A study that will be presented at the upcoming Paleoanthropology convention
has an interesting concluding sentence. It shows that the middle to late
stone age does not represent any big change in hominid intelligence.
Behavioral ecological modeling and faunal resource use in the Middle and
Later Stone Ages of
southern Africa
Tom Minichillo1 and Curtis W. Marean2
1 Department of Anthropology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-3100
2 Department of Anthropology, SUNY at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY 11794-4364
"Archaeological approaches to the origins of modern humans have recently
focused on the attempt to identify the place and timing of the origins of
modern human behavior. Researchers have focused on a variety of attributes
including raw material use, evidence for symbolism, and faunal exploitation
behavior. Prominent among these studies is Richard Klein's identification
and interpretation of a pattern of change in the South African faunal
record. During the Middle Stone Age (MSA), eland predominate over buffalo
and bushpig, the few buffalo that are present are dominated by juveniles,
and eland are well represented by prime age adults. Furthermore, fish and
flying birds are rare in the MSA. These patterns change with the Later
Stone Age (LSA), and Klein has argued that this change reflects improved
hunting skills resulting from the advent of the modern human intellect. The
authors of this paper contend that by examining the same faunal material
from these sites in a theoretical framework derived from behavioral
ecology, compelling alternative explanations can be developed.
Specifically, we argue that the inclusion of dangerous prey such as buffalo
and bushpig, and low-ranked prey such as fish and birds, represent an
expansion of diet breadth. Such an expansion can result from labor
intensification and/or prey depression coupled to population pressure.
Explicit expectations for each hypothesis, that can be tested qualitatively
and quantitatively, are developed and examined using existing data. In
addition, relationship between the size of the faunal assemblages and the
number of different taxa is examined. The authors conclude that the
hypothesis that the MSA/LSA transition represents a marked shift in human
intellectual capacity is not adequately supported, and our ecological
alternative is more parsimonious." Tom Minichillo and Curtis W. Marean,
"Behavioral ecological modeling and faunal resource use in the Middle and
Later Stone Ages of southern Africa" Abstracts for the Paleoanthropology
Society Meeting, The University of Pennsylvania Museum, Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, U.S.A., April 4-5, 2000
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
Lots of information on creation/evolution
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Mar 10 2000 - 22:13:52 EST