• Multiple hominin dispersals into Southwest Asia

    From Pandora@21:1/5 to All on Fri Sep 3 14:46:53 2021
    Notice how these sites, KAM 4 and Jubbah basins are in the interior of
    the Arabian peninsula, not along the coast.

    Multiple hominin dispersals into Southwest Asia over the past 400,000
    years

    Abstract

    Pleistocene hominin dispersals out of, and back into, Africa
    necessarily involved traversing the diverse and often challenging
    environments of Southwest Asia. Archaeological and palaeontological
    records from the Levantine woodland zone document major biological and
    cultural shifts, such as alternating occupations by Homo sapiens and Neanderthals. However, Late Quaternary cultural, biological and
    environmental records from the vast arid zone that constitutes most of Southwest Asia remain scarce, limiting regional-scale insights into
    changes in hominin demography and behaviour. Here we report a series
    of dated palaeolake sequences, associated with stone tool assemblages
    and vertebrate fossils, from the Khall Amayshan 4 and Jubbah basins in
    the Nefud Desert. These findings, including the oldest dated hominin occupations in Arabia, reveal at least five hominin expansions into
    the Arabian interior, coinciding with brief 'green' windows of reduced
    aridity approximately 400, 300, 200, 130–75 and 55 thousand years ago.
    Each occupation phase is characterized by a distinct form of material
    culture, indicating colonization by diverse hominin groups, and a lack
    of long-term Southwest Asian population continuity. Within a general
    pattern of African and Eurasian hominin groups being separated by
    Pleistocene Saharo-Arabian aridity, our findings reveal the tempo and
    character of climatically modulated windows for dispersal and
    admixture.

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03863-y

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  • From Paul Crowley@21:1/5 to Pandora on Fri Sep 3 08:06:28 2021
    On Friday 3 September 2021 at 13:46:55 UTC+1, Pandora wrote:
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03863-y

    Notice how these sites, KAM 4 and Jubbah basins are in the interior of
    the Arabian peninsula, not along the coast.

    Lamppost archaeology. Coastal sites then
    occupied are now under 50-100 metres of
    water.

    If you went on holiday, living in a flimsy tent
    with a number of small children, where in the
    region would you choose to go?

    Yep -- that's the kind of site your great^10k-
    grandmother would have chosen to raise
    her kids.

    The males would have sometimes ventured
    inland in search of extra resources, but the
    females and kids would have stayed in a
    place where it didn't get too hot or too cold.

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