posted
I've come across this term, "behaviorally modern", in various cases dealing with human prehistory, particularly in relation to early OOA migrations of anatomical moderns. The following for example, got my attention from another topic, for what it doesn't say...
quote: Radiocarbon review rewrites European pre-history
LONDON (Reuters) - The ancestors of modern man moved into and across Europe, ousting the Neanderthals, faster than previously thought, a new analysis of radiocarbon data shows.
Rather than taking some 7,000 years to colonize Europe from Africa, the reinterpreted data shows the process may only have taken 5,000 years, scientist Paul Mellars from Cambridge University said in the science journal Nature on Wednesday...
Populations of anatomically and behaviorally modern humans **first appeared** in the near eastern region some 45,000 years ago and slowly expanded into southeastern Europe.
My feedback to the above, was:
Don't want to jump to the gun, and so, here's a question: Considering that it is said that anatomical morderns had been migrating from Africa as early as 65k-85ky, and perhaps even earlier, could these folks be suggesting that those moderns who migrated from Africa more than 45,000 years ago, were NOT "behaviorally modern"?
Indeed, considering modern humans have been migrating from Africa long before 45ky, and how the terms "first appeared" are used in the above citation, the possible questions that can arise from this are;
whether the implication here is that, though anatomical moderns came from Africa, signs of "modern human behavior" first appear in the "Near East" ca. 45,000, and not Africa?...or
..."behaviorally modern humans" appeared "late" or "slowly" in Africa, and arrived in the "Near East" at ca. 45ky?
In any case, the evident conclusion is that, the anatomically modern humans from earlier migrations from Africa into Asia, were not "behaviorally modern" until at about 45ky.
Meanwhile from elsewhere...
Supercar posted:
The appearance of fully modern behavior apparently occurred in Africa earlier than anywhere else in the Old World, but spread very quickly, due to population movements into other geographical regions. - Paleoanthropologist Donald C. Johanson, professor of anthropology and Director of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University.
Rasol's feedback post:
Something happened around 60 000 years ago in Africa - a great leap forward. - Spencer Wells.
It is because modern human intelligent behavior originated in Africa, that recent out of Africa moderns quickly spread thru much of Asia, Australia and the Pacific Islands, and eventually to Europe where Out of Africa moderns supplanted Native European Neanderthal. And it is for this reason, that our lineages all trace back to Africa, and relatively recently, in an evolutionary sense.
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From a personal viewpoint, I take it that "behaviorally modern", implies behavior that contemporary human populations can instantly relate to. The question now is, what does it mean to be "behaviorally modern", as it pertains to human prehistory; do these so-called experts use this term in the same context, or apply it on the basis of a set scholarly code?
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posted
South Africa provides the earliest tangible evidence of Modern Human Behavior - this is prior to the existence/outmigration of Europeans and so *moots* the Eurocentric view.
Of course that doesn't stop Eurocentric game playing - ie - redefine the meaning of modern behavior, but it is quite useless.....
Precocious Human Behaviour in South African Prehistory
By John Parkington and Cedric Poggenpoel
For some time now, the results of southern African archaeological excavations and analyses have been significant in the study of modern human origins.
To understand why this is so, we need first to unpack the idea of 'modern humans' and the debate on 'origins'. The framework for both has been set by the well-researched prehistory of ice-age Europe, where Neandertalers were replaced abruptly by 'moderns' some 40 000 years ago. Modern skeletons are defined as gracile and largely undistinguishable from ours today.
The Neandertalers were certainly not modern in this sense, being robust and morphologically quite distinctive. These cousins of ours, though buried their dead had cranial capacities as large as, if somewhat differently configured than our own.
What has struck European archaeologists, however, is the abundance of decorated bone and ivory, perforated objects and graphic representations that have been found with modern people, compared with a dearth, if not a complete absence, of such with the Neandertalers. Because these skeletal and artefactual changes happen so fast in Europe, one research direction has been to trace the origins of decorated objects and modern skeletal morphology outside Europe. This is the search for 'modern human origins'.
In sub-Saharan Africa there are no Neandertalers. Whereas the European fossil human record illustrates an increasingly Neandertal direction from about 300 000 years ago to 50 000 years ago, that of southern Africa in those times - scrappy though it is - illustrates an undeniable trend toward the modern form. Many anthropologists believe this shows that the modern form originated in Africa and spread to Europe and elsewhere.
But what about the origins of the artefactual remains that are taken to reflect 'modern behaviour'? What seems to underpin the manufacture of decorated and ornamental objects and of graphic designs and forms is an ability to think (and talk?) symbolically, to develop a set of material forms that are conventionally used to represent otherwise intangible concepts, among them personal identity and ownership.
Of course this is extremely difficult to recognise, since we have no extrinsic way of knowing when or how a repeated form reflects an intangible concept. The millions of hand-axes from Africa are patterned artefacts from as much as a million years ago, which might reflect such symbolic behaviour. Research has focused on artefact-making in bone, shell and ochre.
Recent excavations at sites in southern Africa have produced evidence that symbolic systems must undoubtedly have been in place here 80 000 years ago, well before the equivalent manifestation in Europe.
At Blombos Cave, for example, a coastal site in the southern Cape Province, Chris Henshilwood has reported a number of interesting discoveries stratified below a windblown sand level well, dated to about 75 000 years. There are several carefully made bone points, not that dissimilar from ones that have been found in much more recent contexts all over the world. From these levels, too, he has found at least two small chunks of ochre that have cross-hatched markings on them. http://www.dst.gov.za/publications/magazines/m00005/volume5_2.phpPosts: 15202 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
The "behavioural--modern" paradigm is due to bioanthropologist Richard Klein who argues that humans attained the anatomically modern threshold some 150KYA but attained the behaviourally modern threshold some 50KYA--curiously(but expected) simultaneous with the OOA departure times. The key BM traits would be, according to Klein, abstract thought, language and self-awareness. For Klein this threshold was attained at the bio-neuronic level, requiring a genetic mutation. Problem though is that such a thesis cannot be proven for obvious reasons.
The thesis has not been fully accepted by Klein's colleagues but it is instructive to note that Paul Mellars goes along with it.
The subtext, of course, is that the "sapiens sapiens" level was attained mainly by those who made up the OOA migratory cohorts.
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As in all things there's more than one school of thought. Klein champions a mutation responsible for language and cognitive ability producing a "great leap forward" around 50kya.
McBrearty posits slow exponential achievement with examples of modern human behavior from over 260-130kya ago (among never left Africa L1's).
In either case both see it in Africa first. The one in South Africa >100kya, the other in East Africa ~45kya. I'm preparing a write up on this but it won't be posted until Sunday at best. In the meantime I expect Rasol (who sparked my interest in the topic over a discussion of Natufians being the first Hss's of the Levant) to beat me to the punch Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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quote: ...Recent excavations at sites in southern Africa have produced evidence that symbolic systems must undoubtedly have been in place here 80 000 years ago, well before the equivalent manifestation in Europe.
At Blombos Cave, for example, a coastal site in the southern Cape Province, Chris Henshilwood has reported a number of interesting discoveries stratified below a windblown sand level well, dated to about 75 000 years. There are several carefully made bone points, not that dissimilar from ones that have been found in much more recent contexts all over the world. From these levels, too, he has found at least two small chunks of ochre that have cross-hatched markings on them. http://www.dst.gov.za/publications/magazines/m00005/volume5_2.php
Interesting piece. I suspect that as more archeological revelations come to light, dating will be pushed further back in time.
And apparently, prior to the above revelations, according to another perspective, again from Donald Johanson, here are the archeological indicators of change in behavior:
Archaeological evidence
Very interestingly, while Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens were distinguished from one another by a suite of obvious anatomical features, archaeologically they were very similar. Hominids of the Middle Stone Age of Africa (H. sapiens) and their contemporary Middle Paleolithic Neanderthals of Europe had artifact assemblages characterized as follows:
little variation in stone tool types, with a preponderance of flake tools that are difficult to sort into discrete categories
over long periods of time and wide geographical distances there was general similarity in tool kits
a virtual lack of tools fashioned out of bone, antler or ivory
burials lacked grave goods and signs of ritual or ceremony
hunting was usually limited to less dangerous species and evidence for fishing is absent
population densities were apparently low
no evidence of living structures exist and fireplaces are rudimentary
evidence for art or decoration is also lacking
The archaeological picture changed dramatically around 40-50,000 years ago with the appearance of behaviorally modern humans. This was an abrupt and dramatic change in subsistence patterns, tools and symbolic expression. The stunning change in cultural adaptation was not merely a quantitative one, but one that represented a significant departure from all earlier human behavior, reflecting a major qualitative transformation. It was literally a "creative explosion" which exhibited the "technological ingenuity, social formations, and ideological complexity of historic hunter-gatherers."7 This human revolution is precisely what made us who we are today.
The appearance of fully modern behavior apparently occurred in Africa earlier than anywhere else in the Old World, but spread very quickly, due to population movements into other geographical regions. The Upper Paleolithic lifestyle, as it was called, was based essentially on hunting and gathering. So successful was this cultural adaptation that until roughly 11,000 years ago, hominids worldwide were subsisting essentially as hunter-gatherers.
In the Upper Paleolithic of Eurasia, or the Late Stone Age as it is called in Africa, the archaeological signature stands in strong contrast to that of the Middle Paleolithic/Middle Stone Age. It was characterized by significant innovation:
a remarkable diversity in stone tool types
tool types showed significant change over time and space
artifacts were regularly fashioned out of bone, antler and ivory, in addition to stone
stone artifacts were made primarily on blades and were easily classified into discrete categories, presumably reflecting specialized use
burials were accompanied by ritual or ceremony and contained a rich diversity of grave goods
living structures and well-designed fireplaces were constructed
hunting of dangerous animal species and fishing occurred regularly higher population densities
abundant and elaborate art as well as items of personal adornment were widespread
raw materials such as flint and shells were traded over some distances
Homo sapiens of the Upper Paleolithic/Late Stone Age was quintessentially modern in appearance and behavior. Precisely how this transformation occurred is not well understood, but it apparently was restricted to Homo sapiens and did not occur in Neanderthals. Some archaeologists invoke a behavioral explanation for the change. For example, Soffer11 suggests that changes in social relations, such as development of the nuclear family, played a key role in bringing about the transformation.
Klein7, on the other hand, proffers the notion that it was probably a biological change brought about by mutations that played the key role in the emergence of behaviorally modern humans. His biologically based explanation implies that a major neural reorganization of the brain resulted in a significant enhancement in the manner in which the brain processed information. This is a difficult hypothesis to test since brains do not fossilize. But it is significant that no changes are seen in the shape of the skulls between earlier and later Homo sapiens. It can only be surmised from the archaeological record, which contains abundant evidence for ritual and art, that these Upper Paleolithic/Late Stone Age peoples possessed language abilities equivalent to our own. For many anthropologists this represents the final evolutionary leap to full modernity.
Shortly after fully modern humans entered Europe, roughly 40,000 years ago, the Neanderthals began a fairly rapid decline, culminating in their disappearance roughly 30,000 years ago. Neanderthals were apparently no match for the technologically advanced fully modern humans who invaded Europe and evidence for interbreeding of these two types of hominids is equivocal.Posts: 5964 | Registered: Jan 2005
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posted
Oldest Jewelry? "Beads" Discovered in African Cave - National Geographic.
The presence of beads, whether used as trade items, to convey group status, or to identify group members or relationships within a group suggests some form of language existed, says Henshilwood, who is affiliated with the University of Bergen, Norway, and the State University of New York.
"What the beads might symbolize is unknown, but it does imply that there had to be some means of communicating meaning, which plausibly is language," Henshilwood said. "Everyone knew what it meant, just as today if you're wearing Gucci sunglasses or a diamond tennis bracelet, there's a message being put out."
RELATED Is Bead Find Proof Modern Thought Began in Africa? African Bone Tools Dispute Key Idea About Human Evolution When Did Modern Behavior Emerge in Humans?
Recent studies have suggested that Khoisan, a southern African language that includes many clicks, could be as many as 100,000 years old. It's possible the people at Blombos were speaking in some form of click language, Henshilwood said.
Weighing the Evidence
When is a bead a bead? The two ostrich-eggshell beads found at the Serengeti site are unquestionably beads, but questions pertaining to the accuracy of their dating at 70,000 years old remain. By contrast, the date of the Blombos artifacts is fairly certain, but some question exists as to whether they are actually beads.
"The photographs [of the Blombos beads] look pretty convincing, but I'd like to see them in the flesh," Bower said. "A lot of shells like that have perforations, where they've been dropped by seagulls or occur through natural agencies. I'm cautiously convinced; it doesn't surprise me they occurred in a middle Stone Age context, since we found [beads] in Serengeti also."
Richard Klein, an anthropologist at Stanford University who has worked extensively at dig sites in South Africa, is a major proponent of the idea that modern behavior appeared rapidly, around 45,000 years ago, possibly as the result of a genetic change that facilitated our use of language. He is not convinced that the shells found at Blombos are actually beads.
"The holes are irregular and look fresh," Klein said. "We need to know why [the investigators at the Blombos site] think they were made by human hand and how they think they were made—were the holes punched out, did they file them, were they drilled out? Shell beads are very common in late Stone Age coastal sites, and you can see they're clearly modified as beads.
"There are ten sites in South Africa that have been excavated, and at only one do we find this kind of evidence for precocious behavior. I don't think the case has been clearly made yet that these are beads."
Klein also notes that the history of archaeology is littered with examples where later deposits of archaeological artifacts have slumped into older layers.
The isolated finds from middle Stone Age sites in Africa, even if correctly dated, don't necessarily indicate widespread "modern" behavior.
"You could have the prehistoric equivalent of a Michelangelo," Klein said. "An individual far ahead of his time, able to come up with innovative ideas that the rest of society doesn't adopt."
The Coastal Advantage
Henshilwood has a different theory to explain why evidence of symbolic thinking or "modern" behavior shows up in only some of the middle Stone Age sites, rather than all of them.
"The answer could be that it's not a behavior that's necessarily required everywhere," he says. Early modern humans living in a region with plenty of land animals, for instance, wouldn't be motivated to develop specialized tools to catch fish.
In addition, Henshilwood thinks the people at Blombos may have had a nutritional advantage. "We know today that fish is brain food," he said. "It's possible that people living in coastal regions just had a lot more going on. Remember, modern humans followed the coastline and reached Australia about 60,000 years ago, and they had to figure out how to build a boat to get there."
He says the "creative explosion" that took place around 45,000 years ago could be merely the result of facing new environmental and social pressures. Such pressures might have included an increase in population and competition with other species outside of Africa, like the Neandertals, who had occupied Europe for several hundred thousand years.
"I hate the use of the word 'modern,'" Bower says. "Modern behavior is talking on the telephone. Clearly that's not what humans were doing a hundred thousand years ago. Emerging evidence suggests that aspects of human technology are now strung out way back in time. Blombos has bone points—you have the famous bone harpoons at Katanga [Central Africa, about 90,000 years old]—long before the "creative explosion of 40,000 to 45,000 years ago."
quote:Originally posted by rasol: Oldest Jewelry? "Beads" Discovered in African Cave - National Geographic.
The presence of beads, whether used as trade items, to convey group status, or to identify group members or relationships within a group suggests some form of language existed, says Henshilwood, who is affiliated with the University of Bergen, Norway, and the State University of New York.
"What the beads might symbolize is unknown, but it does imply that there had to be some means of communicating meaning, which plausibly is language," Henshilwood said. "Everyone knew what it meant, just as today if you're wearing Gucci sunglasses or a diamond tennis bracelet, there's a message being put out."
RELATED Is Bead Find Proof Modern Thought Began in Africa? African Bone Tools Dispute Key Idea About Human Evolution When Did Modern Behavior Emerge in Humans?
Recent studies have suggested that Khoisan, a southern African language that includes many clicks, could be as many as 100,000 years old. It's possible the people at Blombos were speaking in some form of click language, Henshilwood said.
Speaking of which, as I posted elsewhere...
As we go further back in time, it becomes clear that the Khoisan languages are just but among the various oldest languages spoken on the continent, with traits such as the "clicking" sound. And these populations, as it turns out, aren't necessarily as genetically close, as one would imagine:
African Y chromosome and mtDNA divergence provides insight into the history of click languages.
Knight A, Underhill PA, Mortensen HM, Zhivotovsky LA, Lin AA, Henn BM, Louis D, Ruhlen M, Mountain JL.
Department of Anthropological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA. aknight@stanford.edu
BACKGROUND: About 30 languages of southern Africa, spoken by Khwe and San, are characterized by a repertoire of click consonants and phonetic accompaniments. The Jumid R:'hoansi (!Kung) San carry multiple deeply coalescing gene lineages. The deep genetic diversity of the San parallels the diversity among the languages they speak. Intriguingly, the language of the Hadzabe of eastern Africa, although not closely related to any other language, shares click consonants and accompaniments with languages of Khwe and San.
RESULTS: We present original Y chromosome and mtDNA variation of Hadzabe and other ethnic groups of Tanzania and Y chromosome variation of San and peoples of the central African forests: Biaka, Mbuti, and Lisongo. In the context of comparable published data for other African populations, analyses of each of these independently inherited DNA segments indicate that click-speaking Hadzabe and Jumid R:'hoansi are separated by genetic distance as great or greater than that between any other pair of African populations. Phylogenetic tree topology indicates a basal separation of the ancient ancestors of these click-speaking peoples. That genetic divergence does not appear to be the result of recent gene flow from neighboring groups.
CONCLUSIONS: The deep genetic divergence among click-speaking peoples of Africa and mounting linguistic evidence suggest that click consonants date to early in the history of modern humans. At least two explanations remain viable. Clicks may have persisted for tens of thousands of years, independently in multiple populations, as a neutral trait.
Alternatively, clicks may have been retained, because they confer an advantage during hunting in certain environments.
Interestingly, the whole region of southwest Asia speak a language group, that appears to have its roots in Africa.
quote: Weighing the Evidence
When is a bead a bead? The two ostrich-eggshell beads found at the Serengeti site are unquestionably beads, but questions pertaining to the accuracy of their dating at 70,000 years old remain. By contrast, the date of the Blombos artifacts is fairly certain, but some question exists as to whether they are actually beads.
"The photographs [of the Blombos beads] look pretty convincing, but I'd like to see them in the flesh," Bower said. "A lot of shells like that have perforations, where they've been dropped by seagulls or occur through natural agencies. I'm cautiously convinced; it doesn't surprise me they occurred in a middle Stone Age context, since we found [beads] in Serengeti also."
Richard Klein, an anthropologist at Stanford University who has worked extensively at dig sites in South Africa, is a major proponent of the idea that modern behavior appeared rapidly, around 45,000 years ago, possibly as the result of a genetic change that facilitated our use of language. He is not convinced that the shells found at Blombos are actually beads.
"The holes are irregular and look fresh," Klein said. "We need to know why [the investigators at the Blombos site] think they were made by human hand and how they think they were made—were the holes punched out, did they file them, were they drilled out? Shell beads are very common in late Stone Age coastal sites, and you can see they're clearly modified as beads.
"There are ten sites in South Africa that have been excavated, and at only one do we find this kind of evidence for precocious behavior. I don't think the case has been clearly made yet that these are beads."
Klein also notes that the history of archaeology is littered with examples where later deposits of archaeological artifacts have slumped into older layers.
The isolated finds from middle Stone Age sites in Africa, even if correctly dated, don't necessarily indicate widespread "modern" behavior.
I am curious to know what Mr. Klien, who was mentioned earlier by paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson, determines as 'modern behavior'. The fact of the matter, is that the finds in South Africa, belie the notion of 'modern behavior' occurring at about 45ky. Period!
quote: "You could have the prehistoric equivalent of a Michelangelo," Klein said. "An individual far ahead of his time, able to come up with innovative ideas that the rest of society doesn't adopt."
IMO, a ridiculous example, but even then, Michelangelo was a product of a society that already had 'culture' in place. His "innovative ideas" are an outgrowth of 'culture(s)' [beliefs, traditions, social order and conduct, and so forth; social conditioning from childhood] he was immersed in. As human community developement progressed to more elaborate forms, so did the needs of the society. Necessity has traditionally been the motivation of human innovations, which brings us to...
quote: The Coastal Advantage
Henshilwood has a different theory to explain why evidence of symbolic thinking or "modern" behavior shows up in only some of the middle Stone Age sites, rather than all of them.
"The answer could be that it's not a behavior that's necessarily required everywhere," he says. Early modern humans living in a region with plenty of land animals, for instance, wouldn't be motivated to develop specialized tools to catch fish.
In addition, Henshilwood thinks the people at Blombos may have had a nutritional advantage. "We know today that fish is brain food," he said. "It's possible that people living in coastal regions just had a lot more going on. Remember, modern humans followed the coastline and reached Australia about 60,000 years ago, and they had to figure out how to build a boat to get there."
He says the "creative explosion" that took place around 45,000 years ago could be merely the result of facing new environmental and social pressures. Such pressures might have included an increase in population and competition with other species outside of Africa, like the Neandertals, who had occupied Europe for several hundred thousand years.
Fair enough. But back to this so-called magical era [45ky] of 'creative explosion'. There were other hominids in Africa as well, whom Africans had to confront before minding about earlier OOA migrants outside of the continent. Surviving on the continent, was no cakewalk by any means, and perhaps, the reason for human expansions elsehwhere to begin with, if not in part.
quote: "I hate the use of the word 'modern,'" Bower says. "Modern behavior is talking on the telephone. Clearly that's not what humans were doing a hundred thousand years ago.
Depends on what we mean by "modern behavior", and hence, the title of this topic!
quote: Emerging evidence suggests that aspects of human technology are now strung out way back in time. Blombos has bone points—you have the famous bone harpoons at Katanga [Central Africa, about 90,000 years old]—long before the "creative explosion of 40,000 to 45,000 years ago."
"I'm inclined to think we should get rid of the whole concept of 'modern' behavior," Bower said.
Exactly. What Klein refers to as "precocious behavior" is quite evident in finds at sites like the Blombos cave, and so, making 45ky out to be some kind of a magical era of the emergence 'modern behavior', is just redundant. Prehistoric anatomically modern humans ought have had the same emotions as their contemporary counterparts, though environments that the former and latter have had to deal with, differ significantly; why call them anatomically modern, if we can't biologically and emotionally relate to them?
With all that said, it is another interesting citation!
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quote:Richard Klein, an anthropologist at Stanford University who has worked extensively at dig sites in South Africa, is a major proponent of the idea that modern behavior appeared rapidly, around 45,000 years ago, possibly as the result of a genetic change that facilitated our use of language. He is not convinced that the shells found at Blombos are actually beads.
What does Donald Johanson have to say about this viewpoint...
"Klein, on the other hand, proffers the notion that it was probably a biological change brought about by mutations that played the key role in the emergence of behaviorally modern humans. His biologically based explanation implies that a major neural reorganization of the brain resulted in a significant enhancement in the manner in which the brain processed information.
This is a difficult hypothesis to test since brains do not fossilize. But it is significant that no changes are seen in the shape of the skulls between earlier and later Homo sapiens."
But...
"It can only be surmised from the archaeological record, which contains abundant evidence for ritual and art, that these Upper Paleolithic/Late Stone Age peoples possessed language abilities equivalent to our own. For many anthropologists this represents the final evolutionary leap to full modernity."
-------------------- Truth - a liar penetrating device! Posts: 5964 | Registered: Jan 2005
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quote:IMO, a ridiculous example, but even then, Michelangelo was a product of a society that already had 'culture' in place.
Yes, quite laughable I thought, and desparate.
Those comments can be likened to some of the early European reaction to the 1st human remains being found in Africa - feign incredulity.
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What about the paleolithic ostrich egg with grass protruding out to absorb moisture? That too has been taken to be a sign of 'modern' behavior.
But all in all, I don't see what the big deal is or what the issue is really. If modern humans orginated in Africa, wouldn't it be logical for their modern behavior to originate in Africa too??
Although I do get tired of the focus on prehistoric Europe, like with all cave paintings. There are cave paintings all over the world, including those in Africa that are much older than those in the Netherlands and France.
So what gives?
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