GRADES 9-12 H.BACA Material Culture of Archaic Humans

Tool Use and Hunting Acheulean and more basic tool kits remained in use into recent times By 400,000 to 250,000 years ago used:  2-meter long wood spears  Hunt in an organized fashion  Wooden spears  Group hunts and ran at Atapuerca, Spain  Fire  Shelters of wood and possibly hide in eastern Europe and east Africa  Levallois technique- produced quality tools

Tool Use and Hunting Cont’d  Many Neanderthal sites- further refinement of stone tool making using the Mousterian industry:  Mousterian technique- technique which is an enhancement of previous patterns.  At least 60 known types  Used for many different activities opening new opportunities to the Neanderthals

Diet and Behavior Transition from H. erectus to archaic humans  Continued use of animal matter in diet, and some areas of expansion, foods and methods used to acquire them  Use of wooden spears by at least 400,000  It is assumed that H. erectus was capable of some large game hunting; archaic humans were doing it regularly by 500,000 to 400,000 years ago.  Levallois technique allowed the production of flake tools  Mousterian industry allowed rapid production of high quality flakes and other tools  More tools allowed archaic humans to apply them to more uses  Enhanced scraping, piercing, puncturing, and gauging  Plant materials were exploited effectively  Manipulation of animal hides and bones  Regional cultural variation- depending on materials available  Exploited diets, including shellfish, fish, and even dolphins in coastal areas

H. heidelbergensis Neanderthals lived in groups (possibly large)  Not much information about their communal lives  Evidence for cooperative hunting  Complex tool production that required coordination and communication  No clear signs of how they thought or spoken language used lived and worked together in communities  Provided assistance for injured or aged individuals  Buried some of their dead  Personal group adornment items  High number of healed injuries shows that communal care for the injured was common; the fossil record of relatively aged individuals indicates the same  Some researches argue against these interpretations because there are only a few aged individuals on the fossil record and that we also see healed injuries in nonhuman primate species that have no communal care. Social Patterns

Social Patterns Cont’d  Debate on whether care was provided for the injured or aged  Excavating sites might help address these issues  Little doubt that they buried their dead at least in Eurasia and the Mediterranean  More than 35 burial sites have been found  Neanderthals excavated an area and placed dead bodies in a hole Some are placed in specific positions Some contain “grave goods” such as tools and flowers placed on or near the bodies  Some individuals adorned their bodies with shells or other nonfunctional items. Not sure how this practice was because there are only a few examples in the archaic human fossil record

Postmortem Modification of bodies Bodo cranium in Africa to more recent fossils in China and across Eurasia show evidence of removal from the flesh specially from the skull after death Initial interpretations of Cannibalism Other forms of postmortem practices  Mortuary practice  cognizance of death  Believe systems of an afterlife  Burials and defleshing suggest cultural patterns and beliefs Little evidence to propose a hypotheses

Why did the Neanderthals Disappear? Used terrestrial and marine resources Scheduling or seasonal shifting in resource use Overlapped in living areas Occasional interbred with modern humans Complex tool use, advanced hunting skills, and complex material and social culture, how did they disappear as modern humans spread around Europe and the Mediterranean?  Increased evolutionary success might have played a role in the differential success of Homo sapiens and Neanderthals as the co-existed between 50,000 and 28,000 years ago in Europe and Southwest Asia Homo sapiens and Neanderthals Little evidence for direct competed over food, water, raw materials, living areas and passage routes and that humans won.  Researches argue that differences in success was due to scramble competition  Modern Homo sapiens outcompeted Neanderthals at being human  Modern humans were less adapted to the cold north than Neanderthals  Both were skilled at hunting large animals  Little evidence of direct conflict  Neanderthals tools might have been less expansive and innovative than those of Homo sapiens, but were functional for their needs

Why did the Neanderthals Disappear? Cont’d Suggestions on why the Neanderthals went extinct  Trade, exchange and long distance social networks  Exchanged goods, resources and ideas across groups locally Material culture might have travelled 150 km bulk confined to 20 km between source and place of use exchange of commodities over 200 km In the Ukraine, Northern Europe, and Africa shell and stones were exchanged over 1,000 km Trading networks negotiated in season where modern human groups got together  Exchange of materials cemented social relationships or individuals or smaller groups travelled between larger groups facilitated exchange for economic reasons; this might have benefited modern humans over the Neanderthals  Exchanging resources and ideas created an interdependency and had impacts on surrounding ecologies or humans ability to deal with environmental challenges  Movement of ideas, genes, and materials across Africa and Eurasia led to increase success for humans

Why did the Neanderthals Disappear? Cont’d Under this model, Neanderthals could have engaged in some successful local-level niche construction; far-reaching, and biocultural patterns, and niche construction in modern humans outcompeted them during harsh environmental situations