 11 is identical to that found in both level 9 and the pockets containing level 9 lithics that penetrated deeply into level 11 (Derevianko and Shunkov, 2003 <#CR59>, Fig. 7 <#Fig7>), their association with the IUP is questionable. At Kara-Bom, the material (namely, one perforated bovid tooth and a pear-shaped bone bead) was found in a small ?depression? that contained significant amounts of goethite pigment; this feature was located 1 m away from a hearth excavated in 1987 by Okladnikov in his Stratum 3, now correlated with the lower part of ?lithological level 6,? which contains Occupation Horizons 6 and 5. These occupations are both AMS dated on charcoal to c. 43 ka ^14 C BP, but no more than approximately 30 cm above and in the same lithological unit is the significantly younger Occupation Horizon 4 (c. 34 ka ^14 C BP). The excavation plan (Derevianko and Rybin, 2003 <#CR58>, Fig. 8 <#Fig8>) makes it clear that the depression with the pigment and the ornaments was beyond the boundaries of the lithic scatter associated with the hearth, and the nature of the finds is strongly suggestive of a cache. Stratigraphically, this cache was excavated into the hearth level and, therefore, the two are not necessarily coeval; all that can be securely said is that the dates for Horizons 6 and 5 provide a /terminus post quem/, and those for Horizon 4 a /terminus ante quem/. Europe Symbolism in the Lower and Middle Paleolithic? As in the Near Eastern, Russian, and central Asian regions reviewed above, the evidence for symbolic artifacts before the Upper Paleolithic in European regions west of the Russian/Ukrainian plains also is ambiguous. Where the Lower Paleolithic is concerned, claims have been made that a small ensemble of animal bone remains from the open air site of Bilzingsleben (Germany), dated to >300 ka BP, are marked with motifs that carry a symbolic meaning (Bednarik, 2003b <#CR19>; Mania and Mania, 1988 <#CR125>; Meller, 2003 <#CR143>). The markings?groups of fine strokes whose broadly parallel disposition indicates that they are unlikely to derive from ordinary utilitarian activities such as butchering or cutting?are clearly anthropic; the best piece, a percussion tool manufactured from a spall of elephant tibia, bears two groups of marks, one with 7 strokes and another with 14, forming a suggestive rhythmical arrangement. However, unlike the ochre pieces from Blombos, it is not evident that these markings were made to obtain a predesigned graphic composition with a specific even if elusive meaning. ....................................................................... MediaObjects/10814_2006_9008_Fig3_HTML.gif Fig. 3 La Ferrassie: /Above:/ Plan and profile of the burial of individual 6, a 3?5-year-old child; below left, detail of the lower face of the stone slab that covered the burial pit, decorated with cupules virtually identical to those found in blocks scattered in the habitation levels of the Evolved Aurignacian at the top of the stratigraphic sequence (see Fig. 10 <#Fig10>). /Below right:/ Engraved bone found with the adult skeleton in burial 1 (after Peyrony, 1934 <#CR160>, modified) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Where the Middle Paleolithic is concerned, two important objects come from the Hungarian open air site of Tata, dated to >70 ka BP (Moncel, 2003 <#CR145>). One is a silicified nummulite crossed at right angles by engraved lines on both sides, forming ?+? motifs fully inscribed in the object?s circular outline (Bednarik, 2003b <#CR19>). The other is an ivory plaque carefully separated from a mammoth molar, shaped, beveled, and rubbed with red ochre. The edge-wear polish indicates long-term use, and the overall shape evokes the sacred ?churinga? (stones or wooden boards associated with the wanderings of mythological ancestors) of Australian Aborigines (Marshack, 1976 <#CR132>, 1989 <#CR133>). It is not obvious, however, that the engraving on the nummulite is ?decorative,? and a utilitarian explanation for the ?churinga? (bone tool used in the framework of ochre-processing tasks?) cannot be excluded either. Representational status has been claimed for a flint nodule featuring a natural tubular perforation into which a bone splinter is wedged (Marquet and Lorblanchet, 2003 <#CR131>); this ?Neandertal face,? however, is most likely an unmodified /pierre-figure/, and natural process cannot be ruled out as an explanation for the wedged bone (Pettitt, 2003 <#CR158>). Clear evidence for complex abstract thinking involving graphic modification of objects in connection with ritual activities comes from the Mousterian graveyard of La Ferrassie in France (Defleur, 1993 <#CR53>; Peyrony, 1934 <#CR160>) (Fig. 3 <#Fig3>). Seven individuals (one fetus, two infants, two children, and two adults) were buried in the Ferrassie Mousterian levels of this rockshelter; available dating evidence from southwestern France as a whole suggests that occurrences of this assemblage type all date to the c. 65?70 ka BP interval (Mellars, 1996 <#CR138>). The La Ferrassie 1 individual, an adult male, was buried in a shallow pit together with a cylindrical bone fragment decorated with four sets of parallel incisions; the La Ferrassie 6 individual, a 3?5-year-old child, had three flint tools (a point and two very large sidescrapers) carefully placed on top of his dead body, which had been interred in a deep pit covered by a limestone slab whose inferior face was decorated with cupules. La Ferrassie thus suffices to establish a level of symbolic expression among European Neandertals at least identical to that seen in the African lineage at the same time; however, the fact that no counterparts of the Blombos beads have ever been found in the Middle Paleolithic of Europe is a major difference between the two continents, and one that is all the more significant because of Europe?s comparatively much longer and more intensive research history. Moreover, their absence from the hundreds of Middle Paleolithic cave and rockshelter sites with favorable preservation settings excavated in Europe over the last 150 years precludes taphonomic explanations; thus, it is legitimate to conclude that, in this case, the absence of evidence should indeed be considered as evidence of absence. Table 2 Radiocarbon dates for the Châtelperronian (AMS only) and the Protoaurignacian (AMS on bone, AMS and conventional on charcoal)^ /a/ [deleted] Upper Paleolithic culture-stratigraphic framework The earliest Upper Paleolithic of Europe corresponds to a diverse array of cultural entities featuring lithic technologies that, in one way or the other, fit at least some aspects of the technological definition of the period and are often collectively designated as ?transitional.? In the Franco-Cantabrian region there is the well-known Châtelperronian, where blade production is oriented toward the production of blanks for curve-backed Châtelperron points and knives. In Italy and Greece, there is the Uluzzian, a flake-based industry that also features some production of non-Levallois blade blanks but is mostly defined by the manufacture of standardized backed microliths?thick arched pieces, truncations, lunates, and some trapeze, all trimmed with /sur enclume/ retouch. In Bulgaria there is the Bachokirian, where the Upper Paleolithic /cachet/ is mostly due to the preponderance of endscrapers that are made on Levallois blade blanks. In Moravia and southern Poland there is the Bohunician, characterized by the production of morphologically Levallois points obtained by non-Levallois methods. Finally, in different parts of central and northern Europe, from southern England to Poland, there is the Szeletian (and its German cousin, the Altmühlian), characterized by the production of /blattspitzen/, which are carefully flaked, thin, fully bifacial foliate points, plano-convex or, more typically, biconvex in cross section; these foliate point complexes come after the Bohunician and then evolve to such unifacial blade point industries as the so-called Lincombian of England and the Jerzmanovician of eastern Germany and Poland. In the wake of the extensive taphonomic critique of the evidence by d?Errico /et al./ (1998) <#CR49>, Zilhão and d?Errico (1999 <#CR237>, 2003a <#CR238>, b <#CR239>), Rigaud (2001 <#CR163>), Bordes (2002 <#CR25>, 2003 <#CR26>), Teyssandier (2003 <#CR198>), and others, suggestions of a long-term contemporaneity between these earliest ?transitional? Upper Paleolithic entities of Europe and the Aurignacian, based on radiocarbon dates and on patterns of putative interstratification (Bernaldo de Quirós, 1982 <#CR22>; Bordes and Labrot, 1967 <#CR24>; Champagne and Espitalié, 1981 <#CR34>; Gravina /et al./, 2005 <#CR75>), have now been largely abandoned (Zilhão /et al./, 2006 <#CR240>). In particular, the most vocal proponent of that notion has himself recently conceded (Mellars, 2006 <#CR142>) all the major points made by Zilhão and d?Errico (1999 <#CR237>, 2003a <#CR238>, b <#CR239>) on the issues of interpretation raised by the application of radiocarbon to this time range. Once the numerous sources of error are adequately filtered, a clear picture emerges (Zilhão, 2006a <#CR234>, b <#CR235>, c <#CR236>). (1) The ?transitional? technocomplexes either underlie or predate the earliest occurrences of the Aurignacian anywhere in Europe. (2) The development of these technocomplexes took place in the interval between c. 45 and c. 35 ka ^14 C BP, whereas the earliest Aurignacian dates to no more than c. 36.5 ka ^14 C BP (Table 2 <#Tab2>). (3) The slight chronometric overlap is an inevitable consequence of the poor precision of dating techniques and of the fact that the Châtelperronian is almost entirely dated on samples of bone that were not pretreated with the recently developed ultrafiltration technique (Bronk Ramsey /et al./, 2004 <#CR32>) and thus are underestimated (the key site of the Grotte du Renne is a particular case in point). (4) At the continental scale, it remains possible that the Jerzmanovician/Lincombian may have emerged or survived in the northern European plains at the time of the earliest Aurignacian settlement of European regions to the south, and it is certain (contra Jöris /et al./, 2003 <#CR103>) that the Middle Paleolithic continued until much later in Iberian regions south of the Cantabro-Pyrenean mountain range (Zilhão, 1993 <#CR231>, 2000 <#CR232>, 2006a <#CR234>). Recent technological studies in France (Bon, 2002 <#CR23>; Bordes, 2002 <#CR25>; Chiotti, 1999 <#CR35>; Lucas, 2000 <#CR123>) have also confirmed traditional typology-based views of Aurignacian systematics. Moreover, the evidence now clearly shows that the so-called Protoaurignacian, originally defined by G. Laplace and Italian authors (Palma di Cesnola, 1993 <#CR155>) and generally considered to be a cultural/geographic Mediterranean ?facies? of the ?classical? Aurignacian (Bon, 2002 <#CR23>), corresponds instead to a chronological ?phase.? In fact, results from the recent re-excavation of the key cave site of Isturitz (Normand and Turq, 2005 <#CR151>), in good accord with the revised stratigraphy of Le Piage (Bordes, 2002 <#CR25>), suggest that in France, as well as in Italy and Spain, this Protoaurignacian stratigraphically and chronometrically precedes the classical Early Aurignacian or Aurignacian I. The former is characterized by Font-Yves points and long, slender Dufour bladelets of Demars and Laurent?s (1989 <#CR57>) Dufour subtype, which are extracted from unidirectional prismatic cores in the framework of a single, continuous reduction sequence for both blades and bladelets. The latter is characterized by split-based bone points and by the use of carinated ?scrapers? as specialized cores for the extraction of straight or curved bladelet blanks that remain largely unretouched. In the subsequent Evolved Aurignacian or Aurignacian II, the preferred types of bladelet cores are thick ?burins? (carinated or busked) and thick-nosed ?scrapers,? which generate characteristic small, twisted blanks retouched into a particular Roc-de-Combe subtype of Dufour bladelets; other types of points made of ivory, bone, or deer antler emerged in this later facies, all with massive bases, mostly featuring flat or oval cross sections and an overall lozengic morphology?the Mlade? (Lautsch) points. ....................................................................... MediaObjects/10814_2006_9008_Fig4_HTML.gif Fig. 4 Chronostratigraphic correlation scheme between key Early Upper Paleolithic stratified sequences of Europe and the Near East ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Late Neandertals, early moderns, and their cultural associations The chronostratigraphic framework for the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition in Europe and its correlation with Near Eastern developments proposed in Fig. 4 <#Fig4> provide the background for the discussion on the cultural associations of the human remains from the period. The early-mid Upper Pleistocene evidence from the Near East cautions against the establishment of biunivocal correspondences between hominid taxa and archaeological cultures, but such reservations do not apply in the same way to the geographical /cul-de-sac/ of the Old World represented by the European continent, where the Neandertal lineage is unanimously agreed to have differentiated and evolved. As a result, it is legitimate to assume that until a time when the presence of modern humans is first and unambiguously documented in the continental fossil record by diagnostic skeletal remains, Neandertals are considered to be the human actors responsible for the features of the archaeological record. At present, the earliest such modern human material is the complete mandible recovered in the cave site of Oase (Romania), directly dated to c. 35 ka ^14 C BP (Trinkaus /et al./, 2003a <#CR204>, b <#CR205>, 2006 <#CR206>). The cave sites of Muierii and Cioclovina, also in Romania, have produced slightly later modern human material (in the c. 29?30 ka ^14 C BP range), and the age of the large ensemble from the Moravian site of Mlade? has now been conclusively established by the direct dating of human teeth from four different individuals to c. 31 ka ^14 C BP (Trinkaus, 2005 <#CR203>; Wild /et al./, 2005 <#CR224>). Direct dating of other modern human fossils from central Europe traditionally considered to be of early Upper Paleolithic age has shown that, in fact, they all are of Magdalenian, Mesolithic, or even later prehistoric times (Conard /et al./, 2004a <#CR40>; Smith /et al./, 1999 <#CR180>; Svoboda, 2003 <#CR187>; Svoboda /et al./, 2002 <#CR188>; Terberger and Street, 2003a <#CR196>, b <#CR197>). ....................................................................... MediaObjects/10814_2006_9008_Fig5_HTML.gif Fig. 5 Key sites documenting the archaeological associations of late Neandertals and early European moderns (in Iberian regions south of the Ebro basin, Neandertals survived until well after the time of contact elsewhere in Europe). /Above/: Latest reliably dated Châtelperronian, late Micoquian, and Uluzzian sites (circles); sites with Neandertal remains reliably directly dated to <40 ka ^14 C BP (triangles); sites with Neandertal remains in Châtelperronian, late Micoquian, Szeletian, Uluzzian, or late (reliably dated to <40 ka ^14 C BP) Middle Paleolithic archaeological contexts (squares). 1. Caune de Belvis; 2. Abri Dubalen (Brassempouy). 3. Grotte XVI and Roc-de-Combe; 4. Saint-Césaire; 5. Châtelperron; 6. Grotte du Renne; 7. Kleine Feldhofer Grotte (Neander valley); 8. Sesselfelsgrotte; 9. Vindija; 10. Cavallo; 11. Klisoura 1; 12. Lakonis I. /Below/: Reliably dated Protoaurignacian and Early Ahmarian sites (circles); sites with modern human remains reliably directly dated to within five millennia of the time of contact (triangles); sites with modern human remains in Evolved Aurignacian and Early Ahmarian archaeological contexts (squares). 13. Lagar Velho; 14. Morin; 15. Isturitz; 16. Les Rois and La Quina; 17. Esquicho-Grapaou; 18. Riparo Mochi; 19. Krems-Hundsteig; 20. Mlade?; 21. Muierii and Oase; 22. Ksar ?Akil; 23. Kebara; 24. Boker A ------------------------------------------------------------------------ In western Europe, the only diagnostic modern human remains likely to predate c. 30 ka ^14 C BP are at present the juvenile mandibles from La Quina Aval and Les Rois (Trinkaus, 2005 <#CR203>). The Les Rois sequence belongs entirely to the Evolved Aurignacian, whereas the La Quina material comes from level 3 of the old excavations, at the interface between the site?s Early and Evolved Aurignacian levels; a sample from the former, collected in the context of modern testing work, yielded an AMS bone date of 32,650 ± 850 ^14 C BP (OxA-6147/Ly-256) (Dujardin, 2001 <#CR60>) that provides a good /terminus post quem/ for the mandible. The dental material from the Aurignacian I levels of Brassempouy, dated to c. 32 ka ^14 C BP, also may be of modern human affinities, but the issue remains controversial (Bailey and Hublin, 2005 <#CR7>; Henry-Gambier /et al./, 2004 <#CR88>). In any case, the conclusion is that, given the stratigraphic and dating context, none of these French fossils is older than c. 33 ka ^14 C BP. Conversely, nowhere in Europe north of the Ebro River basin have Neandertal remains been found for which an age postdating 36 ka ^14 C BP can be suggested on firm grounds. Two putative exceptions for which direct radiocarbon dates of c. 28?29 ka ^14 C BP have been reported: the material from level G1 of the Croatian cave site of Vindija (Smith /et al./, 1999 <#CR180>) and the infant skeleton from the cave of Mezmaiskaya in the northern Caucasus (Ovchinnikov /et al./, 2000 <#CR153>). Where the latter is concerned, the excavators convincingly argued that the skeleton was found below intact Mousterian deposits reliably dated to >36 ka ^14 C BP and that the direct date for the infant was therefore simply a minimum age, the burial being significantly earlier (Golovanova /et al./, 1999 <#CR72>). Where Vindija is concerned, several lines of reasoning also indicated that the results were minimum ages (Zilhão, 2006b <#CR235>), and this inference has now been vindicated by redating of the original samples (Higham /et al./, 2006 <#CR93>). This evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that after c. 35 ka ^14 C BP the archaeological record of Europe (except parts of the Iberian Peninsula) is entirely related to the activity of anatomically modern people; by the same token, it also implies that one can legitimately assume that the technocomplexes of the earliest Upper Paleolithic (i.e., those predating the Protoaurignacian) were manufactured by Neandertals (Fig. 5 <#Fig5>). Sound evidence for this scenario is available for the Châtelperronian, given the unquestionably Neandertal affinities of (1) the individual buried in level EJOPsup of the St.-Césaire rockshelter, TL-dated to 36.5 ± 2.7 ka BP (average of six measurements on burnt flints), and (2) the fragmentary dental and cranial material from the Châtelperronian levels of the Grotte du Renne at Arcy-sur-Cure (Bailey and Hublin, 2006 <#CR8>; Hublin /et al./, 1996 <#CR98>; Lévêque and Vandermeersch, 1980 <#CR122>). This conclusion has recently been strengthened by the direct dating to c. 38?41 ka ^14 C BP (i.e., in the time range of the Châtelperronian) of the diagnostic Neandertal remains from the El Sidrón cave in Asturias, at the western end of the Franco-Cantabrian region to which the Châtelperronian is confined (Fortea /et al./, 2003 <#CR67>; Lalueza /et al./, 2005 <#CR116>). Human remains associated with the Uluzzian are limited to two deciduous teeth found in level E of the Cavallo cave, which are similar to Neandertal teeth in size, cusp morphology, and taurodontism; this latter feature, in particular, is often present in Neandertal deciduous molars but has never been observed in early modern human juveniles, suggesting that the most parsimonious interpretation of this scarce material is that it belongs to Neandertals as well (Churchill and Smith, 2000 <#CR36>). In central Europe, several important Neandertal fossils, most notably the two individuals from the type site itself, are directly dated to c. 39?40 ka ^14 C BP, but no direct evidence exists about the biological affinities of the people behind the earliest pre-Aurignacian, ?transitional? Upper Paleolithic technocomplexes of the region. The same applies to the Balkans and the lower Danube basin, where the youngest diagnostic Neandertal fossil is the taurodont tooth found in uppermost Unit 1a of the long stratigraphic sequence excavated at the rockshelter of Lakonis I in Greece (Harvati /et al./, 2003 <#CR85>) for which charcoal dates between c. 44 and c. 38 ka ^14 C BP have been obtained. Thus, it cannot be excluded that in European regions situated east of the Rhone and beyond the Adriatic, modern humans may have been involved, at least in part, in the production of the Upper Paleolithic aspects of material culture dated to the critical time period between c. 39 and c. 35 ka ^14 C BP. Two lines of reasoning, however, suggest that this is highly unlikely. First, given the long and intensive history of Paleolithic research in Europe and the large number of fossil human remains recovered in the continent over the last 150 years, the probability that putative modern human populations predating the Protoaurignacian could have remained undetected until the present must be considered rather low. If, as argued above, we accept that the absence of personal ornaments from the European record before c. 40 ka ^14 C BP should be considered as evidence of absence, given the circumstances, we must then derive a similar conclusion from the pattern of temporal distribution of the remains of early modern humans. Second, it seems reasonable to assume that the dispersal of modern humans into the European continent must have entailed some level of population disruption, signs of which should be visible in the archaeological record in terms of settlement patterns and features of material culture. The evidence, however, suggests total continuity in both realms across the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition at least until the Protoaurignacian. Where Greece is concerned, for instance, the fact that the earliest Upper Paleolithic is the Uluzzian suggests that its makers are the same as those behind the Uluzzian of Italy, i.e., Neandertals. Although Panagopoulou /et al./ (2002?2004 <#CR156>) compare the lithic assemblages in the uppermost levels of Lakonis I to the IUP with ?elongated points? of the Near East, those assemblages seem to be quite similar to the penecontemporaneous Micromousterian in Unit VII of Klisoura 1, which underlies this site?s Uluzzian and is in clear technological continuity with it. In Germany, the continuity between the Micoquian and the Altmühlian is such that scholars to this day discuss whether the latter should not be considered a simple functional variant of the former (Bosinski, 1967 <#CR27>, 2000?2001 <#CR28>; Hopkinson, 2004 <#CR94>; Richter, 2002 <#CR162>; Uthmeier, 2000 <#CR207>). More recently, it has been argued, on the basis of perceived similarities with the Bachokirian and the Near Eastern IUP, that the Bohunician is a proxy for the arrival of modern humans in central Europe, with the lower and middle reaches of the Danube basin thus forming, after c. 39 ka ^14 C BP, a wedge of early modern human settlement deeply penetrating the surrounding Neandertal world (Bar-Yosef and Svoboda, 2003 <#CR13>; ?krdla, 2003a <#CR178>, b <#CR179>; Tostevin, 2003 <#CR200>). Further support for this view has been claimed on the basis that, unlike Gle? and Kaczanowski (1982 <#CR71>), who had suggested that the human teeth from Bacho Kiro presented Neandertal affinities, Churchill and Smith (2000 <#CR36>) concluded that aspects of size, shape, and crown morphology aligned this material more with modern humans than with the Neandertals. This conclusion, however, was meant to apply only to the Aurignacian material because the single human remain found in the Bachokirian levels of the site is a taxonomically undiagnostic left mandibular fragment with deciduous first molar. The rationale to model the Bohunician as a cultural manifestation of modern humans assumes that it represents an intrusion into the local sequence of a Levantine technology of the Boker Tachtit type and that the Near Eastern IUP was the work of moderns, not Neandertals. The last is reasonable (although unproven), but recent research has shown that the apparent break observed in the Moravian sequence is a simple byproduct of the fact that a gap of at least five and possibly as much as ten millennia currently exists between the Bohunician and the preceding Middle Paleolithic. The two multilevel workshop sites of Piekary IIa and Ksi?cia Józefa (Sitlivy /et al./, 1999a <#CR175>, b <#CR176>, 2004 <#CR177>; Valladas /et al./, 2003 <#CR210>) near Krakow, Poland, document the emergence of fully Upper Paleolithic, prismatic blade reduction strategies (at first alongside traditional Levallois flake reduction, in the end to the exclusion of any traditional Middle Paleolithic prepared core methods) throughout the time interval between c. 53 ka BP and c. 40 ka ^14 C BP. Thus, there is no need to look for the roots of the Bohunician any further than its own area of distribution (which encompasses both Moravia and southern Poland). The directly dated Oase mandible proves that modern humans were present in at least eastern Europe at the time of the Protoaurignacian. Another powerful argument in favor of linking the latter with modern humans is that a significant transformation of Europe?s cultural geography occurred at that time. Before, the pattern was one of regional diversity, featuring different early Upper Paleolithic ?transitional? industries rooted in different regional variants of the Middle Paleolithic. With the Protoaurignacian, the pattern became one of homogeneity across vast regions of southern Europe and of mid-latitude central and western Europe. Such a pattern of homogeneity actually extended as far as the Near East. There is remarkable similarity between the Protoaurignacian and the Early Ahmarian, not only in technology but also in typology and index fossils; the so-called El-Wad points of the Early Ahmarian are exactly the same thing as the Font-Yves points of the Protoaurignacian (Belfer-Cohen and Goring-Morris, 2003 <#CR20>). Also, in both regions, a similar Aurignacian I with split-based points and carinated ?scrapers?/cores follows the Early Ahmarian/Protoaurignacian (Fig. 4 <#Fig4>). Because these two technocomplexes both date to c. 35?36.5 ka ^14 C BP and because the cultural roots of the Early Ahmarian are found in the Near Eastern IUP, it does make sense to construe the Protoaurignacian as the spilling off of Near Eastern cultural developments into adjacent Europe, in connection with the penecontemporaneous dispersal of modern humans into the continent and the coincident disappearance of Neandertals from the fossil record. It is also conceivable, however, that the process involved is one of diffusion, not migration, or a combination of both. For instance, Neandertal groups establishing contact with moderns in the Near East might have found that the Early Ahmarian/Protoaurignacian?s improved standardization of lithic barbs and points was a beneficial technological development; consequently, they might have decided to adopt the system, further spreading it across their own exchange networks. In this way, the lithic technology of the Protoaurignacian could have expanded into remote parts of the Neandertal world well in advance of the actual arrival of anatomically modern people in those areas. Conversely, it is no less conceivable that the Protoaurignacian was invented among Neandertals and, once contact between the two populations occurred, followed by regular exchanges, was eventually adopted by Near East moderns under the guise of the Early Ahmarian. Thus, it is perfectly possible that the Protoaurignacian was made by the Oase moderns in Romania, by the grandchildren of the Sidrón Neandertals in Cantabrian Spain, and by variously mixed modern/Neandertal populations in intermediate regions. In sum, the combined weight of the physical anthropological, archaeological, stratigraphic, and radiometric evidence suggests that (1) the Châtelperronian and contemporaneous earlier Upper Paleolithic technocomplexes of southern, central, and eastern Europe are the cultural product of anatomically Neandertal populations, (2) the Early Aurignacian and the Evolved Aurignacian are the cultural product of anatomically modern populations, and (3) the Protoaurignacian is related to the Early Ahmarian and dates to the time of contact between Neandertals and moderns throughout most of Europe. Given the potential complexity of the cultural and biological interactions that may have been involved in the phenomenon and the fossil evidence for extensive admixture in at least some parts of Europe at the time of contact between Neandertals and moderns (Trinkaus, 2005 <#CR203>), the biological affinities of the people who manufactured the Protoaurignacian cannot at present (and may well never) be resolved in simple dichotomic terms. Ornaments before the Aurignacian In Europe, the earliest personal ornaments are those found in Bachokirian, Uluzzian, Altmühlian, and Châtelperronian contexts, i.e., given the above, among late Neandertals (Fig. 6 <#Fig6>). Where the Bachokirian is concerned, three items were recovered in level 11 of the type site: a spindle-shaped bone pendant, oval in cross section and grooved at the narrow end, and fragments of two pierced teeth from unidentified species (Koz?owski, 1982 <#CR110>). In southern Europe, the evidence comes from sites in Greece and Italy. The Uluzzian level (Layer V) of the Klisoura 1 sequence, in Greece, yielded more than two dozen /Dentalium/ beads belonging to two different species (Koumouzelis /et al./, 2001a <#CR108>, b <#CR109>). In Italy, only the Grotta del Cavallo, in the southern region of Apulia, yielded ornaments; all were tubular fragments of /Dentalium/ in the lowermost Uluzzian (level EIII) but perforated /Cyclonassa neritea/ and /Columbella rustica/ shells also were recovered in the uppermost Uluzzian (levels EI and D) (Palma di Cesnola, 1993 <#CR155>). Because clear Aurignacian intrusions have been identified among the lithics of Cavallo level D (Gioia, 1990 <#CR70>), it is quite possible that these perforated gastropods likewise represent an Aurignacian contamination and that, as in Greece, /Dentalium/ tubes were the only shell ornaments of the Italian Uluzzian. ...................................................................... MediaObjects/10814_2006_9008_Fig6_HTML.gif Fig. 6 Ornaments of the earliest Upper Paleolithic of Europe. /Above:/ Central and eastern Europe: left, perforated fossil gastropod from level 2 of Willendorf II, Austria; center, spindle-shaped bone pendant from level 11 (Bachokirian) of the type site; right, perforated ivory disc from horizon 2 of the Ilsenhöhle (Ranis), Germany (after Felgenhauer, 1956 <#CR62>?1959; Hülle, 1977 <#CR100>; Koz?owski, 1982 <#CR110>). Below, pierced and grooved pendants from the Châtelperronian levels of the Grotte du Renne (France): (*a?d*) fox canines; (*e?f*) reindeer phalanges; (*g?j*) bovid incisors; (*k*) red deer canine; (*l*) fossil belemnite (after Zilhão and d?Errico, 1999 <#CR237>, modified) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ In central Europe the evidence is restricted to the perforated shell of a fossil gastropod provenanced to geological deposits in the Vienna basin and recovered in level 2 of the long, multilevel, open-air loess site of Willendorf II (Felgenhauer, 1956 <#CR62>, 1959; Hahn, 1993 <#CR84>). This level is overlain by charcoal lenses dated to c. 39.5?41.7 ^14 C BP (Damblon /et al./, 1996 <#CR50>; Haesaerts and Teyssandier, 2003 <#CR80>; Haesaerts /et al./, 1996 <#CR81>) and features a clear Upper Paleolithic but non-Aurignacian (Teyssandier, 2003 <#CR198>) blade debitage. Thus, this level probably relates to the contemporary ?transitional? entities documented in the nearby regions of Moravia and southern Poland. The Altmühlian level of the cave site of Ilsenhöhle, Ranis, in eastern Germany (Hülle, 1977 <#CR100>) yielded a needle-like bone point and, most importantly, an ivory disc with a central hole that may have been worn as a pendant (of which only a drawing survives). In Belgium, a broken ivory ring found in the 19th-century excavations of the Trou Magrite in all likelihood belongs to this northern European, late Neandertal tradition of ivory working. The excavations produced a mixed collection where at least three different components can be recognized (late Mousterian, /blattspitzen//Szeletian-like foliate point industries, and Aurignacian). In the framework of the widespread notion that any ornaments found in OIS-3 contexts must be Aurignacian by default, the Trou Magrite ring has been generally considered to be of that age (Lejeune, 1984 <#CR119>, 1987 <#CR120>; Moreau, 2003 <#CR148>; Otte, 1979 <#CR152>); however, its size, manufacture technique, and cross section are quite similar to those of identical objects from the French Châtelperronian (see below). The bulk of the evidence concerning personal ornamentation among late Neandertals comes from the French Châtelperronian and was reviewed by d?Errico /et al./ (1998) <#CR49> and Zilhão and d?Errico (1999 <#CR237>). Even if old excavations, where the possibility of postdepositional disturbance and contamination cannot be excluded, are removed from further consideration, the number of sites is still quite significant: Caune de Belvis, Saint-Césaire, Quinçay, and Grotte du Renne (Arcy-sur-Cure). Level 7 of the Caune de Belvis cave in Mediterranean France yielded a rather poor context with diagnostic Châtelperron points and two beads made on fossil /Turritella temprina/ shells (Taborin, 1993 <#CR190>). The Quinçay rockshelter (Lévêque, 1993 <#CR121>) is particularly important because contamination from overlying, later occupations can be excluded as a potential explanation for the ornaments recovered in the Châtelperronian levels because no such later occupations exist. The ensemble comprises six perforated teeth?three fox canines, one wolf canine, and two red deer canines. All were perforated by the same technique documented at the Grotte du Renne, i.e., by first abrading the root, then piercing the thinned surface with a puncture blow or a series of pressure removals, and finally smoothing and enlarging the hole (Granger and Lévêque, 1997 <#CR74>). The fact that the Saint-Césaire burial contained several /Dentalium/ beads (Lévêque, personal communication, 1998) adds an unequivocal ritual dimension to the use of ornaments by Châtelperronian Neandertals. .................................................................... MediaObjects/10814_2006_9008_Fig7_HTML.gif Fig. 7 Grotte du Renne (France). /Left:/ Ivory rings: top, the complete fish-tailed ornament from Aurignacian level VII; bottom, the more complete of the two pieces from Châtelperronian level Xb (after White, 2002 <#CR228>). /Right:/ Châtelperronian bird bone tubes decorated with regularly spaced notches (after Zilhão and d?Errico, 1999 <#CR237>, modified) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ For the key site of the Grotte du Renne (Figs. 6 <#Fig6> and 7 <#Fig7>, Table 3 <#Tab3>), Taborin (2002 <#CR191>) and White (2002 <#CR228>) recently resurrected the hypothesis that all the ornaments in Châtelperronian levels VIII?X are intrusions from overlying Aurignacian level VII. d?Errico /et al./ (1998) <#CR49> had already suggested that this was the case with three ivory beads from level VIII, identical to those in level VII, and the same probably holds for a small ivory ring fragment from level VIII, whose cross section (oval) and finishing (polished on the external faces) are identical to those of five other fragments and the one complete, well-known fish-tailed ring from the Aurignacian. However, the large majority of the ornaments (26) comes from level X, more than 70 cm below the base of the Aurignacian, which yielded only four (seven if you add those that are probably intrusive in level VIII). This distribution renders completely untenable the notion that the ornaments in level X represent downward migration, particularly because no evidence of a similar displacement has ever been documented in the realm of that level?s most abundant material culture item, the lithics. White (2002 <#CR228>) further argues in favor of the contamination hypothesis that the fish-tailed ring from level VII and the two large angular rings of ivory with a rectangular cross section found in sublevel Xb are in fact finished product and rough-outs, respectively, of a single /chaîne opératoire/ where the last production stage would consist of the thinning and shaping of the rough-outs through abrasion and polishing. The simple fact that, according to Taborin (2002 <#CR191>, Tables LII?LIII), one of the supposed rough-outs is 50% thinner than the supposed finished product (3 mm vs. 4.6 mm) suffices to expose the inconsistency of the argument, which is further apparent in that White eventually concludes that his analysis ?clearly showed that all surfaces of these objects [the Châtelperronian rings], including the interior ones, were polished and abraded, which suggests that the rings were indeed the intended product, not simple by-products.? Table 3 Ornaments from the Châtelperronian levels of the Grotte du Renne^ /a/ [deleted] Protoaurignacian ornaments Even if significant and unquestionable, the number of Châtelperronian and other pre-Aurignacian occurrences that yielded securely associated ornaments is small. The opposite is true of the Protoaurignacian and subsequent phases of the Aurignacian, where the presence of personal ornaments, often in very large amounts, is commonplace. Because the primary concern here is with the origins of the behavior, only the Protoaurignacian is discussed in detail; Vanhaeren (2002 <#CR211>) and Vanhaeren and d?Errico (2006 <#CR212>) provide a comprehensive review of the distribution of Aurignacian ornaments across Europe, including the later phases of the technocomplex. In Italy, the rockshelters of Fumane and Mochi yielded very large collections of Protoaurignacian ornaments. At Mochi G (Kuhn and Stiner, 1998 <#CR114>), most ornaments are marine shell beads; the dominant taxon is /Cyclope neritea/ (29% out of a total of 240). Stiner (1999 <#CR183>) also reports one pierced incisor of a small carnivore (fox or wild cat) and four carved beads made of bone and soft stone, whose shapes mimic that of red deer canines and whose sizes are very similar to those of the marine shells perforated for ornament use. Because a 50-cm-thick Early Aurignacian level (stratum F) overlies the 1-m-thick Protoaurignacian sequence (stratum G), and some level of uncertainty in the differentiation between the two must have been inevitable at the time of digging (a split-based bone point, for instance, was found in two fragments, one in cut 50 at the top of stratum G, the other in cut 49 at the base of stratum F), it cannot be excluded that the nonshell ornaments in the Mochi G collection relate to the subsequent Early Aurignacian occupation of the site. In fact, as noted by Stiner (1999 <#CR183>), nonshell, basket-shaped beads are characteristic of the classical Aurignacian I of the Périgord, a point also made by White (1989 <#CR226>, 1993 <#CR227>) and Vanhaeren (2002 <#CR211>). The situation reported at Fumane is similar (Broglio and Gurioli, 2004 <#CR29>; Broglio /et al./, 2002 <#CR30>). More than 650 marine shells were recovered in the excavated sequence, half of them perforated, and, in spite of the stratigraphic inversion of the results, the direct radiocarbon dates on three such shell ornaments from different species prove contemporaneity with the Aurignacian occupation. Assigned to some 53 different taxa, the large majority of the shells are /Homalopoma sanguineum/ (also well represented in Mochi G, where they correspond to 16% of the total). Three red deer incisors, grooved for suspension around the tip of the root, are the only nonshell ornaments from Fumane; their exact provenience, however, is unknown. Given the evidence that the site was also used in later Aurignacian times (a split-based point was found at the top of the sequence, and all radiocarbon dates from charcoal in its upper half?levels D3?D6?are in the 30.3?32.3 ka ^14 C BP age range), their association with the Protoaurignacian remains to be demonstrated. Finally, at Castelcivita, the only ornaments were /Homalopoma/ beads (Vanhaeren, 2002 <#CR211>). In France, the single-level rockshelter of La Laouza, in the Mediterranean, yielded a Protoaurignacian bead assemblage composed entirely of marine shells (Taborin, 1993 <#CR190>), 17 of which are perforated: /Cyprea lurida/ (2), /Shpaeronassa mutabilis/ (3), /Trivia europea/ (2), /Hinia reticulata/ (2), and /Nassarius gibbosula/ (8). ?A few? /Dentalium/ are also mentioned. Other reportedly Protoaurignacian occurrences in the same area are those in the Rothschild rockshelter (Fig. 8 <#Fig8>) and in Unit II of the Grotte Tournal (Bon, 2002 <#CR23>; Sacchi, 1996 <#CR167>; Taborin, 1993 <#CR190>; Tavoso, 1987 <#CR193>). The former, in particular, yielded an assemblage of nearly 400 beads, of which greater than 90% were marine shells; the remainder were different mollusk fossils. Finally, at the same latitude but on the opposite Atlantic coast, new excavations in the St. Martin chamber of the Isturitz cave exposed a complete Protoaurignacian?Aurignacian I?Aurignacian II sequence (Normand and Turq, 2005 <#CR151>); because only a reduced area of the lowermost levels could be excavated, the evidence concerning personal ornaments is sparse: pierced /Littorina/ shells, two pierced incisors of a herbivore, and a bead of amber. ................................................................... MediaObjects/10814_2006_9008_Fig8_HTML.gif Fig. 8 Protoaurignacian beads from the Rothschild rockshelter (France): (*a*) pierced red deer canine; (*b*) steatite bead; (*c*) /Theodoxus fluviatilis/; (*d*) /Cyclope neritea/; (*e*) /Trivia europaea/; (*f*) /Sphaeronassa mutabilis/; (*g*) /Hinia reticulata/; (*h, i*) /Dentalium/; (*j*) /Littorina obtusata/; (*k*) /Nassarius/ (=/Arcularia/) /gibbosula/; (*l*) /Nucella lapillus/; (*m*) /Aporrhaïs pespelecani/ (after Barge, 1983 <#CR15>) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Given that the material from El Pendo is not /in situ/ (Montes /et al./, 2005 <#CR147>), a pierced red deer canine from level 7 (Aurignacian I) of the Morin cave (González Echegaray and Freeman, 1971 <#CR73>) is the one ornament securely associated with all of the Aurignacian in Cantabrian Spain. In contrast with their recurrence and abundance in contemporary French and Italian sites, the absence of shell beads is particularly striking where Protoaurignacian level 8 of Morin is concerned, because the exploitation of marine and estuarine resources is documented by remains of edible mollusks throughout the site?s levels 9 to 5 (Madariaga, 1971 <#CR124>). Ornaments also are rare in the Aurignacian of northern Catalonia; only one pierced /Trivia pulex/, three /Dentalium/ fragments, and four other shell fragments of marine species, including one /Homalopoma sanguinea/, were recovered in basal Protoaurignacian level H of L?Arbreda (Maroto, 1994 <#CR127>). The data from Mochi suggest clear continuity between the Protoaurignacian and the Early Aurignacian, the latter retaining the same kinds of beads previously in use, for the most part perforated marine shells. The evidence reviewed by Vanhaeren (2002 <#CR211>), however, shows that the range of types becomes much broader in the Early Aurignacian. In the Aquitaine basin and western Pyrenees, where sites are numerous and often excavated over extensive areas, antler, bone, and ivory beads (especially basket-shaped ones), as well as pierced animal teeth (especially fox canines, followed by red deer canines, incisors of bovid, horse, beaver, and reindeer, and wolf canines), are the most common items. As exemplified by the rich assemblage from the Castanet rockshelter, personal ornaments at that time included marine shell beads (both Mediterranean, such as /Homalopoma sanguina/, and Atlantic, such as /Littorina obtusata/), perforated fossil mollusks (/Turritela/ sp.), basket-shaped bone and ivory beads, soft stone (manganese and hematite) beads, and pierced animal teeth (reindeer incisors) (Taborin, 1993 <#CR190>; Vanhaeren, 2002 <#CR211>). That more than simple geography (i.e., distance to marine shell sources) is involved in this new pattern is indicated by the fact that in the Aurignacian I level of Fossellone cave, an Italian site located in the Latium littoral, all ornaments were made of hard mammal tissue (pierced canines of fox and red deer and beads of deer antler) or of soft stone (steatite beads); shell beads were entirely absent (Vanhaeren, 2002 <#CR211>). Earliest figurative art The c. 40 ka ^14 C BP levels of Piekary IIa yielded two pieces of ochre with abstract designs reminiscent of the Blombos material (Sitlivy /et al./, 2004 <#CR177>). d?Errico /et al./ (2003b <#CR47>) document regular markings in about one third of the 50 bone awls from the Grotte du Renne?s Châtelperronian levels, and in three of the five bird bone tubes from the same levels (Fig. 7 <#Fig7>). Given their arrangement and distribution, the only explanation is deliberate decoration. However, as in Africa or Asia, figurative representations are entirely unknown for that time. Numerous ochred cryoclastic fragments, including six slabs painted with motifs described as zoomorphic in one case and anthropomorphic in another, are reported from the Fumane sequence and have been evoked to support figurative art in a Protoaurignacian context (Broglio and Gurioli, 2004 <#CR29>; Broglio /et al./, 2002 <#CR30>, 2003, 2004 <#CR31>; Floss, 2005 <#CR63>). However, it is not clear that the motifs really are figures; they are more suggestive of an extension to the inhabited space of the symbolic marking of objects with abstract signs documented in preceding times in both Africa and Europe. More importantly, the painted stones all come from either the uppermost Aurignacian levels or the immediately overlying collapse (Broglio and Gurioli, 2004 <#CR29>, p. 99); they are Aurignacian II, not Protoaurignacian, as are the dates for the site?s D3?D6 levels from where the slabs reportedly come. The Austrian site of Stratzing (a.k.a. Galgenberg or Krems-Rehberg) yielded an anthropomorphic statuette carved out of amphibolic schist, the ?Galgenberg Venus? (Neugebauer-Maresch, 1996 <#CR149>, 1999 <#CR150>). This piece comes from an Evolved Aurignacian context, documented by the lithic assemblage and a nearby hearth dated to c. 31.8 ka ^14 C BP. In the Swabian Alb of Germany, the famous lion?man statue from the cave site of Hohlenstein-Stadel was recovered in spit 6, dated by four samples to c. 31?32 ka ^14 C BP (Conard and Bolus, 2003 <#CR38>), in good agreement with the nosed ?scrapers? and bone points with a simple base in the artifact assemblage (Hahn, 1977 <#CR82>). The cave site of Vogelherd yielded ten figurines, of which a felid comes from the backdirt of the 1931 excavations, and the others (a bovid, a horse, two mammoths, three felids, an anthropomorph, and an unidentified quadruped) from levels IV and V (Conard, 2003 <#CR37>). The associated radiocarbon results (Table 4 <#Tab4>) cluster in the c. 32?33 ka ^14 C BP interval, although some are slightly older and others much younger; this scatter is easily understandable given the coarse nature of the stratigraphic work performed at the time (Conard /et al./, 2004). Table 4 Radiocarbon dates associated with the sculpted figurines of the Aurignacian of Austria and Germany (AMS on bone, AMS and conventional on charcoal) [deleted] Thus, where the chronology of this art form is concerned, the key sites of southwestern Germany are those excavated with modern techniques, Hohle Fels and Geissenklösterle. In the former (Conard, 2003 <#CR37>), all the art (a lion?man, a bird, and the head of a horse) comes from levels IId/base, III, and IV, dated to c. 30?31 ka ^14 C BP by 11 of 12 AMS dates. In the latter, all finds come from the uppermost Aurignacian in Archaeological Horizon (AH) II; Conard /et al./ (2004b) <#CR41> provide ample evidence of a clear horizontal stratigraphy inside this level, with the ivory sculptures of a bison and a human and two flutes coming from an /in situ/ ash deposit (subunit IIb) dated to 30?32 ka ^14 C BP, whereas a mammoth and a bear come from the overlying, postdepositionally disturbed (Hahn, 1988 <#CR83>) subunit IIa (Fig. 9 <#Fig9>). A limestone fragment spalled from the cave wall recovered in subunit IIIa was once thought to preserve a painted black V-shape, but it now is seen as corresponding to natural processes or incidental human agency (Conard and Uerpmann, 2000 <#CR39>). .................................................................. MediaObjects/10814_2006_9008_Fig9_HTML.gif Fig. 9 Distribution of the ivory figurines and flutes from Archaeological Horizon II (Evolved Aurignacian) of the Geissenklösterle cave (Germany), plotted against the horizontal and vertical position of the dated samples (the grid is in square meter units) (after Conard /et al./, 2004b <#CR41>, modified). Note the close association of the art with the ash lens in level IIb, and the radiocarbon age of the bones sampled therein, all of which fall in the ca. 29.8?32.3 ka ^14 C BP range; the sculptures of a mammoth and a bear come from overlying level IIa ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Counterparts of the German and Austrian animal and human figurines are currently unknown in France and Spain. A piece of horse frontal bone bearing an incomplete zoomorphic representation (hindquarters of a horse), reportedly found in Aurignacian deposits of the Hornos de la Peña cave, is of uncertain provenience (Arias and Ontañón, 2004 <#CR3>), and the claims for mobiliary figurative art in El Castillo level 18 are unsupported (Zilhão and d?Errico, 2003b <#CR239>). However, in rockshelters of the Périgord, engraved blocks containing incomplete animal figures and signs, as well as pigment-bearing rock fragments spalled from wall and roof, were recovered in stratified deposits during early 20th-century excavations at Belcayre, Blanchard, Castanet, Cellier, and La Ferrassie (Fig. 10 <#Fig10>); whenever the stratigraphic information is secure, they come from levels containing lithic assemblages characteristic of the regional Evolved Aurignacian (Aurignacian II or III of the traditional Périgord sequence) (Delluc and Delluc, 1978 <#CR54>, 1991 <#CR56>). The basal Early Aurignacian level of Blanchard also yielded the distal fragment of a bovid horn core with a modified tip; the Dellucs, following Breuil, see a phallic representation. The interpretation of this object as figurative art, however, is questionable and has indeed been viewed with skepticism since the beginning, notably by such art experts as S. Reinach (Delluc and Delluc, 1979 <#CR55>). ....................................................................... MediaObjects/10814_2006_9008_Fig10_HTML.gif Fig. 10 Decorated blocs from the Aurignacian levels of the La Ferrassie rockshelter (France). /Above/: Zoomorphic figures and vulvas associated with cupules, (Evolved) Aurignacian IV. /Below/: Sculpted animal head with deeply engraved vulva figure on the opposite side, (Evolved) Aurignacian III (after Peyrony, 1934 <#CR160>) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The parietal art in two Ardèche caves is of the same Evolved Aurignacian age. Chauvet yielded five direct dates between 29.7 and 32.4 ^14 C BP for charcoal collected in the black pigment used to paint animal figures of rhinoceros, horse, aurochs, and giant deer (Valladas /et al./, 2001 <#CR209>). Although reasonable reservations have been advanced (Pettitt and Bahn, 2003 <#CR159>; Züchner, 1999 <#CR241>, 2001 <#CR242>), the Aurignacian chronology obtained for these paintings is consistent with their similarity with the German figurines in both style and motifs. Additional support for this conclusion comes from the indirect dating to the same period of the engravings (two felines and a bear) identified by Pales and Vialou (1984 <#CR154>) in the nearby cave of Aldène. Stylistically and thematically close to Chauvet (Sacchi, 2001 <#CR168>), an Aurignacian age for these figures is supported by the radiocarbon date of 30,260 ± 220 ^14 C BP (Beta 188 750) obtained on charcoal from a remnant of the sediment fill that sealed access to the engraved gallery (Ambert /et al./, 2005 <#CR1>). At Chauvet, the black panels yielded evidence of an earlier phase of artistic activity (Baffier and Feruglio, 2005 <#CR5>) but, as these authors point out, the time elapsed since the first episodes of decoration is difficult to evaluate. Given that the rock surfaces were extensively prepared before the execution of the figures, it is to be expected that earlier representations would have been almost completely obliterated, even if made only a few years, decades, or centuries before. In Cantabrian Spain (Fortea, 2000 <#CR64>, 2001 <#CR65>, 2002 <#CR66>), the cave of El Conde and the rockshelter of La Viña feature a parietal decoration of deep vertical grooves covered by Gravettian deposits. At El Conde, bone from a remnant of such deposits, dated to c. 24 ka ^14 C BP, provides a /terminus ante quem/ for the art, and arguments based on the manual field of the artist and the topographic relation between the archaeological strata and these engravings suggest they might well be of Aurignacian age. An early Gravettian chronology, however, cannot be excluded. Direct dating of black punctuations superimposed on two yellow bulls from the Peña de Candamo cave yielded results of c. 32?34 ka ^14 C BP for two samples analyzed at the Gif laboratory; however, two samples sent to a different laboratory, Geochron, yielded significantly younger results, in the 15?16 ka ^14 C BP range. Because other figures from the same panel, the /Muro de los Grabados/, were dated by both labs to between c. 9 and c. 23 ka ^14 C BP, it would seem that the most parsimonious explanation for the results in the Aurignacian time interval is contamination from unidentified sources. One of the most widespread misconceptions of the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition resides in the commonplace notion that ?the first modern humans in Europe were in fact astonishingly precocious artists? (Sinclair, 2003 <#CR172>). As this review shows, however, the documented artistic skills of the people of the Protoaurignacian and of the Early Aurignacian are no more ?astonishing? than those documented in late Neandertal cultural contexts and consist simply of the same kinds of patterned markings applied to bone and ivory tools with decorative or functional purposes. The earliest figurative art of Europe is of Evolved Aurignacian age (c. 32 ka ^14 C BP or later), i.e., ?art? did not emerge among modern human Europeans until at least three radiocarbon millennia after their first fossil representatives (the Oase people) are documented in the continent and until after some five radiocarbon millennia after the appearance of the first potential archaeological indicator (Protoaurignacian lithic assemblages) of the immigration. Explaining late Neandertal ornaments Imitation (or acculturation)? In the ethnographic present, personal ornaments play the role of conveyors of the social identity of persons?group membership, gender, and individual life-history characteristics (age, marital status, etc.) (Wobst, 1977 <#CR229>). The visual display of such information is targeted at encounters with strangers or people infrequently met, because, as pointed out by Kuhn /et al./ (2001) <#CR115>, ?without some history of contact or interaction, the meaning of the visual symbols would be opaque to the viewer,? and ?there is no need to use material symbols to identify one?s affiliation or identity to family and very close acquaintances.? Thus, the emergence of ornaments in the archaeological record probably reflects the crossing of demographic thresholds above which long-distance interaction networks involving alliance, exchange, or mating were necessary. Working with such symbolic systems of personal presentation and representation obviously requires cognitive capabilities unknown among our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees. The evidence reviewed above makes it clear that in Europe those systems predate by several millennia any evidence, archaeological or paleontological, for the immigration of anatomically modern people into the continent. This fact carries the following implications: (1) Measured by the same standards used for modern humans of the African MSA, European Neandertals were behaviorally ?/sapiens/? people. (2) If there is a biunivocal correspondence between a species and its behavior, then European Neandertals and African moderns belonged to the same species. (3) If Neandertals are a separate species on the strength of their morphological particularities, then ?fully symbolic /sapiens/ behavior? emerged independently among different human species, and the biological/genetical foundations for that behavior must have existed in the human genus before the split between the African and European lineages. Whichever alternative is preferred, the corollary is that explanations of the emergence of ?behavioral modernity? as a simple by-product of a putative speciation event in the late Middle Pleistocene of Africa are refuted. Reconciling such explanations with the empirical data would be possible only under the hypothesis that the ornaments recovered in Neandertal contexts reflect the ?aping,? or ?imitation without understanding,? of behaviors observed among nearby, coeval modern human populations (Hublin /et al./, 1996 <#CR98>; Mellars, 1999 <#CR139>; Stringer and Gamble, 1993 <#CR185>). The demonstration of the illusory nature of the putative Aurignacian/Châtelperronian interstratifications (Bordes, 2002 <#CR25>; Zilhão /et al./, 2006 <#CR240>) has effectively eliminated the single piece of evidence upon which such a notion could be supported. At the time of the Châtelperronian, the geographically closest area inhabited by modern humans was the Near East (if the IUP from Boker Tachtit, Ksar ?Akil, and Üça?izli was indeed manufactured by modern humans). This is too far away for close contact acculturation but leaves open the possibility of long distance, ?bow wave? diffusion, along the lines suggested by Hublin (2000 <#CR97>), McBrearty and Brooks (2000 <#CR135>), and Mellars (1999 <#CR139>, 2005 <#CR141>), to explain the cultural innovations documented among Eurasian Neandertals after c. 100 ka BP. In the biological and cultural geography of Eurasia before the time of the Protoaurignacian, what long-distance diffusion from the Near East to western Europe effectively means is that before arriving in Neandertal France, such innovations would have to travel across vast expanses of terrain where only other Neandertals lived, i.e., through exchange networks uniting those different Neandertal populations, from the French Charente in the west to the closest potential Neandertal/modern contact zones in the Black Sea and the eastern Mediterranean (Fig. 5 <#Fig5>). It is clear, however, that the practice of wearing beads could not have survived the innumerous episodes of information exchange necessarily involved in such a process if the individuals transmitting and receiving the information did not fully understand its underlying meaning. The implication is that long-distance diffusion is a viable explanation only if one accepts that cognitive abilities are equivalent at the two ends of the chain, i.e., among both the modern human sources and the Neandertal recipients. Such an acceptance, however, generates two major logical inconsistencies for bow wave diffusion. First, the model was suggested as a way to bring the empirical evidence for symbolic artifacts among Neandertals in line with the notion that because they were not modern, they must have lacked the cognitive capabilities required for their use in a fully symbolic social context, whereas, in reality, it carries the implication that they did have those capabilities. Put another way, it requires the exact kind of behavior whose putative absence it proposed to explain! Second, the model is based on the notion that Neandertals and moderns were separate at the species level, their differentiation having been driven by isolation through distance, followed by the establishment of long-lasting barriers to gene flow (Hublin, 1998 <#CR96>). However, if such barriers existed, how could they have been only biological, not cultural as well? If burials and ornaments represent the acquisition by Neandertals of innovations gradually developed in Africa over tens of thousands of years, how can such a level of contact be reconciled with the notion that after c. 300 ka BP Neandertals had become isolated to the point of evolving into a separate species? Clearly, either Neandertals were a different species, and the implication is that symbolism emerged independently among them; or their symbolic artifacts were a by-product of diffusion from Africa, and then they cannot have been a different species. You simply cannot have it both ways, i.e., complete biological isolation, leading to speciation, but at the same time complete cultural interconnectedness, leading to long-distance diffusion of innovations! At the empirical level, ?long-distance diffusion? faces the additional problem that it also proposes to explain the practice of ritual burial among Neandertals. However, the earliest, uncontroversial instance of burial so far known is not that of a modern human but that of the Tabun C1 Neandertal woman. Bar-Yosef and Callander (1999 <#CR11>) argue that this is an intrusive interment from overlying level B, but the fact that the loose right hand and wrist bones recovered in level C are mirror images of the same left bones in the articulated skeleton (Kaufman, 2002 <#CR104>; Trinkaus, 1993 <#CR202>) is not consistent with their hypothesis, nor is the direct dating by ESR of tooth enamel sampled from the human skeleton itself, which indicates an age between c. 112 and c. 143 ka cal BP (Grün and Stringer, 2000 <#CR77>). Independent invention? Since long-distance diffusion requires that Neandertals had the same cognitive capabilities as moderns, as a potential explanation for the facts it is not intrinsically superior to the alternative view of independent invention put forward by d?Errico /et al./ (1998) <#CR49>, Zilhão and d?Errico (1999 <#CR237>), Zilhão (2001 <#CR233>), and d?Errico (2003 <#CR43>). Choosing between the two, therefore, should be based solely on their respective empirical merits. And although future research may change the picture, the data currently available are more consistent with independent invention than with long-distance diffusion. In fact, one of the most striking features of the record for early ornaments is that in the IUP of the Near East it is entirely made up of perforated shells, for the most part marine gastropods. /Dentalium/ tubes are absent from the IUP, and they are not represented in the subsequent Early Ahmarian either. In contrast, /Dentalium/ tubes are the only securely documented ornaments in the Uluzzian, where marine gastropods are entirely absent. This contrast is puzzling because Uluzzian sites have the same coastal location as those from the Near Eastern IUP, and, if the ornaments had been introduced to their cultural context through diffusion from the latter, one would expect that the same kinds of objects had been selected for the purpose. For instance, that some 90% of the shell beads in the IUP levels of Üça?izli and Ksar ?Akil are /Nassarius/ is a strong argument in favor of the notion that this technocomplex stands for a cultural tradition of ultimate African origin: The earlier, south African beads from Blombos are all made from another, nearly identical species of that genus (Fig. 1 <#Fig1>). That the makers of these ornaments were selecting for a particular shape and that this similarity of appearance is culturally meaningful are also suggested by the fact that the other gastropod used at Ksar ?Akil, /Columbella rustica/, is of broadly similar morphology. That traditions relating to the choice of ornaments are long-lasting is further indicated by the fact that in the long Protoaurignacian-to-Epigravettian sequence of the Mochi rockshelter, people consistently favored a very narrow range of shell sizes and shapes, ?suggesting some kind of shared aesthetic, yet one that lasted more than 20,000 years? (Stiner, 1999 <#CR183>). Thus, where sites in interior locations are concerned, if the earliest Upper Paleolithic of Europe was related to diffusion from the Near East, one might further expect that fossil shells of similar appearance to those used for ornamental purposes in the IUP would be considered as adequate replacements and sought after in the appropriate geological exposures, or, alternatively, that imitations of appropriate shape and size carved out of bone and ivory would replace the lacking marine shells. This expectation, however, is not met by the empirical evidence. Small, basket-shaped bone and ivory beads became common only in the Aurignacian I and are unknown before the Protoaurignacian. In European sites contemporary with the IUP, the known instances of the use of fossils are in level 2 of Willendorf II and in lowermost level X of the Grotte du Renne?s Châtelperronian sequence. In the former the evidence consists of a fossil gastropod of elongated shape, and at the latter (Table 3 <#Tab3>) it consists of a grooved /Rynchonella/, a perforated belemnite, and two pierced /Bayania lactea/. Just as /Dentalium/ beads are tubes, not basket-shaped shells, so is the Grotte du Renne material hardly evocative of /Nassarius/. /Rynchonella/ are brachiopods (totally unrelated to mollusks) with a clamlike but unhinged external shell (and the Grotte du Renne fossil, being an internal mould, is a spherical object with no opening); belemnites are an extinct relative of the squid with internal bullet-shaped shells; and /Bayania lactea/ are an Eocene gastropod with an elongated external shell. These interior sites, moreover, differ from those in Africa and the Near East in that most ornaments are pierced or grooved bones and teeth; such animal products were not used in Africa and are unknown in the Near East before the Aurignacian I. That these differences were not dictated by availability factors is further suggested by the fact that African moderns of the MSA and the earliest LSA in interior geographical settings of South Africa and Kenya made their beads out of ostrich eggshell (Ambrose, 1998 <#CR2>; Wadley, 1993 <#CR217>, 2001 <#CR218>), not out of the bones and teeth of the animals living in their environments. Thus, if long-distance diffusion was operating, it can only have been that of the concept, not of the objects themselves or of their images, which again refutes any notions that the ornaments found among Neandertals represent simple ?copying,? or ?imitation without understanding.? In any case, given that no evidence for comparable diffusion processes exists in other realms of the archaeological record, and given the evidence in favor of considerable isolation between Africa and Europe represented by the fact that the latter harbored populations sufficiently distinct anatomically to be considered by some as a different species, the most parsimonious explanation is that ornaments emerged in the two continents as part of separate, independent cultural trajectories toward ?fully symbolic /sapiens/ behavior.? This view also is supported by the remarkable difference apparent between the African and the European records when possible explanations for the exact social function of personal ornaments in these early symbolic societies are duly considered. Before c. 30 ka ^14 C BP, and with a single potential exception (the /Conus bairstowi/ shell from Border Cave), African and Near Eastern ornaments are exclusively small disk-shaped ostrich eggshell beads or perforated basket-shaped /Nassarius/ shells of comparable size (Fig. 1 <#Fig1>); as noted above, at Blombos, all shells were found in clusters, suggesting that they may have been used in the same way as ostrich eggshell beads, i.e., as individual parts arranged to form composite beadworks. d?Errico and Vanhaeren (2005 <#CR45>) have suggested, on the basis of the ethnographic evidence, that the homogeneity and lack of regional differentiation of these items indicate that they may have been exchange media used in gift-giving systems; in contrast, the large diversity of bead types and the pattern of marked geographic variation that, from the beginning, characterize early European bead assemblages (both Aurignacian and pre-Aurignacian) suggests they were markers of ethnic, social, and personal identity. Such a difference in function is more consistent with independent origins than with long-distance diffusion and further strengthens the argument that, by comparison with the preceding modern human cultural traditions documented in the Near East and in Africa, the Protoaurignacian displays features of both continuity and discontinuity. The latter is apparent in the few instances of perforated teeth and /Dentalium/ tubes found in Protoaurignacian contexts (level G of Mochi, Rothschild, or La Laouza). Such items became widespread in the subsequent Early Aurignacian of France [for instance, for /Dentalium/, Pataud, Tuto de Camalhot, La Ferrassie, Cellier, Blanchard, Castanet or Caminade (Taborin, 1993 <#CR190>)], where the abundant perforated /Nassarius/ and other similar shells, as well as the bone, antler, and ivory beads imitating their shape, represent the element of continuity. By the same token, it is impossible to deny that the most parsimonious explanation for the animal tooth pendants and /Dentalium/ tubes of the Protoaurignacian and the Aurignacian I is that they represent a signature of continuity with such preceding Neandertal-associated cultures as the Châtelperronian and the Uluzzian. This interpretation of Protoaurignacian ornament assemblages as reflecting the blending of two separate traditions is consistent with and lends further support to the biological evidence for significant interaction between Neandertals and modern humans at the time of contact, resulting in extensive admixture in at least some regions of Europe (Trinkaus, 2005 <#CR203>). Conclusion Shennan?s (2001 <#CR171>) study of the relation between innovation and demographic growth showed that the probability that innovations are retained is low when group size is small, because the probability that their effects are advantageous as opposed to deleterious also is low. The situation changes markedly when population increases, either through local demographic growth or through merger between previously isolated groups, and especially so when long-distance contact is established, because that effectively enlarges the population on a scale proportional to the square of the distance radius. Since both the archaeological and the genetic evidence are consistent with significant population increase in Africa once the cold and arid conditions pertaining throughout OIS-4 came to an end, Shennan concludes that the most parsimonious explanation for the fact that cultural innovations with occasional precedents became fixed and widespread only after that time is demography, not cognition. One does not need to go any further than this model to explain the European patterns. The increase in the number of sites and the major northward expansion of the human range document population expansion (and ensuing increased interaction) among OIS-3 Neandertals and suffice to explain why they eventually developed the practice of personal ornamentation at about the same time it was re-emerging in Africa and expanding into the Near East. Moreover, it also is clear that Shennan?s line of reasoning also provides a convincing explanation for the emergence of sculpted figurines and rock art in Evolved Aurignacian times. Although the possession of artistic skills is often portrayed as proof of the decisive cognitive advantage that gave moderns the edge over Neandertals in their competition for Europe, the evidence reviewed in the preceding sections shows that figurative art is as conspicuously lacking from cultural contexts conceivably related to those modern human pioneers (the Protoaurignacian and the Early Aurignacian) as it is from the cultural contexts of late Neandertals. Even if widely used, the argument of the cognitive superiority of ?those wonderful Cro-Magnon artists? as sufficient explanation for the demise of the Neandertals is therefore completely inadequate if not grossly misleading. The European record suggests that it was not until Evolved Aurignacian times that the need was felt for systems of social identification/differentiation extending beyond the individual to include the landscapes and resources claimed as territory by the different groups to whom people advertised their allegiance through the use of body ornaments. As discussed by Gamble (1983 <#CR68>) and Gilman (1984 <#CR69>), the need for such systems can easily be explained as a consequence of adaptive success, with technological innovation leading to demographic growth and implying both increased intergroup competition and increased regulation of that competition. In such a context, it is easy to understand the adaptive value of the emergence of ceremonial behaviors addressing issues of property and rights over resources and of the development of myths and religious beliefs relating such rights to real or ideal ancestors. As the ethnographic record abundantly documents, that is what rock art primarily stands for?embodying places with economic, ideological, or social significance (Bahn and Vertut, 1997 <#CR6>; Layton, 1992 <#CR117>). Sculpted figurines, in turn, are likely to have represented manifestations of the same phenomenon in the personal and domestic arenas of behavior. The emergence of these cultural traits obviously requires the capability for symbolic thinking, and their emergence is often equated (as in Henshilwood and Marean?s definition) with that of the underlying capability. However, this can hardly be the case. McBrearty and Brooks (2000 <#CR135>) and d?Errico (2003 <#CR43>) have supplied plenty of evidence for the emergence of sophisticated behaviors among both the African and European lineages throughout the late Middle and the early Upper Pleistocene, well before beads were first in use. Where Europe is concerned, it suffices to evoke the practice of ritual burial documented at La Ferrassie and that of body painting, using manganese crayons, documented in the MTA of Pech de l?Azé I (Soressi /et al./, 2002 <#CR182>). Often overlooked is also the evidence for symbolic thinking yielded by utilitarian artifacts. The German site of Königsaue, for instance, yielded unique evidence for the mastering of complex fire technology by Micoquian (late Middle Paleolithic) Neandertals. Chemical analysis of two fragments of birch bark pitch used for the hafting of stone knives and directly dated to >44 ka ^14 C BP showed that the pitch had been produced through a several-hour-long smoldering process requiring a strict manufacture protocol, i.e., under exclusion of oxygen and at tightly controlled temperatures (between 340 and 400°C) (Koller /et al./, 2001 <#CR107>). The Königsaue pitch is the first artificial raw material in the history of humankind, and this unique example of Pleistocene high-tech clearly could not have been developed, transmitted, and maintained in the absence of abstract thinking and language as we know them; it certainly requires the enhanced working memory whose acquisition, according to Coolidge and Wynn (2005 <#CR42>), is the hallmark of modern cognition. Another example of the development and learning of such complex technological traditions are the 400,000-year-old wood throwing spears from Schöningen (Thieme, 1997 <#CR199>), whose shape mimics that of the javelins used in field-and-track competitions and implies the empirical understanding of the basic laws of ballistics. One must therefore conclude that the explanation for the emergence of ornaments and figurative art resides in the realm of cultural, demographic, and social processes, not in that of paleogenetics or paleoneurology. Because the particulars of nucleotide arrangements in the DNA of fossil humans are themselves mute where issues of intelligence are concerned, and given that soft tissue does not fossilize (which places speculations as to the nature and consequences of putative functional reorganizations of the inner workings of the human mind outside the field of testable scientific propositions), this is a rather fortunate conclusion for paleoanthropology. It also is one that is consistent with the notion that the ?hardware? for ?behavioral modernity? must have been in place as soon as the size and shape of the brain case entered modern ranges of variation, and the cultural record documents behaviors that require language, i.e., symbolic thinking by definition. The paleontological record (Lee and Wolpoff, 2003 <#CR118>; McHenry and Coffing, 2000 <#CR136>) concurs in suggesting that such a rubicon had already been crossed by c. 400 ka BP. The rest?including ornaments and art as much as writing and computers?is history. Acknowledgments The research and initial drafting for this article were performed during a 2003?2004 research stay at the University of Cologne, in the framework of a Humboldt Foundation Research Award. I am particularly grateful to Nicholas Conard, Martin Porr, Ludwig Reisch, Jürgen Richter, Thorsten Uthmeier, Gerd-Christian Weniger, Bernhard Weninger, Andreas Zimmermann, and Christian Züchner for making my stay in Germany pleasant and productive. The ideas expressed here also benefited from exchanges with and information provided by many other colleagues. I am particularly grateful to Diego Angelucci, Javier Baena, Paul Bahn, Ion B?ltean, Ofer Bar-Yosef, François Bon, Jean-Guillaume Bordes, Alberto Broglio, Miguel Cortés, Francesco d?Errico, Francine David, Javier Fortea, Dominique Henry-Gambier, Michèle Julien, Ivor Karavani?, Janusz Koz?owski, Stephen Kuhn, Claire Letourneux, Jose Manuel Maíllo, António Monge Soares, Ramón Montes, Anna Pazdur, Catherine Perlès, Paul Pettitt, Daniel Richter, Curtis Runnels, Valery Sitlivy, Olga Soffer, Ji?í Svoboda, Nicholas Teyssandier, Erik Trinkaus, Marian Vanhaeren, Alexander Verpoorte, Paola Villa, and Ralf Vogelsang for the information provided on request. Last but not the least, T. Douglas Price originally invited me to write this review, and I must thank him for his patient wait. As usual, any errors or omissions are my own. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ References cited [deleted]