800.000 år gamla fortspår

[Boreas]

Vid Happisburgh utanfør  Norfolk på engelska ostkusten har man hittat symetriskt hugna, bi-faciala spjutspetsar i flinta, vars ålder påstås överstiga 800.000 år. Nyligen bekräftades att man på samma ort hittat förstenade fotspår - med samma ålder:

Scientists have discovered the earliest evidence of human footprints outside of Africa, on the Norfolk Coast in the East of England.

The footprints are more than 800,000 years old and were found on the shores of Happisburgh.

They are direct evidence of the earliest known humans in northern Europe.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26025763

Ny översikt över paleolitikum ikring Engelska kanalen:

"Site Distribution at the Edge of the Palaeolithic World"
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0081476

Ref.:
Arktiska mäniskor i England - 950.000 år f.n.:
http://www.arkeologiforum.se/forum/index.php/topic,3504.msg36613.html#msg36613
Kulturnivå:
http://www.arkeologiforum.se/forum/index.php/topic,5601.msg52025.html#msg52025
800.000 år gammal hantverkskonst:
http://www.arkeologiforum.se/forum/index.php/topic,4388.msg37054.html#msg37054
Tidiga britter:
http://www.arkeologiforum.se/forum/index.php/topic,5116.msg44629.html#msg44629
Väster og öster om Östersjön:
http://www.arkeologiforum.se/forum/index.php/topic,3504.msg39196.html#msg39196

[Boreas]

Happisburg - Englands viktigaste arkeologiska fyndort?

The Happisburgh footprints were a set of fossilized hominin footprints that date to the early Pleistocene. They were discovered in May 2013 in a newly uncovered sediment layer on a beach at Happisburgh.

Results of research on the footprints were announced on 7 February 2014, and identified them as dating to more than 800,000 years ago, making them the oldest known hominin footprints outside Africa. Before the Happisburgh discovery, the oldest known footprints in Britain were at Uskmouth in South Wales, from the Mesolithic and carbon-dated to 4,600 BC.

Between 2005 and 2010 eighty palaeolithic flint tools, mostly cores, flakes and flake tools were excavated from the foreshore in sediment dating back to up to 950,000 years ago. The tools are believed to have been made by Homo antecessor, the same species thought to have made the footprints, and are the earliest artefacts to have been found in northern Europe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happisburgh_footprints

[Boreas]

Världens äldsta fynd av en upprest, bipedal gångart är 3,7 millioner år gammal, från Laetoli (Olduvai) i Tanzania:
http://www.arkeologiforum.se/forum/index.php/topic,2510.msg39472.html#msg39472

Märkligt nog blev också dessa fotspår hittat i hop med verktyg av acheulien-typ.

Laetoli is a site in Tanzania, dated to the Plio-Pleistocene and famous for its hominin footprints, preserved in volcanic ash (Site G).

...

Dated to 3.7 million years ago, they were the oldest known evidence of hominin bipedalism at the time they were found.

...

Along with footprints were other discoveries including hominin and animal skeletal remains and Acheulean artifacts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laetoli

[Boreas]

Hur 'moderna' var dåtidens människor?

http://www.utaot.com/2013/02/09/oldest-prehistoric-human-fossil-discovered-in-serbia-dated-between-397-000-and-525-000-years-old/

Newly obtained ages, based on electron spin resonance combined with uranium series isotopic analysis, and infrared/post-infrared luminescence dating, provide a minimum age that lies between 397 and 525 ka for the hominin mandible BH-1 from Mala Balanica cave, Serbia.

This confirms it as the easternmost hominin specimen in Europe dated to the Middle Pleistocene. Inferences drawn from the morphology of the mandible BH-1 place it outside currently observed variation of European Homo heidelbergensis. The lack of derived Neandertal traits in BH-1 and its contemporary specimens in Southeast Europe, such as Kocabaş, Vasogliano and Ceprano, coupled with Middle Pleistocene synapomorphies, suggests different evolutionary forces acting in the east of the continent where isolation did not play such an important role during glaciations.

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0054608

[Boreas]

Homo erectus och Acheulien - från England, Frankrike, Spanien och Serbien till Kaukasus och Kina:

Middle Pleistocene hominin occupation in the Danjiangkou Reservoir Region, Central China

Danjiangkou Reservoir Region, central China is a key Paleolithic area with handaxes. The Maling 2A site, dated by OSL to ∼386–221 ka, is unusually rich in artifacts. Artifact distributions and sizes reflect only slight fluvial disturbance to the site. The assemblage is an Acheulean variant with the continuation of mode 1 elements.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440314003926

Homo erectus i Kina redan 1,6 miljoner år sen?

New dating of the Homo erectus cranium from Lantian (Gongwangling), China

The Homo erectus cranium from Gongwangling, Lantian County, Shaanxi Province is the oldest fossil hominin specimen from North China. It was found in 1964 in a layer below the Jaramillo subchron and was attributed to loess (L) L15 in the Chinese loess-palaeosol sequence, with an estimated age of ca. 1.15 Ma (millions of years ago). Here, we demonstrate that there is a stratigraphical hiatus in the Gongwangling section immediately below loess 15, and the cranium in fact lies in palaeosol (S) S22 or S23, the age of which is ca. 1.54–1.65 Ma.

Closely spaced palaeomagnetic sampling at two sections at Gongwangling and one at Jiacun, 10 km to the north, indicate that the fossil layer at Gongwangling and a similar fossil horizon at Jiacun were deposited shortly before a short period of normal polarity above the Olduvai subchron. This is attributed to the Gilsa Event that has been dated elsewhere to ca. 1.62 Ma. Our investigations thus demonstrate that the Gongwangling cranium is slightly older than ca. 1.62 Ma, probably ca. 1.63 Ma, and significantly older than previously supposed.

This re-dating now makes Gongwangling the second oldest site outside Africa (after Dmanisi) with cranial remains, and causes substantial re-adjustment in the early fossil hominin record in Eurasia.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047248414002309

[Boreas]

Anatoliens äldsta spår efter uppresta människor med acheulien-teknologi lär vara ca. 1,2 miljoner år:

Anatolia lies at the gateway from Asia into Europe and has frequently been favoured as a route for Early Pleistocene hominin dispersal. Although early hominins are known to have occupied Turkey, with numerous finds of Lower Palaeolithic artefacts documented, the chronology of their dispersal has little reliable stratigraphical or geochronological constraint, sites are rare, and the region's hominin history remains poorly understood as a result. Here, we present a Palaeolithic artefact, a hard-hammer flake, from fluvial sediments associated with the Early Pleistocene Gediz River of Western Turkey. (...)

New 40Ar/39Ar age estimates from these flows are reported here which, together with palaeomagnetic measurements, allow a tightly-constrained chronology for the artefact-bearing sediments to be established. These results suggest that hominin occupation of the valley occurred within a time period spanning ∼1.24 Ma to ∼1.17 Ma, making this the earliest, securely-dated, record of hominin occupation in Anatolia.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379114004818

[Boreas]

OoG - Nya fynd placerar våra äldsta förfäder i Georgien, 1,8 mill. år sen: 
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-08/caveman-zezva-has-1-8-million-year-grin-forces-georgia-to-rewrite-history.html

Frågan om Homo erectus var intelligent tycks besvarad. Här är Europas första akademiker:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/data?pid=avimage&iid=iLaEvQ72CZrw

Tidig acheulian-teknologi också i Armenien:

Stone Age Site Challenges Assumptions About Early Technology

Analysis of artifacts from a newly excavated site in Armenia shows that human technological innovation occurred intermittently throughout the Old World, rather than spreading from a single point of origin, as previously thought.

The study, co-authored by U.Conn archaeology professor Daniel Adler and more than a dozen scientists from universities worldwide, was recently published in the journal Science. Adler and his colleagues examined thousands of stone artifacts retrieved from Nor Geghi 1, a site on the outskirts of Yerevan, the Armenian capital. The artifacts were found in sediments between two ancient layers of lava that could be accurately dated to a period between 325,000 and 350,000 years ago.

http://today.uconn.edu/blog/2014/09/stone-age-site-challenges-assumptions-about-early-technology/

Arkaiska människor i NV Europa:
http://www.ahobproject.org/AHOBI/index_2.html

Kronologi - England:
http://www.ahobproject.org/AHOBI/key_questions.html

England - 35.000 f.n.:
http://www.ahobproject.org/AHOBII/index_2.html

http://www.arkeologiforum.se/forum/index.php/topic,2510.msg39733.html#msg39733

Äldsta erectus från Spanien, 1,3 miljoner år:

Early Pleistocene human mandible from Sima del Elefante (TE) cave site in Sierra de Atapuerca:          A

We present a detailed morphological comparative study of the hominin mandible ATE9-1 recovered in 2007 from the Sima del Elefante cave site in Sierra de Atapuerca, Burgos, northern Spain. Paleomagnetic analyses, biostratigraphical studies, and quantitative data obtained through nuclide cosmogenic methods, place this specimen in the Early Pleistocene (1.2–1.3 Ma).
(...)

This analysis reveals some primitive Homo traits on the external aspect of the symphysis and the dentition shared with early African Homo and the Dmanisi hominins. In contrast, other mandibular traits on the internal aspect of the symphysis are derived with regard to African early Homo, indicating unexpectedly large departures from patterns observed in Africa.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047248411000820

[Boreas]

Multiregionala ursprung till dagens människor?

I dag vet man att världens olika befolkningar kan spåras tillbaka till olika förfäder - typ Denisovaner och Neandertal - vars gemensamma ursprung, Homo erectus, levde för redan två miljoner år sen.
 
Numer kan vi även följa vissa linjer från dessa arkaiska människogrupper ända fram till dagens befolknngar - i såväl Europa som Asien och Afrika - genom mer än 1 miljon år. Flertalet lär ha levt i tropiska klimat, men endera har - jmfr. ovan - alltså varit anpassat till ett arktiskt livsmiljö på nordliga bräddgrader redan 1 miljon år sen.

Här en kort översikt över dom äldsta typer stenverktyg - där "Mode 1" är dom enklare (Oldowan), medan "Mode 2" anses vara dom mer avancerade (Acheulien).

Mode 1 lithic industries, is observed at Dmanisi (Georgia) at 1.8 Ma, in Asia (in China and Pakistan around 2 Ma), and in Europe (for example in Spain since 1.2-1.4 Ma at Orce, Atapuerca), in Italy (Monte-Poggiolo, ca. 1 Ma, Pirro-Nord, at least 1.3 Ma) and in France (Pont-de-Lavaud, Le Vallonnet around 1 Ma). Some dates in China and Indonesia support the idea of earlier settlements in continental and island Asia than in Europe, while the oldest tool kit in Africa dates to 2.6 Ma (Kada Gona, Ethiopia).

A second phase is marked by the appearance of new tools, especially handaxes and cleavers. These large tools do occur in Africa around 1.6-1.7 Ma (Konso, Ethiopia; Kokiselei, Kenya) and around 1.4-1.2 Ma in the Middle-East (Ubeidiya, Israel). They are considered as the first indicators of Acheulian tradition (or Mode 2), consisting in shaping large tools on flakes or blocks. These tools appear outside Africa with different time lags according to geographical areas.

In Asia, the first ones occur around 1.2 Ma (Isampur, India) and then become more significant, with an increasing number of sites around 800 ka in eastern Asia (e, China) and south-eastern Asia (Ngebung, Java). In western and southern Europe, Acheulian sites appear around 700 ka, as attested by the recent discoveries in Centre Region, France (La Noira, in Cher Valley), and they become more numerous from 500 ka onwards, in Spain (Atapuerca Galeria, Ambrona), in Italy (Visogliano, Castel di Guido), in northern and southern France (Somme River terraces, Caune de l'Arago).

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1040618210000807

Den 850.000 år gamla handyxan från Happisburg (bild ovan) hör givetvis till "Mode 2"  - och väl så det. Den arktiska befolkningen hade mao. redan på denna tid en teknologisk insikt och dito färdigheter som var bland dom främsta i sin tid - en tränd som kom fortgå fram till Gravettien och Solutrean-perioderna.

http://www.arkeologiforum.se/forum/index.php/topic,4388.msg79738.html#msg79738