Cro-Magnons and Neanderthal extinction

Cro-Magnons and Neanderthal extinction
Sudden change 40-35 kya
) Physical and cultural
)
Upper Paleolithic Tools
Cro-Magnon Art
Ice Age Venus
Ritual Life
Unsolved Mysteries
about the appearance of modern people:
1. Where did they come from?
2. Why did they coexist, then suddenly replace others?
3. Why the radical change in culture at 40k, long AFTER first
appearance of sapiens?
Where did modern people come from?
(. . . and hey, where did all the Neanderthals go?)
) Rapid
evolution?
) Intermarriage with newcomers?
) Genocide?
) Peaceful replacement?
One traditional answer:
Middle Eastern transitional
types “Caught in the act”
of evolving
) Unfortunately, this no
longer works
)
– Redated at 100k, older than
Neanderthals
– Redefined as modern
Skhul 5
Israel
Two Models of Modern Human Origins
Europe
Africa
Asia
Multiregional
Europe
Africa
Asia
Replacement
Multiregional Theory
Franz Weidenreich
Europe
Milford Wolpoff
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)
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“Continuity” or “Candelabra”
Weidenreich, 1930’s: studied Asian erectus
Carleton Coon: Racist overtones
Milford Wolpoff & Alan Thorne
Asian & Australian fossils emphasized
Africa
Asia
Kow Swamp 1 Homo sapiens
)
)
)
Alan Thorne, 1967
Kow Swamp, Australia
Age: 10,000 years
Kow Swamp 1
These odd-looking
skulls have a
flattened forehead
that Alan Thorne
compares with Java
erectus; Thorne uses
them as supporting
evidence for multiregional evolution of
modern humans. Some
suggest that they may
have been artificially
Deformed during life.
Kow Swamp 5
Out of Africa/Replacement Theory
“Replacement,”
“Recent Origin,”
“Eve,” “Noah’s Ark,”
“Garden of Eden,” etc.
) First proposed on basis
of fossils
) Reinforced by blood
groups, protein
analysis, nDNA,
mtDNA
)
Europe
Africa
Asia
The Case for Replacement
)
)
Chris String, a leading advocate
Omo-Kibbish skull . . .
Chris Stringer
Omo-Kibbish 1
Homo sapiens sapiens
Kimoya Kimeu. 1967
) Omo Basin, Ethiopia
) Age: 130,000 years
Perhaps the oldest known
fossil of fully modern
Homo sapiens sapiens
)
Anatomically Modern Homo sapiens
)
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Orthagnathism (flattened face)
High forehead
Rounded occipital
Thin cranial bones
Cranium widest at top
Small face
Mental protruberance (chin)
Small teeth in a short jaw
Gracility of cranium and body
Neoteny
Neoteny:
A Master Trend?
Border Cave,
South Africa
Homo sapiens sapiens
) 70-130
kya
Klasies River Mouth
South Africa
)
)
)
Fossils and footprints
117 kya
Homo sapiens sapiens
Qafzeh IX & Skhul 5
Homo sapiens sapiens
Qafzeh and Es-Skhul caves, Israel, 1969
Qafzeh, Skhul, and others like them were once thought to follow the Middle Eastern Neanderthals in time.
However, ESR and TL dating now put them at 90,000 to 100,000 years–older than Middle Eastern
Neanderthals. Although they have some incidental
archaic traits, they are classified as fully modern.
Qafzeh IX
Adult female
Skhul 5
Adult male
ESR and TL dating
)
)
)
New techniques
Measure amount of radiation absorbed from the soil
They fill in the time gap between C-14 and K-A
– Carbon-14 cannot date anything more than 40k years old
– K-A and Fission-track date things more than 200k years old
)
ESR: Electron Spin Resonance
– Teeth
)
TL: Thermolumescence
– Heated flints
– Pottery
– Other materials: Still being extended
Routes and times of sapiens migrations
Stringer’s reconstruction
Luca Cavilli-Sforza
Forty years’ work on racial groupings
)
)
)
1960’s: Blood groups
Later: Proteins, enzymes, nDNA
Branching patterns diverge first in Africa
Nuclear
DNA
Tree
In search of the Mother Tongue
Taxonomic studies of language
)
)
E.g., Merritt Ruhlen, 1994 (right)
Linguistic findings coincide with
Cavilli-Sforza’s geneology (below)
Enter Mitochodrial Eve
Rebecca Cann, Mark
Stoneking et al,
1980’s
) Mitochondrial DNA
) Computer modeling
) Findings:
)
1. Branching patterns
rooted in Africa
2. mtDNA similarities
suggest recent
branching 100-200 kya
Recipe for sensational science reporting
)
Overstate the newness of X
)
Claim that “until now all
scientists believed Y”
)
Have a gimmick
“Everyone alive today is
descended from one woman,
‘Eve,’ who lived in Africa two
hundred thousand years ago”
Newsweek, January 11, 1988, was better than most
Why would we all have
one ancestral woman’s
mtDNA?
mtDNA only passes
through women
) Chance termination of
some female-female
lines
) Humans can have one
mtDNA ancestor, but
thousands of nDNA
ancestors from the same
period
)
Summary of mtDNA results
)
)
)
)
Computer models still being debated
Setbacks in early nineties
Gaining support again
Results corroborate fossils, tools, nDNA, blood groups,
morphological studies, linguistics
– Recent origins of modern people
– Branching patterns
rooted in Africa
)
Highly suggestive,
but not the last word
What about those Asian-Australian fossils?
)
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Not fully explained
Fits no simple scenario
Can be read in different ways
Some “Asian” traits may be global
“Out-of-Africa” moderns sometimes
precede “local” moderns
Role of local selection?
More gene flow in Asia?
Eve scores a point: Neanderthal DNA
)
)
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379-nucleotide mtDNA
sequence from
Neanderthal bones
Differs from moderns at
27 locations
Equally distant from all
modern populations
Moderns differ at average
of 8 locations
Homo neanderthalensis, a
separate species
Wolpoff protests
A 24,500 year old “love child”?
Lagar Velho, Portugal,1998
Trinkaus & Zilhao
)
)
)
Modern jaw with Neandertal
skeleton?
Evidence of interbreeding?
Tattersall says no, only a
“chunky” modern
QuickTime™ and a
Photo - JPEG decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Middle East: Why long coexistence
followed by rapid shift?
) Sapiens
more adapted to cultural change
) Example: tool types
) Why?
) Language and complex mental maps?
Next: Language and the Mind
The Origins of Language
Primate Communication
Vocal + Nonvocal
) Expresses immediate mental/emotional state
) Species-wide
) Innate
) Examples:
)
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–
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–
Yikes–a snake!
Give me some of that
I am dangerous!
I see food!
Human Spoken Language
Distinguishing Traits
) Detachable
from immediate state of speaker
) Displacement of time and space
) Infinite productivity
) High information density
) Cultural
) Arbitrary
The Evolution of Human Language
and Cognition: Two Models
)
Early/gradual
– Circumstantial arguments
– Brain casts
)
Recent/sudden
– Upper Paleolithic revolution
– Vocal tract
)
Must it be one
of these?
Multilayered Human Communication
We cannot find partially linguistic species
today . . .
. . . but we can “peel away” the layers of our
own system.
We contain multitudes!
Two Experimental
Scenarios:
A. PRELANGUAGE
cannot use words.
You
B. PROTOLANGUAGE You have
all your present abilities, except
that your vocabulary is roughly
that of an 18 month old human
child (a few dozen nouns &
names, a dozen or so verbs, no
tense, no articles or
prepositions, no pronouns but
“me”)
Communicate to Thag:
1. You want Thag to share food with you
2. You want Thag to leave, or else you may
attack him
3. How your companion Thug got covered
with mammoth poop
4. Why Thag shouldn’t eat that plant
5. You want Thag to go find rocks and
make tools to cut up the wildebeeste
you have just found
6. Lord Vader finds Thag’s lack of faith
“disturbing”
PRELANGUAGE
CALLS
GESTURES
The Human Call System
)
)
Similar to other primates and mammals
Largely cross-cultural
– Eek! Grrrr...!
)
Interlaces with language
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Tone of voice
Volume
Pitch
May supplement, even contradict, spoken message
Increased importance when speech is limited
The Human Gestural System
Gesture vastly enriches calls or simple speech
) Linked to speech centers
) Recent studies of blind gesturers
) Shared with related species
) Largely innate & species-wide
)
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Cultural vs. universal gestures
Anger
Begging
Flirtation?
Language Evolution Revisited:
How could language
have evolved?
Language Development:
An Alternative Model
Homo sapiens:
Syntactic
language
Homo erectus:
Gesture & Calls, + Protolanguage
Australopithecus:
Enhanced calls
& gestures
Primates:
Calls &
gestures
3 mya
2 mya
1 mya
Present
Argument for Australopithecus language
Slightly larger brain
Reorganized? (casts)
Circumstances: ecology, society
Against:
Apelike vocal tract
No tools
Enhanced call system?
(Not cultural)
(No displacement, etc.)
Primates:
Calls &
gestures
Australopithecus:
Enhanced calls
& gestures
3 mya
2 mya
Phase 2:
Protolanguage
(Dereck Bickerton, Language and Species)
)
“Robust” and universal
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)
18-month children
Language-trained apes
Language-deprived (“Genie”)
Pidgin speakers
Short, unstructurecd utterances (“word salad”)
– “Applesauce buy store”
– “Banana give banana me give”
)
)
Cultural: learned words
Lexical (vs. grammatical) words
– Concrete nouns, verbs, adjectives
(bear, hand, rock, Thag, hit, give, big)
– No tense, conjuntions, prepositions,
pronouns etc.
– No syntactical elements
Homo erectus:
Protolanguage
& gestures
2 mya
1 mya
What is syntax?
Logical organization of elements in an utterance
) Devices: Word order, connectors, inflections
) Nesting levels of relationship
)
– “Lord Vader finds Thag’s lack of faith “disturbing.”
– “I have been deeply troubled by your lack of regard for
my Christian moral principles.”
How much of this could be said in protolanguage?
) Clusters of meaning, normally nested without
ambiguity
) Breakdown of syntax draws our attention to how it
works. Can you fix these?
)
– “The King of England’s hat”
– “Today we will be discussing sex with a leading child
psychologist.”
)
)
Protolanguage
enhanced by
gesture and
nonverbal
sounds
Protolanguage utterances=“word salad”
How to get “syntax” into protolanguage?
– 1. Context
– 2. Gesture
)
Gesture:
– Stokoe, The Gestural Origins of Language
– Gestures have incipient syntax
– Stories (mimesis)
)
)
)
H. erectus: protolanguage + gesture and nonverbal sounds
Compatible with erectus brain & vocal tract
Homo
Explains continuing evolution of brain
and vocal tract
2 mya
erectus
1 mya
The Modern Transformation
)
Syntactic items
– Do not refer to things or actions
– Create logical relationships among
lexical items
– Example: “I am deeply troubled by
your lack of regard for my Christian
moral principles.”
)
Modern cognition
– Complex mental maps created by
semantic categories and syntactic
connections
)
Homo sapiens:
Syntactic
language
Modern articulation
– “Dance” of mouth, tongue, larynx,
breath
)
A “Package” (?)
800 kya
Present
Which came first?
) Syntax,
mental mapping, or articulation?
) Language is a holistic system of
representation which entails all three
) Can’t have mental representation of
something until it can be put into syntax
) Speech/hearing is the doorway between the
individual mind and the cultural
“storehouse”
) Mind and Culture
The Human Vocal Tract
Doorway of the mind
Specialized for speaking
What about Neanderthal?
Modern human
Neanderthal
Vowel formation and Supralaryngeal
Vocal Tract (SLVT)
)
)
)
Vital phonemes /i/ and /a/
Modern proportions are crucial
Could Neanderthal talk? Skhul?
Dance of the Consonants
)
)
Tongue and teeth for stops
Coordination of breath and tongue in voicing
Unvoiced and voiced (/p/ versus /b/ or /t/ versus /d/)
20 millisecond difference
)
Requires specialized neuroanatomical equipment
Phonemes
Humans capable of about 50 vocal sounds
) Typical language maps out 25-30 “phonemes”
) Phonemic distinctions must be learned during
childhood
)
– English speakers cannot differentiate aspirated and
unaspirated /p/ of pots and spots
– Chinese speakers cannot distinguish /r/ and /l/
)
Phonemes grade into one another for speed
– Say “Tea for two” while touching your lips
Speech conquers a biological barrier
Mammal hearing cannot track a tapping sound at more
than 7 taps per second
) However, we can distinguish about 20 meaningful units
of spoken information per second:
)
“Australopithecus” has 14 phonemes, plus pitch contours and
accentuations
Neurological and anatomical adaptation for speech
) Unique to fully modern sapiens (?)
)
Spoken language as a “natural” legacy
)
)
Occurs at a predictable age
Does not depend on deliberate teaching
– Requires only exposure
)
)
)
)
We unfailingly follow grammatical rules that we cannot
describe
All human languages are equally complex
Isolated languages have recurrent grammatical features
New “Pidgin” and “Creole” languages evolve similarly
everywhere
Reviewing Language Development
How language advantaged erectus and
modern sapiens
Homo sapiens:
Syntactic
language
Homo erectus:
Protolanguage
& gestures
Australopithecus:
Enhanced calls
& gestures
Primates:
Calls &
gestures
3 mya
2 mya
1 mya
Present
Hominid Intelligence
Social Intelligence
) The role of sensory processing
) Four kinds of learning
)
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–
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Experiential [Animals?]
Observational [Mammals?]
Constructional: [Homo?]
Cultural: [Homo?]
Cognitive mapping with syntactic spoken
language
– An unexplored territory of mind
– Effects are cumulative
The Creative Explosion
“Symbolic Tools”
Personal Adornment
Music
Grave offerings
Ritual and religion
Upper Paleolithic society
Linguistic complexity probably equal to today’s
) Religion, music and art
) Regional trade and intergroup relations
) Global cultures diverse but comparably complex
) A world constructed by language and mind
)
– “We live suspended in webs of meanings that we ourselves
have constructed”
– Yet, fully adaptive to material conditions
)
The best glimpse of this world comes from modern
hunter-gatherers
Next . . .
Hunter-Gatherers:
The Original Affluent Society?