starożytność: Southern Levant

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

The Southern Levant is a geographical region in West Asia along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, a territory corresponding approximately to present-day Israel, Palestine, and Jordan; some definitions also include southern Lebanon, southern Syria, and the Sinai Peninsula. As a strictly geographical description, it is sometimes used by archaeologists and historians to avoid the religious and political connotations of other names for this area. Like much of Southwestern Asia, the Southern Levant is an arid region consisting mostly of desert and dry steppe, with a thin strip of wetter, temperate climate along the Mediterranean coast. Geographically it is dominated by the Jordan Valle…

Evidence: 63 • authority: 72

Several expansions of populations of archaic humans (genus Homo) out of Africa and throughout Eurasia took place in the course of the Lower Paleolithic, and into the beginning Middle Paleolithic, between about 2.1 million and 0.2 million years ago (Ma). These expansions are collectively known as Out of Africa I, in contrast to the expansion of anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) into Eurasia, which may have begun shortly after 0.2 million years ago (known in this context as "Out of Africa II"). The earliest presence of Homo (or indeed any hominin) outside of Africa dates to close to 2 million years ago. A 2018 study identified possible hominin presence at Shangchen, central China, as…

Evidence: 63 • authority: 72

The earliest migrations and expansions of archaic and modern humans across continents are believed to have begun approximately 2 million years ago with the early expansions out of Africa by Homo erectus. This initial migration was followed by other archaic humans including H. heidelbergensis, which lived around 500,000 years ago and was the likely ancestor of Denisovans and Neanderthals as well as modern humans. Early hominids had likely crossed land bridges that have now sunk. Within Africa, Homo sapiens dispersed around the time of its speciation, roughly 300,000 years ago. The recent African origin theory suggests that the anatomically modern humans outside of Africa descend from a popul…

Evidence: 41 • authority: 72

North Africa, also known as Northern Africa, is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region. However, it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of the Western Sahara in the west, to Egypt and Sudan's Red Sea coast in the east. The most common definition for the region's boundaries includes Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, and Western Sahara, the territory disputed between Morocco and the partially recognized Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. The United Nations’ definition includes all these countries as well as Sudan. The African Union defines the region similarly, only differing from…

Evidence: — • authority: 88

Paleoecology/paleoclimate of the Levant and its impact on the spread of modern humans from Africa to Europe. Which routes did Homo sapiens take when spreading from Africa to Eurasia? The climatic conditions changed and with them the living conditions. Over the past twelve years, a research team has deciphered the complex interplay of cultural innovations, mobility and environmental changes funded by the German Research Foundation (Collaborative Research Center 806 "Our Way to Europe"). Our working group in Bonn specifically investigated when and where migration corridors or barriers existed  from a paleoecological and paleoclimatological point of view. It turned out that the Levant, as…

Evidence: — • authority: 88

WITHDRAWN: Modern humans dispersed from southern Africa?. Withdrawal Statement The author has withdrawn this manuscript because analysis with X-chromosomal diversity used the heterozygosity of XY individuals. That was incorrect; analysis should have, instead, used the heterozygosity of XX individuals. All results/conclusions with respect to X-chromosomal heterozygosity should be discarded (the author may submit a revised manuscript at some point). Therefore, the author does not wish this work to be cited as reference for the project. If you have any questions, please contact the corresponding author.

Evidence: — • authority: 88

Comment on “The earliest modern humans outside Africa”. Hershkovitz et al . (Reports, 26 January 2018, p. 456) interpreted the Misliya-1 fossil maxilla as evidence of the earliest known anatomically modern human outside Africa. However, the fossil’s reported age of 177,000 to 194,000 years relies on flawed interpretations of uranium-series data. We contend that those data support a minimum age of no more than ~60,000 to 70,000 years.

Evidence: — • authority: 92

The late-Quaternary megafauna extinctions: Patterns, causes, ecological consequences and implications for ecosystem management in the Anthropocene.. Across the last ~50,000 years (the late Quaternary) terrestrial vertebrate faunas have experienced severe losses of large species (megafauna), with most extinctions occurring in the Late Pleistocene and Early to Middle Holocene. Debate on the causes has been ongoing for over 200 years, intensifying from the 1960s onward. Here, we outline criteria that any causal hypothesis needs to account for. Importantly, this extinction event is unique relative to other Cenozoic (the last 66 million years) extinctions in its strong size bias. For example, on…

Evidence: — • authority: 92

The three waves: Rethinking the structure of the first Upper Paleolithic in Western Eurasia.. The Neronian is a lithic tradition recognized in the Middle Rhône Valley of Mediterranean France now directly linked to Homo sapiens and securely dated to 54,000 years ago (ka), pushing back the arrival of modern humans in Europe by 10 ka. This incursion of modern humans into Neandertal territory and the relationships evoked between the Neronian and the Levantine Initial Upper Paleolithic (IUP) question the validity of concepts that define the first H. sapiens migrations and the very nature of the first Upper Paleolithic in western Eurasia. Direct comparative analyses between lithic technology from…

Evidence: — • authority: 92

Tracing the Neanderthal–Modern Human hybrid zone using paleogenomic data. Interbreeding between closely related lineages is a pervasive evolutionary feature across taxa 1 , including modern humans, who admixed with Neanderthals and other archaic hominins 2,3 . Identifying where gene flow between these lineages happened can shed light on ecological and adaptive contexts in which introgressed genes were acquired. However, mapping ancient hybrid zones is challenging because post-admixture population dynamics obscure their genetic signatures. Here, we determine the conditions under which spatial patterns of introgressed DNA in ancient genomes allow the inference of the geographic location of pa…

Evidence: — • authority: 92

Lithic Miniaturization Provides a Signature of an MIS4-3 Southern Dispersal of Homo sapiens.. Fossil and artefactual evidence shows Homo sapiens in Eurasia well before 75 ka. However, genetic evidence suggests all extant non-African populations derive almost all of their ancestry from a dispersal that only diverged in the last 60-50 ka. In northern Eurasia, the Upper Paleolithic with its laminar blade knapping provides an archeological signature of this dispersal, but no equivalent is yet established for southern Asia, Wallacea, and Sahul. This paper suggests that lithic miniaturization may provide such a signature as it appears across these southern regions from around 50 ka. It can be tra…