Some curiosities of the MP-UP transition in Europe: the Lincombian and a wooden spear point

I just want to mention that I have discovered today a couple of probably important elements I was unaware of earlier in regard to the Middle-Upper Paleolithic transition in Europe.


The Lincombian culture

The first one is dealt with in detail by Millán Mozota at his blog (in Spanish but all reference papers are in English) and is the Lincombian-Ranisian-Jerzmanowician (LRJ) culture. This techno-culture shares the general evolution towards characteristic Upper Paleolithic blade technology but is however quite different from others we know in the typological aspect, styling a distinctive double-faced retouch.

Extension and typical LRJ point (Semal 2009)

This culture is most probably the work of Homo neanderthalensis, as it was found along with Neanderthal remains in the cave of Spy in Belgium (however in flagrant case of bad archaeology where the archaeological context was totally destroyed and not documented). These remains have been recently carbon-dated and display a date of c. 36,000 years BP (very roughly c. 45,000 years ago after calibration), suggesting that both are related.


Wooden spear from Slovenia

The other item I stumbled upon today is the existence of a unique spear point made of yew wood. This point was discovered in 2009 at the Ljubljana Marshes near Sinja Gorica in Slovenia and is said to have Szeletian affinities (source: Ljubljana Municipality).


You tell me if this is not fascinating. There has been for long speculation on the existence of such wooden tools and weapons (for instance in SE Asia where bamboo might have been a material of choice) but so far no direct evidence.

The spear is believed to date to 38-45,000 years ago, though I am not aware that it has been dated by any method.

Did South Asians invent microliths some 38,000 years ago?

Also found at Anthroforum, thanks to Ayepod, and sourced to Scientific American.

It seems that Michael Petraglia, who already surprised us some years ago with his discovery of pre- and post-Toba continuity at Jawalpuram, has now come to find that microliths are found in the subcontinent dating to c. 38,000 years ago.

South Asian microliths (below) compared with older tools (above). Each segment of the scale is 1 cm.

This may be one of the oldest worldwide dates for this curious technological phenomenon of blade reduction on Earth and may help to explain, maybe, the spread of Y-DNA macrohaplogroup P and its derived lineages R and Q, whose origins seem to be in the subcontinent.


Update: I have located the original paper and another divulgative article on it. Apparently Petraglia argues for 35-30,000 years ago (though these may be uncalibrated BP - unsure).

M. petraglia et al. Population increase and environmental deterioration correspond with microlithic innovations in South Asia ca. 35,000 years ago. PNAS 2009 (behind paywall by the moment).

And also check this article at New Scientist.
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Stone blades already 500,000 years ago.

Found at Remote Central, original news from Science Now.

This is a most interesting news and review for those of us who are interested in the formation of Humankind. In the past blade-making abilities were considered something somehow definitory of what meant to be Homo sapiens. Eventually blade tools associated with Neanderthals were discovered too and it was also acknowledged that many Sapiens cultures did not use blades altogether anyhow. The use of this technology is anyhow quite definitory of the Upper Paleolithic of West Eurasia.

Recent research anyhow has been pushing back this technology: to 380,000 in West Asia and 300,000 in Europe. Now the record of antiquity has been beaten by a discovery in Kenya that is dated to more than 500,000 years ago (509-543,000 BP)

The revealing artifacts

It must be mentioned that H. neanderthalensis and H. sapiens are not that old, they are generally believed to be some 200,000 years old as species, maybe less in the case of H. sapiens.

So who made them? Apparently our direct ancestor Homo heidelbergensis, whose remains (sometimes described as H. rhodesiensis) have been found in the same part of the Kenyan formation. In the case of the later European blades it would be H. antecessor, the direct ancestor of Neanderthals, while it is not obvious who would be responsible for the West Asian ones, of intermediate age.

One factor that is anyhow underlined is the last dramatic expansion of brain size in the human lineage about 600,000 years ago, which may have been responsible for a major shift in human intelligence, allowing for more complex achievements among our ancestors and extinct relatives.
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On Eurasian mtDNA

A quite lengthy discussion with (primarily) Terry Toothill at Dienekes' Anthropology Blog on Eurasian genetics and particularly mtDNA and the possible routes of migration and coalescence areas has caused me to review and re-consider Eurasian mtDNA genetics, often poorly understood because of higher complexity, less clear-cut nomenclature and somewhat less interest in general as of late.

After careful consideration of the genealogical tree (see Ian Logan's mtDNA site for reference), I came with the following simplified map:


Legend:

• Red large dots represent top level subclades of M, small red dots mean significative presence of an M subclade likely to have originated in some other region.
• Blue large dots represent top level subclades of N(xR), small blue dots mean significative presence of an N subclade likely to have originated in some other region (notably Australian N* related to West Eurasian W), blue squares represent N* (normally a single top-level N subclade but hard to confirm). An exception is East Asian N9-Y, actually related to R at its genesis but considered a separate haplogroup everywhere, which has been here considered like any other N(xR) subclade for simplicity.
  
• Green large dots represent top level subclades of R, small green dots mean significative presence of an R subclade likely to have originated in some other region. R is a derivate subclade of N, linked to N9-Y at its origin but because of its widespread distribution it is always considered separately.
• Grayed out areas are not really considered for various reasons.
  
• Regions are marked by gray borders and 3-letter abbreviations in black: WEA (West Eurasia), SOA (South Asia), AND (Andaman Islands), SEA (SE Asia), AUS (Australian Aborigines), MEL (Melanesia), EAS (East Asia), CAS (Central Asia), KET (Ket people of the Yenisei basin), NAM (North American Natives), SAM (South American Natives).
  

Discussion:

It seems self-evident from the top-level diversity (and central geographical position) that South Asia was with all likehood the place of coalescence of haplogroups M and R. The case is less clear for haplogroup N and the genesis of R itself is directly associated with a major East Asian clade (N9-Y).

Pre-R (i.e. the N-derived ancestor of R and N9-Y) could have been South Asian or not (in which case we would have to look to East Asia). But considering the context, I'm more inclined to think that pre-R lived in South Asia and that R is its direct derivate in that region, with N9-Y representing maybe an early migration into East Asia.

The context is not just geography and common sense but also the problem of N as such. If we are to follow the clue of highest top level diversity, West Eurasia stands (by narrow margin admittedly) as the most likely candidate for the origing of N. It is not a too solid conclusion but it does make some good sense anyhow.

Specially if, as I do, you suspect, based on archaeology, that the presence of H. sapiens in Asia may be as old as c. 100,000 BP, long before the Toba supervolcano event and the expansion of H. neanderthalensis into West and Central Asia.

I do understand that the main expansion of H. sapiens in Eurasia happened after these two events: towards the east after Toba (i.e. after c. 74,000 BP) and towards the west after a phase of losing ground to Neanderthals (i.e. after c. 60,000 BP).

But some H. sapiens may well have survived in West Asia after the Neanderthal expansion and, in my opinion they may well have carried haplogroup N, either still undifferentiated or in the process of evlution towards the modern West Eurasian N subclades (all them quite rare): N1, X and W. These N carriers would have also migrated eastward after Toba through South Asia, mixing to an extent with the carriers of M, who were already in the subcontinent. Together (more or less, the exact process is not known) they must have migrated towards East Asia and Sahul, roughly at the same time when N was evolving into "pre-R" (R plus N9-Y) and into "pre-W" (W plus directly related Australian N*), as well as when pre-R was evolving into R (soon after).

This expansive epysode must have happened soon after Toba, I think, because only something of the dimensions of the Toba catastrophe would have left so much empty land for such a massive migration, evident in the huge ammount of new clades at this genealogical "point".

After R had already coalesced (necesarily in South Asia), there was surely a "back-migration" towards West Asia that brought R (already evolving into U and maybe also into R0, aka pre-HV, and pre-JT). This wave eventually colonized Europe, as it's well known, and we do have a clear date for that: c. 45-40,000 years ago - and at least U subclades participated in that migration. So the whole process of divergence of N and then of "pre-R" and of R itself happened probably between 74,000 and 40,000 years ago. This was surely also the moment of diversification of M (I'd say that rather to the beginning, soon after Toba).

And this timeframe (c. 60-40,000 BP) is when we do have the best available archaeological evidence for expansion of H. sapiens east of South Asia and west of West Asia. Though archaeological evidence in some cases may be of later date than the actual events, specially in those areas not throughtly researched.

West and South Asia though, as well as North Africa, do have some evidence pointing to older presence of H. sapiens. In the case of West Asia and North Africa this includes the oldest skulls north of the Sahara and are dated to c. 90,000 BP (North Africa, modern solid datation) and c. 130,000 BP (West Asia, old contoversial datation).

In the case of South Asia, it has the oldest evidence worldwide of stone blade technology (dated c. 103,000 BP) as well as strong indications of survival and continuity through the Toba epysode. There are no human remains though until much later, possibly because the tropical climate (wet and hot) makes preservation less likely even for bones.

Below there is a simplified map for a plausible scenario:


Notes:

1. I have depicted migration into Sahul (Melanesia and Australia) as two separate events. This matter is not fully agreed upon and, admittedly, I depicted it that way on a mere whim.
2. There is an interesting problem regarding SE Asia: it must have been necesarily a passage for the migrations into East Asia and Sahul, yet it appears to keep a relatively low index of high-level diversity (excepted the Andaman islands, where not just two unique subclades of M but also a distinct fossil clade of Y-DNA D appear to suggest that the regional diversity was much higher in the past). In comparison East Asia appears as much more diverse. I guess that Terry might want to make a case out of this matter but, sadly for his hypothesis, Central Asia does not appear to show any autonomous top-level diversity at all. Only the rare Ket N* might suggest that some N-derived clades (but not anything else) might have been in Northern Asia (rather than Central Asia) since old but how N arrived there and exactly when is a total mystery.
   

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What if... Y-DNA K diversified after Toba?

Karafet 2008 dates some haplogroups on the assumption that age(CT)=70,000 BP, following the rapid coastal migration hypothesis.

Largely inspired by Petraglia 2007, who strongly suggests continuity in the Paleolithic of India before and after the Toba ash layer, I dare make a different assumption: age(K)=72,000 BP (after the Toba catastrophe), to see how he corresponding estimates would vary, I must then add 52% to all of Karafet's ages.

Result:

CT 106.4 KY
> CF 104.7 KY
> DE 98.8 KY
>> E 79.8 KY
>>>>> E1b1 72.2 KY
>> F 73 KY
>>> IJ 58.5 KY
>>>> I 33.7 KY
>>> K 72 KY (assumed)
>>>> P 51.7 KY
>>>>> R 40.7 KY
>>>>>> R1 28.2 KY

Notes:

CF would then have diversified in South Asia, right in time for the earliest known blade tools of the subcontinent (c. 103,000 BP) .

Not just K but also its immediate ancestor, macro-haplogroup F, would have diversified right after the Toba event, which would have been followed, as per my hypothesis, by a rapid expansion out of South Asia.

P diversified (into the precursors of Q and R) in Central Asia (as it's normally acknowledged) and the date of c. 52,000 BP fits reasonably well with the TL dates for sites in Altai. Probably R remained in the south of Central Asia, while Q went to the NE (Altai?).

R diversified (into the precursors of R1 and R2) c. 41,000 BP (according to this model), and could even have taken part (as pre-R1) in the Aurignacian colonization of Europe. This is a risky assumption but certainly Central Asian, Iranian and Anatolian sites have been claimed as proto-Aurignacian.

The estimate for R1 of c. 28,000 BP fits just too well with Gravettian. If so pre-R1b would have headed west and pre-R1a eastwards. Karafet does not provide age estimates for the succesive nodes in this branch though.

What about I? IJ would seem to have diversified c. 58,000 BP, and that surely happened in West Asia. But I is mostly a European clade, what implies some sort of founder effect. The estimate for the divergence of the I node (into the precursors of I1 and I2) of c. 33,000 BP is no good date: too late to be Aurignacian and too early for Gravettian possibly.

As with IJ, I have no clear what to say about E, just that E1b1 (its main subclade and the most important African haplogroup), if the c. 72,000 BP age is correct, would also seem to have benefitted from whatever niche-opening effects the Toba event had in Africa.

Aterian and the coastal migration model

It seems that Aterian, the North African paleolithic culture (attributable to Homo sapiens), occupies the whole range of dates between c. 85,000 BP to the Epipaleolithic, when new waves (Iberomaurusian, Capsian) may have arrived from Spain and Sudan.

Recently these findings have been confirmed by archaeological research at Taforalt, Morocco, that have yielded some of the oldest known ornaments, competing for that title with Skuhl cave (Palestine) and Oued Djebanna (Algeria).

Aterian tools

Fine so far. But there is a problem: the deepest genetic layer in North Africa seems to be mtDNA haplogroup U6, that is related with other U clades of West, Central and South Eurasia. This clade is believed to have arrived to North Africa with the earliest human colonists, much like its "sisters" U5 and U8a seem to have arrived to Europe too. But, while European early sapiens colonization may date to 48-40,000 BP, not being in contradiction with the mainstream model of colonization of Eurasia from a single out of Africa migration c. 75-60,000 BP, the Aterian very old C14 dates do.

And there is nothing between Aterian and the Epipaleolithic that can explain that.

So I am starting to question the coastal migration model too, or at least the dates attributed to it.

No hardcore conclussions yet but what if... the OOA event happened much earlier, maybe c. 120,000 BP, and had a westward branch via the Levant that ended up in North Africa? There are certainly H. sapiens remains in the Levant that are date c. 100,000 BP (though they are believed to have been replaced by Neanderthals, that are dated to c. 60,000 BP).

In South Asia (key area for Eurasian prehistory) archaeology can hardly differentiate between pre-sapiens and sapiens technologies. The divide between Middle and Upper UP is placed, somewhat arbitrarily, at c. 30,000 BP (much later than in Central and West Eurasia) and human or hominin remains are very scarce anyhow. But, like in West Asia, disconinued blade tools (preluding UP somewhat) are occasionally found with much older dates. In West Asia this was (more or less consistently) attributed to Neanderthals but it is very unlikely that the findings of India can be attributed to them too.

Check for instance Petraglia et al., 2007: Middle Paleolithic Assemblages from the Indian Subcontinent Before and After the Toba Super-Eruption:

We provide here firm chronological evidence that hominins were present in the Jurreru River valley, south India, immediately before and after the YTT eruption. Analyses of the archaeological industries recovered from the site indicate a strong element of technological continuity between the pre- and post-Toba assemblages. Together with the presence of faceted unidirectional and bidirectional bladelike core technology, these pre- and post-Toba industries suggest closer affinities to African Middle Stone Age traditions (such as Howieson's Poort) than to contemporaneous Eurasian Middle Paleolithic ones that are typically based on discoidal and Levallois techniques (Fig. 3). The coincidence of (i) evidence of hominins flexible enough to exhibit continuity through a major eruptive event, (ii) technology more similar to the Middle Stone Age than the Middle Paleolithic, and (iii) overlap of the Jwalapuram artifact ages with the earlier end of the most commonly cited genetic coalescence dates (21–23) may suggest the presence of modern humans in India at the time of the YTT event. This interpretation would be consistent with a southern route of dispersal of modern humans from the Horn of Africa (24); the latter, however, will remain speculative until other Middle Paleolithic sites in the Indian subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula (25) are excavated and dated.

Jwalapuram tools

And also:
- Modern Human Origins and the Evolution of Behavior in the Later Pleistocene Record of South Asia, by Hanna V.A. James and Michael D. Petraglia, 2005 (no link found).
- J.B. Harrod, Synopsis of the Paleolithic of India (PDF).

From this last paper (a list of Indian Paleolithic sites with brief descriptions), I specially noticed two sites from before the Toba event that show blade creation. One (Hokra 1-a and Gurha, Thar Desert, Rajasthan) is not dated but the other (Patpara, Middle Son Valley) has a C14 date of at least 100,000 BP. Blade based tools are also found after the Toba event in several sites that may be dated since c. 45,000 BP.

But even if the earlier blade industries are not really consolidated UP (like happens with Levantine Jabroudian, where stone blades were made long before UP apparently by Neanderthals without continuity), presence of anatomically modern humans does not need to be related to them anyhow (in fact that is the case in may other parts of the World). And the technoligical continuity in India an the very early dates of Sapiens-made Aterian in North Africa, strongly suggest an out-of-Africa event much earlier than Toba eruption. Maybe c. 100,000 BP. There was a warm peak (a more favorable climate probably) c. 105,000 BP that could account for such migration maybe.