The Early Upper Paleolithic Site Crvenka-At, Serbia–The First Aurignacian Lowland Occupation Site in the Southern Carpathian Basin

The Carpathian Basin is a key region for understanding modern human expansion into western Eurasia during the Late Pleistocene because of numerous early hominid fossil find spots. However, the corresponding archeological record remains less understood due to a paucity of well dated, contextualized sites. To help rectify this, we excavated and sampled Crvenka-At (Serbia), one of the largest Upper Paleolithic sites in the region to obtain radiometric ages for the archeological artifacts and evaluate their depositional context and subsequent site formation processes. Our results confirm that this locality represents a multiple-occupation Aurignacian site that dates to 36.4 ± 2.8 ka based on modeling of luminescence ages. Electrical resistivity tomography measurements indicate that the site formed on a sandy-gravelly fill terrace covered by overbank deposits. Complex grain size distributions further suggest site formation in contrasting depositional environments typically occurring alongside fluvial channels, at lakeshores, in alluvial fan or delta settings. The site is thus the closest (ca. 50 km) known Aurignacian site to the earliest undisputed modern human remains in Europe at the Peştera cu oase and some intervals of the occupation may therefore have been contemporaneous with them. This suggests that modern humans, during their initial settlement of Europe, exploited a wider range of topographic and ecological settings than previously posited. Our findings indicate that lowland areas of the Carpathian Basin are an important part of understanding the early settlement patterns of modern humans in Europe.

A new window onto animal culture

Scientific interest in the diversity of gestural signalling dates back to the figure of Charles Darwin. More than a hundred years later, there is a considerable body of work describing human gestural diversity across languages and cultures. However, the question of communicative culture in our closest living relatives, the nonhuman primates, is relatively unexplored. Here, we will stir new interest into this topic by (i) briefly summarizing the current knowledge of animal culture, and (ii) presenting the current knowledge on gesture cultures, diversity and usage in the most common model for early hominid behaviour, the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes). We will focus particularly on well-established behaviours being customary in some and absent in other chimpanzee communities, and recently discovered social customs that have been suggested to differ in their form, and/or meaning across populations. We also introduce latest findings on chimpanzees’ gestural diversity, providing further evidence for the role social negotiation plays in gestural acquisition. We conclude that the field has been hampered by misconstruing great ape gestures as FAP’s, a strong research bias on the perspective of signalers only, and a lack of coherent methodology to assess the meaning and context of gestures across sites. We argue for systematic cross-site comparisons by viewing communicative exchanges as negotiations, enabling a unique perspective onto the evolutionary trajectory of culture and communication.

The Lake CHAd Deep DRILLing project (CHADRILL) – targeting ∼ 10 million years of environmental and climate change in Africa

At present, Lake Chad (∼ 13∘′ N, ∼ 14∘ E) is a shallow freshwater lake located in the Sahel/Sahara region of central northern Africa. The lake is primarily fed by the Chari–Logone river system draining a ∼ 600 000 km2 watershed in tropical Africa. Discharge is strongly controlled by the annual passage of the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) and monsoon circulation leading to a peak in rainfall during boreal summer. During recent decades, a large number of studies have been carried out in the Lake Chad Basin (LCB). They have mostly focused on a patchwork of exposed lake sediments and outcrops once inhabited by early hominids. A dataset generated from a 673 m long geotechnical borehole drilled in 1973, along with outcrop and seismic reflection studies, reveal several hundred metres of Miocene–Pleistocene lacustrine deposits. CHADRILL aims to recover a sedimentary core spanning the Miocene–Pleistocene sediment succession of Lake Chad through deep drilling. This record will provide significant insights into the modulation of orbitally forced changes in northern African hydroclimate under different climate boundary conditions such as high CO2 and absence of Northern Hemisphere ice sheets. These investigations will also help unravel both the age and the origin of the lake and its current desert surrounding. The LCB is very rich in early hominid fossils (Australopithecus bahrelghazali; Sahelanthropus tchadensis) of Late Miocene age. Thus, retrieving a sediment core from this basin will provide the most continuous climatic and environmental record with which to compare hominid migrations across northern Africa and has major implications for understanding human evolution. Furthermore, due to its dramatic and episodically changing water levels and associated depositional modes, Lake Chad's sediments resemble maybe an analogue for lake systems that were once present on Mars. Consequently, the study of the subsurface biosphere contained in these sediments has the potential to shed light on microbial biodiversity present in this type of depositional environment. We propose to drill a total of ∼ 1800 m of poorly to semi-consolidated lacustrine, fluvial, and eolian sediments down to bedrock at a single on-shore site close to the shoreline of present-day Lake Chad. We propose to locate our drilling operations on-shore close to the site where the geotechnical Bol borehole (13∘28′ N, 14∘44′ E) was drilled in 1973. This is for two main reasons: (1) nowhere else in the Chad Basin do we have such detailed information about the lithologies to be drilled; and (2) the Bol site is close to the depocentre of the Chad Basin and therefore likely to provide the stratigraphically most continuous sequence.

Early hominids may have been weed species

Panid, gorillid, and hominid social structures appear to have diverged as dramatically as did their locomotor patterns as they emerged from a late Miocene last common ancestor (LCA). Despite their elimination of the sectorial canine complex and adoption of bipedality with its attendant removal of their ready access to the arboreal canopy, Australopithecus was able to easily invade novel habitats after florescence from its likely ancestral genus, Ardipithecus sp. Other hominoids, unable to sustain sufficient population growth, began an inexorable decline, culminating in their restriction to modern refugia. Success similar to that of earliest hominids also characterizes several species of macaques, often termed “weed species.” We here review their most salient demographic features and find that a key element is irregularly elevated female survival. It is reasonable to conclude that a similar feature characterized early hominids, most likely made possible by the adoption of social monogamy. Reduced female mortality is a more probable key to early hominid success than a reduction in birth space, which would have been physiologically more difficult.

Aural exostoses (surfer’s ear) provide vital fossil evidence of an aquatic phase in Man’s early evolution

For over a century, otolaryngologists have recognised the condition of aural exostoses, but their significance and aetiology remains obscure, although they tend to be associated with frequent swimming and cold water immersion of the auditory canal. The fact that this condition is usually bilateral is predictable since both ears are immersed in water. However, why do exostoses only grow in swimmers and why do they grow in the deep bony meatus at two or three constant sites? Furthermore, from an evolutionary point of view, what is or was the purpose and function of these rather incongruous protrusions? In recent decades, paleoanthropological evidence has challenged ideas about early hominid evolution. In 1992 the senior author suggested that aural exostoses were evolved in early hominid Man for protection of the delicate tympanic membrane during swimming and diving by narrowing the ear canal in a similar fashion to other semiaquatic species. We now provide evidence for this theory and propose an aetiological explanation for the formation of exostoses.