What Is the Hobbit?

The tiny hominid bones, which a joint Australian-Indonesian team unearthed in 2003 on the Indonesian island of Flores, have quickly become as celebrated (and derided) as any find in the tempestuous history of human paleontology

Prospect Farm and the Middle and Later Stone Age Occupation of Mt. Eburru (Central Rift, Kenya) in an East African Context

Located within the Nakuru-Naivasha basin on the northern slope of Mt. Eburru, the open-air site of Prospect Farm (Central Rift, Kenya) is one of the few East African sites that have yielded a stratigraphic sequence containing archaeological levels dating from the late Middle Pleistocene to the Holocene. Excavations at the site by Barbara Whitehead Anthony and Glynn Isaac in 1963–1964 exposed Pastoral Neolithic (Stone Bowl culture) and Later Stone Age (LSA; Kenya Capsian) levels overlying four Middle Stone Age (MSA) levels attributed to the Prospect Industry, a local expression of the Kenya Stillbay. This paper integrates the information currently available for the site and discusses its relevance in a wider East African context. Furthermore, it presents the results of a density survey completed in 2014, mapping the spatial distribution of artifacts along the northern slope of Mt. Eburru and providing data on the landscape setting of the site. The survey identified marked differences in the distribution of diagnostic MSA vs. LSA artifacts: whereas MSA finds cluster at two particular mid-altitude locations (2,102–2,108 m and 2,138–2,140 m a.s.l.) corresponding to the position of Anthony’s Localities I and II, LSA finds tend to show a much broader spatial distribution including both higher and lower altitudes

Issues of theory and method in the analysis of Paleolithic mortuary behavior: a view from Shanidar Cave

Mortuary behavior (activities concerning dead conspecifics) is one of many traits that were previously widely considered to have been uniquely human, but on which perspectives have changed markedly in recent years. Theoretical approaches to hominin mortuary activity and its evolution have undergone major revision, and advances in diverse archaeological and paleoanthropological methods have brought new ways of identifying behaviors such as intentional burial. Despite these advances, debates concerning the nature of hominin mortuary activity, particularly among the Neanderthals, rely heavily on the re-reading of old excavations as new finds are relatively rare, limiting the extent to which such debates can benefit from advances in the field. The recent discovery of in situ articulated Neanderthal remains at Shanidar Cave offers a rare opportunity to take full advantage of these methodological and theoretical developments to understand Neanderthal mortuary activity, making a review of these advances relevant and timely

Genomic analyses inform on migration events during the peopling of Eurasia.

High-coverage whole-genome sequence studies have so far focused on a limited number of geographically restricted populations, or been targeted at specific diseases, such as cancer. Nevertheless, the availability of high-resolution genomic data has led to the development of new methodologies for inferring population history and refuelled the debate on the mutation rate in humans. Here we present the Estonian Biocentre Human Genome Diversity Panel (EGDP), a dataset of 483 high-coverage human genomes from 148 populations worldwide, including 379 new genomes from 125 populations, which we group into diversity and selection sets. We analyse this dataset to refine estimates of continent-wide patterns of heterozygosity, long- and short-distance gene flow, archaic admixture, and changes in effective population size through time as well as for signals of positive or balancing selection. We find a genetic signature in present-day Papuans that suggests that at least 2% of their genome originates from an early and largely extinct expansion of anatomically modern humans (AMHs) out of Africa. Together with evidence from the western Asian fossil record, and admixture between AMHs and Neanderthals predating the main Eurasian expansion, our results contribute to the mounting evidence for the presence of AMHs out of Africa earlier than 75,000 years ago.Support was provided by: Estonian Research Infrastructure Roadmap grant no 3.2.0304.11-0312; Australian Research Council Discovery grants (DP110102635 and DP140101405) (D.M.L., M.W. and E.W.); Danish National Research Foundation; the Lundbeck Foundation and KU2016 (E.W.); ERC Starting Investigator grant (FP7 - 261213) (T.K.); Estonian Research Council grant PUT766 (G.C. and M.K.); EU European Regional Development Fund through the Centre of Excellence in Genomics to Estonian Biocentre (R.V.; M.Me. and A.Me.), and Centre of Excellence for Genomics and Translational Medicine Project No. 2014-2020.4.01.15-0012 to EGC of UT (A.Me.) and EBC (M.Me.); Estonian Institutional Research grant IUT24-1 (L.S., M.J., A.K., B.Y., K.T., C.B.M., Le.S., H.Sa., S.L., D.M.B., E.M., R.V., G.H., M.K., G.C., T.K. and M.Me.) and IUT20-60 (A.Me.); French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs and French ANR grant number ANR-14-CE31-0013-01 (F.-X.R.); Gates Cambridge Trust Funding (E.J.); ICG SB RAS (No. VI.58.1.1) (D.V.L.); Leverhulme Programme grant no. RP2011-R-045 (A.B.M., P.G. and M.G.T.); Ministry of Education and Science of Russia; Project 6.656.2014/K (S.A.F.); NEFREX grant funded by the European Union (People Marie Curie Actions; International Research Staff Exchange Scheme; call FP7-PEOPLE-2012-IRSES-number 318979) (M.Me., G.H. and M.K.); NIH grants 5DP1ES022577 05, 1R01DK104339-01, and 1R01GM113657-01 (S.Tis.); Russian Foundation for Basic Research (grant N 14-06-00180a) (M.G.); Russian Foundation for Basic Research; grant 16-04-00890 (O.B. and E.B); Russian Science Foundation grant 14-14-00827 (O.B.); The Russian Foundation for Basic Research (14-04-00725-a), The Russian Humanitarian Scientific Foundation (13-11-02014) and the Program of the Basic Research of the RAS Presidium “Biological diversity” (E.K.K.); Wellcome Trust and Royal Society grant WT104125AIA & the Bristol Advanced Computing Research Centre (http://www.bris.ac.uk/acrc/) (D.J.L.); Wellcome Trust grant 098051 (Q.A.; C.T.-S. and Y.X.); Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellowship grant 100719/Z/12/Z (M.G.T.); Young Explorers Grant from the National Geographic Society (8900-11) (C.A.E.); ERC Consolidator Grant 647787 ‘LocalAdaptatio’ (A.Ma.); Program of the RAS Presidium “Basic research for the development of the Russian Arctic” (B.M.); Russian Foundation for Basic Research grant 16-06-00303 (E.B.); a Rutherford Fellowship (RDF-10-MAU-001) from the Royal Society of New Zealand (M.P.C.)

The Human Remains from the site of Et-Tin, Israel

This paper describes the human remains from the cave of Et-Tin, Israel These remains date from the Levantine Early Neolithic or late Epi-Palaeolithic period, a period associated to the Natufian population in the area. The remains from the Wadi Et-Tin are compared to Natufian samples, and found to generally conform to the range of morphological features and metrical values of Natufian fossils. Although the remains from Wadi Et-Tin are scant and of a fragmentary nature, they add to our knowledge of the extent of distribution of Natufian and Neolithic peoples in time and space.Ce travail décrit les restes humains de la grotte ď Et-Tin (Israël). Ces ossements humains sont datés du Néolithique Levantin ancien ou de la fin de l'Epipaléolithique. Ces restes humains du Wadi Et-Tin comparés à des pièces natoufïennes présentent en règle générale des traits et des dimensions semblables à ceux des fossiles natoufiens.Mirazon Lahr Marta, Haydenblit Rebeca. The Human Remains from the site of Et-Tin, Israel. In: Paléorient, 1995, vol. 21, n°1. pp. 97-111

The Distribution and Biogenic Origins of Zinc in the Mineralised Tooth Tissues of Modern and Fossil Hominoids: Implications for Life History, Diet and Taphonomy

Peer reviewed: TrueAcknowledgements: We thank the Government of Kenya and the National Museums of Kenya for the continued use and access to precious fossil material in their care. We thank Meave Leakey, Emma Mbua and Samuel Muteti for enabling aspects of this study. We extend our sincere thanks to Yoel Rak for making material from Amud, Israel, available to us for this study. We thank the curators of the Elliot Smith Collection at UCL, the Ditsong National Museum of Natural History, Pretoria, South Africa, the Duckworth Laboratory (University of Cambridge, UK), Holly Smith and Salvador Moyà-Solà for making specimens available to us. We are grateful to Anastasia Brozou, Gerald Falkenberg and those at DESY who have developed techniques employed in this study, as well as the DESY User Office. This research was supported in part through the Maxwell computational resources operated at Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, Hamburg, Germany. This research benefited from the scientific framework of the University of Bordeaux’s IdEx “Investments for the Future” program/GPR “Human Past”. We thank the editors and four anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.Publication status: PublishedFunder: Calleva Foundation within the Centre for Human Evolution Research (CHER) at the Natural History Museum, LondonFunder: Max Planck Society, GermanyFunder: French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) at the Université de BordeauxZinc is incorporated into enamel, dentine and cementum during tooth growth. This work aimed to distinguish between the processes underlying Zn incorporation and Zn distribution. These include different mineralisation processes, the physiological events around birth, Zn ingestion with diet, exposure to the oral environment during life and diagenetic changes to fossil teeth post-mortem. Synchrotron X-ray Fluorescence (SXRF) was used to map zinc distribution across longitudinal polished ground sections of both deciduous and permanent modern human, great ape and fossil hominoid teeth. Higher resolution fluorescence intensity maps were used to image Zn in surface enamel, secondary dentine and cementum, and at the neonatal line (NNL) and enamel–dentine–junction (EDJ) in deciduous teeth. Secondary dentine was consistently Zn-rich, but the highest concentrations of Zn (range 197–1743 ppm) were found in cuspal, mid-lateral and cervical surface enamel and were similar in unerupted teeth never exposed to the oral environment. Zinc was identified at the NNL and EDJ in both modern and fossil deciduous teeth. In fossil specimens, diagenetic changes were identified in various trace element distributions but only demineralisation appeared to markedly alter Zn distribution. Zinc appears to be tenacious and stable in fossil tooth tissues, especially in enamel, over millions of years.</jats:p

Prospect Farm and the Middle and Later Stone Age Occupation of Mt. Eburru (Central Rift, Kenya) in an East African Context

Located within the Nakuru-Naivasha basin on the northern slope of Mt. Eburru, the open-air site of Prospect Farm (Central Rift, Kenya) is one of the few East African sites that have yielded a stratigraphic sequence containing archaeological levels dating from the late Middle Pleistocene to the Holocene. Excavations at the site by Barbara Whitehead Anthony and Glynn Isaac in 1963–1964 exposed Pastoral Neolithic (Stone Bowl culture) and Later Stone Age (LSA; Kenya Capsian) levels overlying four Middle Stone Age (MSA) levels attributed to the Prospect Industry, a local expression of the Kenya Stillbay. This paper integrates the information currently available for the site and discusses its relevance in a wider East African context. Furthermore, it presents the results of a density survey completed in 2014, mapping the spatial distribution of artifacts along the northern slope of Mt. Eburru and providing data on the landscape setting of the site. The survey identified marked differences in the distribution of diagnostic MSA vs. LSA artifacts: whereas MSA finds cluster at two particular mid-altitude locations (2,102–2,108 m and 2,138–2,140 m a.s.l.) corresponding to the position of Anthony’s Localities I and II, LSA finds tend to show a much broader spatial distribution including both higher and lower altitudes.This study was funded by a European Research Council Advanced Award to MML (In-Africa Project, ERC 295907) and carried out with the permission of the National Council for Science and Technology, Republic of Kenya, No. NCST/5/002/R/ 419, and from the National Commission for Science, Technology, and Innovation, Kenya, No. NACOSTI/P/15/2669/4758

The evolution of the diversity of cultures

The abundant evidence that Homo sapiens evolved in Africa within the past 200 000 years, and dispersed across the world only within the past 100 000 years, provides us with a strong framework in which to consider the evolution of human diversity. While there is evidence that the human capacity for culture has a deeper history, going beyond the origin of the hominin clade, the tendency for humans to form cultures as part of being distinct communities and populations changed markedly with the evolution of H. sapiens. In this paper, we investigate ‘cultures’ as opposed to ‘culture’, and the question of how and why, compared to biological diversity, human communities and populations are so culturally diverse. We consider the way in which the diversity of human cultures has developed since 100 000 years ago, and how its rate was subject to environmental factors. We argue that the causes of this diversity lie in the distribution of resources and the way in which human communities reproduce over several generations, leading to fissioning of kin groups. We discuss the consequences of boundary formation through culture in their broader ecological and evolutionary contexts