L'art-thérapie gériatrique : le rôle des médias (dessin, peinture, sculpture, collage)

Looks at the role of different kinds of art and materials used for the rehabilitation of persons in an old age home

Ecological consequences of human niche construction: Examining long-term anthropogenic shaping of global species distributions

The exhibition of increasingly intensive and complex niche construction behaviors through time is a key feature of human evolution, culminating in the advanced capacity for ecosystem engineering exhibited by Homo sapiens. A crucial outcome of such behaviors has been the dramatic reshaping of the global biosphere, a transformation whose early origins are increasingly apparent from cumulative archaeological and paleoecological datasets. Such data suggest that, by the Late Pleistocene, humans had begun to engage in activities that have led to alterations in the distributions of a vast array of species across most, if not all, taxonomic groups. Changes to biodiversity have included extinctions, extirpations, and shifts in species composition, diversity, and community structure. We outline key examples of these changes, highlighting findings from the study of new datasets, like ancient DNA (aDNA), stable isotopes, and microfossils, as well as the application of new statistical and computational methods to datasets that have accumulated significantly in recent decades. We focus on four major phases that witnessed broad anthropogenic alterations to biodiversity—the Late Pleistocene global human expansion, the Neolithic spread of agriculture, the era of island colonization, and the emergence of early urbanized societies and commercial networks. Archaeological evidence documents millennia of anthropogenic transformations that have created novel ecosystems around the world. This record has implications for ecological and evolutionary research, conservation strategies, and the maintenance of ecosystem services, pointing to a significant need for broader cross-disciplinary engagement between archaeology and the biological and environmental sciences

Ancient genomes reveal complex patterns of population movement, interaction, and replacement in sub-Saharan Africa

Africa hosts the greatest human genetic diversity globally, but legacies of ancient population interactions and dispersals across the continent remain understudied. Here, we report genome-wide data from 20 ancient sub-Saharan African individuals, including the first reported ancient DNA from the DRC, Uganda, and Botswana. These data demonstrate the contraction of diverse, once contiguous hunter-gatherer populations, and suggest the resistance to interaction with incoming pastoralists of delayed-return foragers in aquatic environments. We refine models for the spread of food producers into eastern and southern Africa, demonstrating more complex trajectories of admixture than previously suggested. In Botswana, we show that Bantu ancestry post-dates admixture between pastoralists and foragers, suggesting an earlier spread of pastoralism than farming to southern Africa. Our findings demonstrate how processes of migration and admixture have markedly reshaped the genetic map of sub-Saharan Africa in the past few millennia and highlight the utility of combined archaeological and archaeogenetic approaches

Reply to Ellis et al.: human niche construction and evolutionary theory

We are pleased Ellis et al. found value in our recent synthesis of the deep history of human impacts on global ecosystems and agree that our paper should influence the current debate on if and how an Anthropocene epoch is defined. We also agree that the ecological consequences of human niche construction have profound and growing effects on the evolutionary trajectories of humans and other species living within human-altered ecosystems. Niche construction theory (NCT) provides an explicit framework for linking evolutionary and ecological processes into a coherent theory of biological evolution. Of special appeal to us as archaeologists is that NCT bridges biological and cultural evolution by including human culture and social learning within the mechanisms of evolutionary change, allowing scientists to address issues at the interface of human and natural systems. Some of us have contributed significantly to human NCT, addressing some of the very issues raised by Ellis et al. Finally, we agree that human transformations of ecosystems are inherently social processes—clearly humans are intensely social organisms—and that such processes result from long-term melding of biological and cultural evolution

Reply to Westaway and Lyman: emus, dingoes, and archaeology’s role in conservation biology

In a curious comment on our PNAS Perspective, Westaway and Lyman offer two Australian zooarchaeological case studies—one involving eggshells and the other dingoes—that they argue undercut one of our main points: that archaeological data and deep time perspectives have much to offer conservation biology. Neither example provides a specific substantive critique of our perspective: there are no dingoes in our article, no eggshells, and we mention the long and rich record of human management and alteration of Australian environments only briefly. Nor do we suggest that all archaeological assemblages can effectively inform current conservation biology efforts. Such datasets obviously vary in their quality and potential applicability to modern situations. When considered more closely, both of Westaway and Lyman’s case studies underscore rather than undercut the importance of archaeological and paleoecological data in conservation biology initiatives

Microliths in the South Asian rainforest ~45-4 ka: New insights from Fa-Hien Lena Cave, Sri Lanka

Microliths–small, retouched, often-backed stone tools–are often interpreted to be the product of composite tools, including projectile weapons, and efficient hunting strategies by modern humans. In Europe and Africa these lithic toolkits are linked to hunting of medium- and large-sized game found in grassland or woodland settings, or as adaptations to risky environments during periods of climatic change. Here, we report on a recently excavated lithic assemblage from the Late Pleistocene cave site of Fa-Hien Lena in the tropical evergreen rainforest of Sri Lanka. Our analyses demonstrate that Fa-Hien Lena represents the earliest microlith assemblage in South Asia (c. 48,000–45,000 cal. years BP) in firm association with evidence for the procurement of small to medium size arboreal prey and rainforest plants. Moreover, our data highlight that the lithic technology of Fa-Hien Lena changed little over the long span of human occupation (c. 48,000–45,000 cal. years BP to c. 4,000 cal. years BP) indicating a successful, stable technological adaptation to the tropics. We argue that microlith assemblages were an important part of the environmental plasticity that enabled Homo sapiens to colonise and specialise in a diversity of ecological settings during its expansion within and beyond Africa. The proliferation of diverse microlithic technologies across Eurasia c. 48–45 ka was part of a flexible human ‘toolkit’ that assisted our species’ spread into all of the world’s environments, and the development of specialised technological and cultural approaches to novel ecological situations

Late Pleistocene to early-Holocene rainforest foraging in Sri Lanka:Multidisciplinary analysis at Kitulgala Beli-lena

Sri Lanka has produced the earliest clear evidence for Homo sapiens fossils in South Asia and research in the region has provided important insights into modern human adaptations and cultural practices during the last ca. 45,000 years. However, in-depth multidisciplinary analyses of Late Pleistocene and Holocene sequences remain limited to just two sites, Fa Hien-lena and Batadomba-lena. Here, we present our findings from the reinvestigation of a third site, Kitulgala Beli-lena. New chronometric dating from the site confirms the presence of humans as early as ca. 45,000 cal. BP. in the island's Wet Zone rainforest region. Our analyses of macrobotanical, molluscan, and vertebrate remains from the rockshelter show that this early human presence is associated with rainforest foraging. The Late Pleistocene deposits yielded evidence of wild breadfruit and kekuna nut extraction while the Holocene layers reveal a heavy reliance on semi-arboreal and arboreal small mammals as well as freshwater snails as a protein source. The lithic and osseous artefacts demonstrate that populations developed a sophisticated tool kit for the exploitation of their immediate landscapes. We place the rich Kitulgala Beli-lena dataset in its wider Sri Lankan context of Late Pleistocene foraging, as well as in wider discussions of our species’ adaptation to ‘extreme’ environments as it moved throughout Asia

Continental Island Formation and the Archaeology of Defaunation on Zanzibar, Eastern Africa

With rising sea levels at the end of the Pleistocene, land-bridge or continental islands were formed around the world. Many of these islands have been extensively studied from a biogeographical perspective, particularly in terms of impacts of island creation on terrestrial vertebrates. However, a majority of studies rely on contemporary faunal distributions rather than fossil data. Here, we present archaeological findings from the island of Zanzibar (also known as Unguja) off the eastern African coast, to provide a temporal perspective on island biogeography. The site of Kuumbi Cave, excavated by multiple teams since 2005, has revealed the longest cultural and faunal record for any eastern African island. This record extends to the Late Pleistocene, when Zanzibar was part of the mainland, and attests to the extirpation of large mainland mammals in the millennia after the island became separated. We draw on modeling and sedimentary data to examine the process by which Zanzibar was most recently separated from the mainland, providing the first systematic insights into the nature and chronology of this process. We subsequently investigate the cultural and faunal record from Kuumbi Cave, which provides at least five key temporal windows into human activities and faunal presence: two at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), one during the period of post-LGM rapid sea level rise and island formation, and two in the late Holocene (Middle Iron Age and Late Iron Age). This record demonstrates the presence of large mammals during the period of island formation, and their severe reduction or disappearance in the Kuumbi Cave sequence by the late Holocene. While various limitations, including discontinuity in the sequence, problematize attempts to clearly attribute defaunation to anthropogenic or island biogeographic processes, Kuumbi Cave offers an unprecedented opportunity to examine post-Pleistocene island formation and its long-term consequences for human and animal communities

Agriculture in the Karakum: An archaeobotanical analysis from Togolok 1, southern Turkmenistan (ca. 2300–1700 B.C.)

Southern Central Asia witnessed widespread expansion in urbanism and exchange, between roughly 2200 and 1500 B.C., fostering a new cultural florescence, sometimes referred to as the Greater Khorasan Civilization. Decades of detailed archeological investigation have focused on the development of urban settlements, political systems, and inter-regional exchange within and across the broader region, but little is known about the agricultural systems that supported these cultural changes. In this paper, we present the archaeobotanical results of material recovered from Togolok 1, a proto-urban settlement along the Murghab River alluvial fan located in southeastern Turkmenistan. This macrobotanical assemblage dates to the late 3rd - early 2nd millennia B.C., a time associated with important cultural transformations in southern Central Asia. We demonstrate that people at the site were cultivating and consuming a diverse range of crops including, barley, wheat, legumes, grapes, and possibly plums and apples or pears. This, together with the associated material culture and zooarchaeological evidence, suggest a regionally adapted mixed agropastoral economy. The findings at Togolok 1 contribute to the ongoing discussion of dietary choices, human/landscape interactions, and the adaptation of crops to diverse ecosystems in prehistoric Central Asia