the impossible coincidence. a single-species model...

ARTICLES

The Impossible Coincidence. A Single-SpeciesModel for the Origins of Modern Human Behaviorin EuropePAUL MELLARS

If we accept all of these social,symbolic, and cognitive implicationsof distinctively Upper Paleolithic be-havioral patterns, then the issue ofexactly how these patterns of behav-ior and the implied mental capaci-

ties they required emerged amongEuropean populations becomes oneof the most critical issues in currentevolutionary and cognitive research.Broadly, we are confronted by twofairly stark and sharply polarized al-

ternatives: that these patterns of be-havior and the implied levels of as-sociated cognition emerged by apurely internal process of behavioraland cognitive evolution among thelocal European populations, extend-ing directly through the EuropeanNeanderthal line; or, alternatively,that at least the majority of the newbehavioral patterns, as well as thecognitive hardware necessary tosupport these innovations, was dueto a major influx of new populationsinto Europe deriving ultimatelyfrom either an African or Asiansource.29,30 It is hardly necessary tostress the importance of this issue inevolutionary terms. If the Neander-thals did independently develop thewhole range of behavior that tradi-tionally has been regarded as thehallmark of fully “modern” humans,this would arguably be the most im-portant thing we have learned about theNeanderthals since their original dis-covery more than 150 years ago. Whatfollows is an attempt to review thesetwo alternatives, as briefly as possible,in the light of the most recent archeo-logical and biological research.

In a recent paper31 I have attemptedto explore the first of these scenariosfrom an explicitly Darwinian, evolu-tionary perspective, which puts the pri-mary emphasis on the complex patternof climatic and associated environmen-tal changes that occurred in Europearound the middle of the last glaciation(the period of oxygen-isotope stage 3,from ca. 60,000–25,000 BP32) and thepotential selective and adaptive effectsof these environmental oscillations onthe demographic, social, and other cul-tural patterns of the local Neanderthal

Few topics in palaeoanthropology have generated more recent debate than thenature and causes of the remarkable transformation in human behavioral patterns thatmarked the transition from the Middle to the Upper Paleolithic in Europe.1–11 Those ofus who have argued for an effective technological and cultural “revolution” at this pointin the Paleolithic sequence have emphasized three main dimensions1,2,9,11–14: the widerange of different aspects of behavior that appear to have been affected (Fig. 1); therelative speed and abruptness with which most of these changes can be documentedin the archeological records from the different regions of Europe; and the potentiallyprofound social and cognitive implications of many of the innovations involved. Moststriking of all in this context is the abrupt appearance and proliferation of various formsof perforated animal teeth, shells, beads, and other personal ornaments, and the evenmore dramatic eruption of remarkably varied and sophisticated forms of art, rangingfrom representations of male and female sex organs, through the highly stylized animaland combined animal-human figures from southern Germany, to the striking wallpaintings of the Chauvet Cave.8,15–18 One might add to this the similar proliferation ofmore enigmatic but potentially equally significant abstract “notation” systems on boneand ivory artifacts.19 To describe the Upper Paleolithic revolution in Europe as reflect-ing preeminently an explosion in explicitly symbolic behavior and expression is in nosense an exaggeration, as most prehistorians would now agree. We are probably onsafe ground in assuming that symbolic behavior and expression of this level ofcomplexity would be inconceivable in the absence of highly structured languagesystems and brains closely similar, if not identical to, our own.5,17,20–28

Paul Mellars is Professor of Prehistory and Human Evolution in the Department of Archaeologyat Cambridge University. Following his involvement in the notorious Mousterian debates withFrancois Bordes and Lewis Binford in the 1960s and 1970s, his research has centered on thebehavioral origins and geographical dispersal of anatomically modern human populations,and the extinction of the European Neandertals. He is the author of The Neanderthal Legacy,and coeditor of The Human Revolution, Modelling the Early Human Mind and other conferencevolumes. He has conducted excavations on Mesolithic sites in England (Star Carr) andScotland (Oronsay).

Department of Archaeology, Cambridge University, Downing Street, Cambridge, CB2 3DZ,UK. E-mail: [email protected]

© 2005 Wiley-Liss, Inc.DOI 10.1002/evan.20037Published online in Wiley InterScience(www.interscience.wiley.com).

Evolutionary Anthropology 14:12–27 (2005)

populations (Fig. 2). Reduced to its bareessentials, this model assumes that theoccurrence of major, rapid, and re-peated environmental fluctuationscould have precipitated repeated epi-sodes of increased demographic and so-cial competition between adjacent Ne-anderthal groups for both space andresources, which in turn would haveimposed strong selective pressures onalmost all aspects of their cultural andbehavioral adaptations, leading to arange of associated patterns of techno-logical, economic, and social change.33

Arguably, an increased investment invarious forms of symbolic expressionand communication could be seen asone potentially direct evolutionary ad-aptation to cope with the increasing de-

mographic and social pressures thatemerged directly from the contempo-raneous patterns of climatic and envi-ronmental change.7,9,34,35 This model,of course, carries with it the auto-matic implication that all of the nec-essary intellectual and neurologicalcapacities for these behaviors were ei-ther already present in the indigenousNeanderthal populations of Europe orthat these capacities emerged, pre-sumably as a result of one or moregenetic mutations,23,36 as a further di-rect evolutionary consequence of thevarious environmental, demographic,or other selective pressures to whichthe European Neanderthals were sub-jected.

Clearly, that kind of local evolu-tionary model represents an impor-tant theoretical perspective for thepossible origins of Upper Paleolithicculture in Europe, and has been de-bated at various times and from avariety of different perspec-tives.3,4,37– 40 It was, of course, an es-sential and integral component ofthe multiregional or regional-conti-nuity model of modern human ori-gins that largely dominated this fieldthroughout the 1960s and 1970s,41 atmuch the same time as the strongly“processualist” notions of the NewArchaeology and the strong reac-tions against large-scale diffusionand migration as an explanatory prin-ciple in accounting for prehistoricchange. Recently, a similar viewpoint

Figure 1. Early Upper Paleolithic behavioral innovations in Europe. For details, see Bar-Yosef,1,2

Gamble,12 Klein,66 Mellars,9,13,27,68,69 Kozlowski,137 White,15,16 Le Bon,107 Conard and Bolus.8

Figure 2. Possible climatic model for the “Upper Paleolithic revolution” in Europe,31 based onpotential technological and cultural adaptations to the rapid climatic oscillations of oxy-gen-isotope Stage 3.

ARTICLES The Impossible Coincidence 13

has been argued strongly by Francesod’Errico.4

Making the maximum possible al-lowance for these arguments, how-ever, I continue to see a range of ma-jor obstacles to attempting to viewthese kinds of entirely local, indige-nous evolutionary processes as pro-viding more than, at best, a partialand inadequate explanation for thebroad sweep of radical behavioral in-novations that define the conventionalMiddle-Upper Paleolithic transition inEurope (Fig. 1). The problems, as I seethem, stem from two separate sourc-es: first, the spate of recent informa-tion on the anatomical and geneticorigins and geographical dispersal ofbiologically “modern” populations;and second, a range of equally impor-tant developments in our understand-ing of the archeological evidence it-self. The premise of what follows is

that any fully balanced assessment ofthe problem of the emergence of“modern” behavioral patterns in Eu-rope or elsewhere must be based on aclosely integrated analysis of boththese lines of evidence. While I fullyagree with d’Errico that the biologicaland archeological evidence must, atcertain levels, be treated separatelyand, in a sense, allowed to “tell theirown stories,” for any fully integratedperspective on modern human originsthe separate dimensions of the arche-ological and biological evidence mustinevitably be brought together. Statedbluntly, we simply cannot afford the lux-ury of allowing ourselves to look only atone side of the scientific coin if palaeoan-thropology is to move forward as a fullyintegrated scientific discipline. From thisperspective, the essential considerations,as I see them, can be summarized as fol-lows.

THE CORRELATION OFBEHAVIORAL AND

BIOLOGICAL CHANGE

The first and most conspicuous ob-stacle to the “independent-evolution”model for the origins of modern be-havioral patterns in Europe stemsfrom the extraordinary coincidencebetween the timing of the major be-havioral innovations that define theclassic Middle-to-Upper Paleolithictransition in Europe and western Asiaand the generally agreed timing of thedispersal of anatomically and geneti-cally modern human populationsacross the continent (Fig. 3). The evi-dence for this dispersal has been doc-umented at length in the recent liter-ature,29,30,42 and rests on at least fourseparate and essentially independentlines of evidence:

Figure 3. Apparent dispersal routes of the earliest anatomically and behaviorally modern populations across Europe, as reflected in thearcheological data. The northern (Danubian) route is represented by the “classic” Aurignacian technologies, while the southern (Medi-terranean) route is represented by the “Proto-Aurignacian” bladelet technologies with their inferred origins in the preceding early UpperPaleolithic technologies in the Near East and southeastern Europe.56,60,71,107 Dates indicate the earliest radiocarbon dates for thesetechnologies in different areas, expressed in thousands of radiocarbon years BP. (Note that these are likely to underestimate the true(calendrical) ages of the sites by between 2,000 and 4,000 years.104–106)

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1. The evidence of the mitochon-drial DNA patterns of modern Euro-pean populations, when analyzed interms of “founder lineage” patterns,points to an initial dispersal of fullygenetically modern populations (thatis, with distinctively African-derivedpatterns of mtDNA) extending acrossEurope somewhere within the timerange of ca. 40,000 to 50,000 BP,43–45

best reflected in the distribution of theU5 haplogroup. It is now clear that allthese patterns of mtDNA are radicallydifferent from those of the precedingNeanderthal populations in Europe,which have been shown from analysesof seven separate fossil samples tohave mtDNA patterns that are totallylacking from both present-day Euro-pean populations45–47 and a sample ofat least five early anatomically mod-ern humans from Europe.48,49

2. A closely similar age estimate forthe modern human dispersal across Eu-rope was produced by Rogers andJorde50 and others from studies ofmtDNA “mismatch” distributions. Thisagain appears to show a major popula-tion expansion of genetically modernpopulations in Europe centred broadlyaround 40,000 BP.51,52

3. Analyses of Y-chromosome DNApatterns are less well calibrated inchronological terms than are thosebased on mitochondrial data andmust be handled with caution. Never-theless, studies of microsatellite andother data once again point to an ini-tial expansion of modern DNA pat-terns across Europe (as representedby the M89/M213 lineages) at around40,000 to 45,000 BP, with a subse-quent expansion of the M173 lineageat around 30,000 BP.53,54

4. Evidence from fossil skeletal re-mains over the relevant time range isscarce and patchily distributed, but atleast five or six discoveries point un-mistakably to the presence of fully an-atomically modern populations inboth Europe and the adjacent parts ofsouthwest Asia between ca. 30,000and 45,000 BP.55,56 Most significant inthis context are the recently discov-ered remains of three separate indi-viduals from the Pestera cu Oase cavein Romania, which have been directlydated by radiocarbon AMS techniquesin two separate laboratories to34,290 � 900 BP and �35,200 BP.57

Equally significant is the completeskeleton of a young individual fromthe early Upper Paleolithic “Ahmar-ian” levels at Ksar Akil in Lebanon,dated by radiocarbon and associatedarcheological material to well before35,000 BP, and most probably around40,000 to 42,000 BP.58–60 There is alsoa fragmentary maxilla, said to be dis-tinctively modern in morphology,from the early Upper Paleolithic levelsat Kent’s Cavern in England, whichhas been directly dated by AMS to30,900 � 900 BP.55,61 Slightly less se-curely dated are the two modern cra-nia from Mladec in the Czech Repub-lic, attributed, on the basis of 14Cdating of the associated calcite forma-tions, to around 34,000 to 35,000 BP62

and the two mandibles from Les Roisin southwestern France, apparently

closely associated with the early Au-rignacian levels on the site, again dat-ing to around 32,000 to 34,000 BP.63

From Kostienki site 14 (MarkinaGora) in southern Russia, there is aburial of a fully anatomically modernskeleton dated to at least 30,000 to32,000 BP.64,65

In short, we now have at least fouressentially independent lines of evi-dence for a major dispersal of fullygenetically and anatomically modernpopulations across Europe and west-ern Asia somewhere within the rangeof 45,000 to 35,000 BP, that demon-strably and fairly rapidly replaced thepreexisting Neanderthal popula-tions.29,42,49 The precision of the chro-

nological estimates based on the DNAdata remain open to some debate,42

but the occurrence of unambiguousexamples of fully anatomically mod-ern, if fairly robust skeletal remainswithin this time span is now beyonddispute. This time range coincidesprecisely with that of the conventionalMiddle-Upper Paleolithic transition inEurope and with the broad spectrumof technological, symbolic, social, andother changes associated with thistransition.1,2,11,12 This clearly raisestwo critical questions:

● How could any major populationdispersal of this kind fail to bring withit certain new technological or cul-tural elements, derived ultimatelyfrom regions beyond Europe, presum-ably from either Asian or Africansources?

● How do we account for the ex-traordinary coincidence between thetiming of this population dispersal andthe contemporaneous technologicaland cultural revolution that marks theMiddle-Upper Paleolithic transition inEurope, following a period of around200,000 years of relative behavioral andtechnological stability throughout thepreceding Middle Paleolithic peri-od?2,27,66 As I asked in an earlier paper,“Can we really believe that after a pe-riod of around 200,000 years of typi-cally Middle Paleolithic technology andbehaviour, the local Neanderthal popu-lations in western Europe indepen-dently, coincidentally, and almost mi-raculously ‘invented’ these distinctivefeatures of Upper Paleolithic culture atalmost exactly the same time as ana-tomically and behaviourally modernpopulations are known to have been ex-panding across Europe?”67 (p 44).As indicated in the title of the presentpaper, this is what I am tempted todescribe as the impossible coinci-dence in the parallel records of hu-man biological and cultural develop-ment in Europe.

THE SCALE AND SPEED OF THEUPPER PALEOLITHIC

REVOLUTION

The second significant feature toemphasize in this context is the dra-matic scale of the so-called UpperPaleolithic revolution in Europe andthe relative speed with which it oc-

How do we account forthe extraordinarycoincidence betweenthe timing of thispopulation dispersal andthe contemporaneoustechnological andcultural revolution thatmarks the Middle-UpperPaleolithic transition inEurope . . .


curred. As noted earlier, the Middle-Upper Paleolithic transition ismarked by changes in effectively allof the archeologically visible dimen-sions of behavior: radical innova-tions in both the forms and tech-niques of blade and bladeletproduction in stone tools; the sud-den florescence of complex, varied,and highly shaped bone, antler, andivory tools; the emergence of elabo-rate notation systems on bone andivory artifacts; the appearance of ex-tensive and organized exchange sys-tems for the distribution of both rawmaterials and decorative prestigeitems; the effective explosion of per-forated animal-tooth pendants, per-forated marine shells, laboriouslyshaped stone and ivory bead forms,and other forms of personal orna-ments; and the emergence of highlysophisticated and varied forms ofboth abstract and “naturalistic”art.1,2,11,13–16 In addition, there weremany more inferential but appar-ently closely associated changes inthe economic, social, and demo-graphic patterns of the humangroups2,9,12,68,69 (Fig. 1). Not only areall these features conspicuously ab-sent from well-documented MiddlePaleolithic contexts in Europe, asd’Errico4 has recently stressed, butthey show a close correlation, for themost part, with the distribution ofvarious forms of distinctively Aurig-nacian and “Proto-Aurignacian”technologies across the continent,generally between ca. 40,000 and35,000 BP.8,11,56,70,71

There is a sharp contrast betweenthe relative speed and abruptness withwhich all of these novel technologicaland cultural features appear in the ar-cheological records of Europe and theapparently more gradual, piecemealfashion with which similar innova-tions appear in the archeologicalrecords of Africa. In short, any at-tempt to explain the Upper Paleolithicrevolution in terms of purely localevolutionary processes in Europewould need not only to account forthe impressive range and scale of thecultural changes in question, but toexplain why these changes appear somuch more rapidly in the archeologi-cal sequence of Europe than in that ofAfrica.

THE AFRICAN EVIDENCE

Our knowledge of the archeologicalevidence from Africa over the UpperPleistocene time range has expandeddramatically during the past two de-cades.5–7,66,72–74 On the basis of thisnew evidence it is now possible toshow beyond any reasonable doubtthat many of the most distinctive ar-cheological hallmarks of the classicMiddle-Upper Paleolithic transition inEurope can be documented at least30,000 to 40,000 years earlier in cer-tain parts of Africa than anywherewithin Europe itself. In this context,the evidence reported recently fromthe so-called Howiesons Poort levelsat Klasies River Mouth in South Af-

rica, dated on the basis of several linesof evidence to around 70,000 BP,72–75

and the evidence from the slightly ear-lier Still Bay levels at the nearbyBlombos Cave (ca. 75,000 to 80,000BP)76–79 are especially significant.Leaving aside the occurrence of stan-dardized blade technology, which isnow known to occur sporadically inMiddle Paleolithic/Middle Stone Agecontexts back to at least 200,000 to250,000 BP in both Africa and Eu-rope,2,6,27,80 this evidence can be sum-marized as follows:

1. The occurrence of relativelyabundant and highly typical speci-mens of both end scrapers and burins,

to all appearances identical to thoseencountered in European Upper Pa-leolithic sites75 (Fig. 4). Even if rarespecimens of burins have occasionallybeen claimed from the EuropeanMousterian, fully typical specimens ofend scrapers are at best a very rareand debatable occurrence.81,82 Theappearance of new end-scraper formsmost probably reflects the emergenceof new forms of skin-working technol-ogy, while the appearance of burinsmay or may not be directly related tothe appearance of shaped bone toolsat Blombos and other African sites.

2. The appearance of a range ofcarefully shaped small geometricforms, evidently employed as insets inmulti-component hafted tools (Fig. 4).The highly varied geometrical shapesencountered in the Howiesons Poortindustries at Klasies River Mouth andelsewhere (triangles, trapezes, cres-cents, and obliquely blunted points)not only reflect a high degree of delib-erately “imposed form” in stone toolproduction, with possible social andsymbolic connotations, as discussedby Wurz,83 Deacon,73 and others, butalmost certainly reflect the appear-ance of new forms of multi-compo-nent tools employed as either huntingmissiles or, possibly, as hafted insetsfor plant-processing tools.74,75 The de-sign complexity of these tools is un-questionably far greater than that ofthe occasional specimens of haftedMousterian points recorded from theEurasian Middle Paleolithic.4 Itshould be added that the a large partof the lithic industry at Klasies RiverMouth is manufactured on high-qual-ity raw materials deliberately im-ported into the site from a distance ofat least 20 km,74 a feature that is againhard to parallel in European contextsbefore the earliest Upper Paleolithic.All in all, there is no doubt that at leastthe greater part of the industry fromKlasies River Mouth would be unhesi-tatingly classified as technologically“Upper Paleolithic” if found in a Eu-ropean or southwest Asian context.

3. The appearance of extensivelyshaped bone tools, exhibiting onceagain not only a clear degree of im-posed form but a complex sequence ofmanufacturing stages to shape andpolish the tools. The best-describedspecimens are those from the Still Bay

. . . it is now possible toshow beyond anyreasonable doubt thatmany of the mostdistinctive archeologicalhallmarks of the classicMiddle-Upper Paleolithictransition in Europe canbe documented at least30,000 to 40,000 yearsearlier in certain parts ofAfrica than anywherewithin Europe itself.

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levels at Blombos cave, where they ap-parently served a range of functions,from sharply pointed awls and leath-er-piercing tools to carefully finishedand polished projectile points.77 Sim-ilar shaped bone tools have been re-corded more sporadically from otherAfrican Middle Stone Age sites.4,6 Ifthe dating of the highly shaped barbedbone points recovered from three sep-arate sites at Katanda in former Zairecan be securely attributed to around90,000 BP,84,85 the levels of complex-ity of bone working achieved in theseearly African sites will parallel any-thing at present known from the Eu-

ropean Upper Paleolithic sequence. Asd’Errico4 has recently stressed, exten-sively shaped bone tools of any formare as yet effectively unknown fromwell-documented Middle Paleolithicsites in Europe.

4. The occurrence of large quanti-ties of red ochre (including over 8,000pieces from the Still Bay levels atBlombos) including many pieces withsmoothed facets or deliberatelyscraped surfaces, which almost cer-tainly imply their use as coloring pig-ments.76,77 The presence of geometri-cal designs incised on at least twolarge pieces of ochre from Blombos

seems to confirm their role in certainexplicitly symbolic or ceremonial ac-tivities.78 Similar use of ochre is, infact, abundant in many African Mid-dle Stone Age sites, apparently ex-tending back, at the Twin Rivers sitein Zambia and the Kapthurin sites inKenya, to at least 250,000 BP.6,86,87

Whatever significance one may attachto the sporadic occurrence of blackmanganese dioxide and occasionalfragments of ochre at EuropeanMousterian sites,4 it is clear that thescale of this red ochre use at Africansites vastly exceeds that recorded any-where in Europe prior to the UpperPaleolithic.

5. Most significant of all, the occur-rence of a range of explicitly “artistic”or “decorative” items, for which aninterpretation in terms of complexsymbolic communication systemsnow seems beyond question. Themost significant finds are the twolarge pieces of red ochre incised withcomplex and repeated criss-cross de-signs recently reported from the StillBay levels at Blombos.77 These arenow generally recognized as the earli-est fully convincing examples of delib-erate and repeated design motifs re-corded anywhere in the world,certainly exceeding anything atpresent known from Mousterian orearlier contexts in Europe. Recently,the significance of these finds hasbeen graphically underscored by therecovery from the same archeologicallevels of no less than 41 specimens ofcarefully perforated seashells (Nassa-rius kraussianus), which were appar-ently introduced into the site from es-tuarine contexts at least 20 km awayfrom the site and, on the basis of mi-croscopic analyses, were intended forsuspension from cords or thongs79

(Fig. 6). Even earlier occurrences ofperforated marine shells have been re-ported from the 90,000-year-old Mid-dle Paleolithic levels of the Qafzehcave in Israel, where they were asso-ciated with a veritable cemetery of es-sentially anatomically modern humanremains, including at least one in theform of a clearly ceremonial burialaccompanied by red ochre and a largepair of deer antlers.88,89 The latterfinds, together with those from thenearby site of Skhul, presumably re-flect a brief expansion of anatomically

Figure 4. Stone tools from the Middle Stone Age Howiesons Poort levels at Klasies RiverMouth, South Africa (ca. 70,000 BP), showing typical end scrapers, burins, and shaped“geometric” forms manufactured from blade segments, probably representing haftedinserts of composite hunting armatures (modified from Singer and Wymer75).


modern populations from Africa tothe adjacent parts of southwest Asia atan early stage in the last glacia-tion.29,30,60 At present, these finds rankas the earliest unambiguous examplesof “personal ornaments” recorded inthe archeological record, and againare without parallel from Europeansites prior to ca. 40,000 BP. In short,the appearance of complex social orsymbolic communication systems by

at least 80,000 to 90,000 BP in southernAfrica and the Levantine region mustnow be accepted as a well-documentedfeature of the archeological record.

To summarize, we now have seem-ingly unambiguous evidence that atleast the majority of the most distinc-tive and widely discussed archeologi-cal features of the so-called Upper Pa-leolithic revolution in Europe can befirmly documented in the archeologi-

cal records of Africa by at least 70,000to 80,000 BP, long before their occur-rence in Europe (Fig. 6). Exactly howwe interpret these features in culturaland cognitive terms will no doubt re-main the topic of lively debate. Therewill no doubt be similar debate as tohow far we can trace direct continuityof these features between the Africansites dated to around 60,000 to 70,000BP and the earliest manifestations offully Upper Paleolithic culture in Eu-rope and western Asia at around40,000 to 45,000 BP. Perhaps themain point to be kept in mind here isthat Africa is an extremely large andecologically varied continent, andthat, as Richard Klein5,66 and othershave recently stressed, well-docu-mented archeological sites spanningthe critical period between ca. 60,000and 45,000 BP are still virtually lack-ing in most parts of Africa. Certainlysites showing a similar combinationof blades, end scrapers, small “seg-ment” forms and carefully shaped os-trich eggshell beads are well docu-mented from at least 40,000 BP atsites such as Enkapune ya Muto inEast Africa,90 and may extend back to50,000 to 60,000 BP at Mumba andelsewhere.6,74 And of course the pre-cise geographical source area (or ar-eas) from which the small founderpopulations of anatomically and ge-netically modern humans colonizedEurope and western Asia from ca.45,000 to 50,000 years onward re-mains to be established.60,91 But inany event, the occurrence of a widerange of distinctively “modern” (or in-deed “Upper Paleolithic”) behavioralfeatures at a much earlier date in thecontinent that is known to have givenrise to the evolution of anatomicallyand genetically modern populationscan hardly be dismissed.29,42,92 As Ihave commented elsewhere,93 to ig-nore these striking and well-docu-mented similarities between the Mid-dle Stone Age archeological records ofAfrica and the early Upper Paleolithicrecords of Western Eurasia would beto take a strangely short-sighted viewof the archeological evidence as awhole.

CHRONOLOGICAL PATTERNS

Finally in this context we shouldnote what appears to be a more gen-

Figure 5. Perforated shells of Nassarius kraussianus from the Still Bay levels at Blombos Cave,South Africa, dated to ca. 75,000 to 80,000 BP (reproduced with permission from Hen-shilwood et al., Middle Stone Age shell beads from South Africa. Science 304:404. 2004AAAS).

18 Mellars ARTICLES

eral chronological cline in the dis-persal of early Upper Paleolithic cul-ture across Europe and westernAsia11,56,60,70 (Fig. 3). From southwestAsia there is evidence of a relativelysudden and sharply defined transitionfrom typically Middle to typically Up-per Paleolithic technology; (markedby a proliferation of blades, end scrap-ers, burins, and new “type fossil”forms, together with a range of perfo-rated shell ornaments) radiocarbondated at the two sites of Boker Tachtitin southern Israel and Ksar Akil in Leb-anon to around 45,000 to 47,000BP.1,35,60 The date of a similar transi-tion in southeastern Europe, as at Ba-cho Kiro and Temnata in Bulgaria,seems to center on ca. 40,000 to 43,000BP, while in western Europe there is noevidence of any substantial, analogousshift in technology until ca. 38,000 to40,000 BP, in the form of the earliestAurignacian and “Proto-Aurignacian”technologies.1,2,8,11,56,60,71,94 If there isindeed a significant chronological clinein the appearance of distinctively UpperPaleolithic technology from east to westacross Europe, and with a much earlier

emergence of similar features in Africa,this would accord much better with thehypothesis of a gradual dispersal or dif-fusion of these technological elements(regardless of whether carried by newpopulations) than with a totally inde-pendent evolution of the same featureswithin the individual regions of Europe.

Clearly, there is a further potentialparadox inherent in the independentorigin model here. If the argument isthat characteristically Upper Paleo-lithic technology and culture devel-oped entirely independently in severaldifferent regions of Europe, as re-flected by the Chatelperronian inFrance, the Szeletian in Central Eu-rope, and the Uluzzian in Italy, thenthis would require an extraordinarydegree of convergent and simulta-neous evolution in the patterns oftechnological development withinthese different regions. If, on the otherhand, the assumption is that large-scale intercommunication and trans-mission of technology between thesedifferent areas accounts for these con-vergent patterns of development, thiswould imply large-scale technological

diffusion among the later Neander-thal communities extending effec-tively across the whole of Europe and,presumably, the adjacent MiddleEast.3,4,40 But in the latter case, ofcourse, it is difficult to see how onecould exclude the possibility thatthese technological diffusion pro-cesses originated in the gradual dis-persal of anatomically and behavior-ally modern populations from outsidethese regions—that is, ultimatelyfrom adjacent Asian or North Africansources. As I will discuss further, thisis what I would refer to as the inevi-table “bow-wave” effect of technolog-ical and cultural diffusion extendingsome way in advance of the actualdispersal of anatomically modernpopulations into the different regionsof Europe.

The final and perhaps most puz-zling aspect of the local-origins modellies in the ultimate fate of the Nean-derthals. Proponents of the local-ori-gins model would, of course, disputethe notion that there was any inherentcognitive or intellectual superiority ofthe biologically modern populationsover those of the Neanderthals. Theywould also argue that most if not all ofthe technological and symbolic inno-vations that traditionally have beencredited to the dispersal of modernpopulations had already been devel-oped independently among the finalNeanderthal communities, accordingto the multiple-species model for theorigins of behavioral modernity.3,4,40

But this, of course, immediately andinevitably begs the question of exactlywhy and how the Neanderthals de-clined so rapidly to extinction in theface of the modern human dispersalacross Europe. This question becomeseven more acute if we bear in mindthe fact that the Neanderthals werethe product of at least 200,000 years ofbiological and behavioral adaptationto the demanding glacial and perigla-cial environments of Europe, whereasthe intrusive modern populations hadevolved in biological, anatomical, andpresumably behavioral terms to themassively different tropical and sub-tropical environments of sub-SaharanAfrica.5,29,30,95 Stated crudely, if theEuropean Neanderthals were so cog-nitively advanced and had developedmost if not all of the elements of char-

Figure 6. Comparison of artifacts from early Upper Paleolithic “transitional” levels in Europeand later Middle Stone Age levels in South Africa. Note that the South African forms areapproximately twice as old as the typologically and technologically similar European forms(modified from d’Errico4).


acteristically “modern” culture andcognition, why did they succomb sorapidly to a biologically and environ-mentally less well adapted specieswithin a space of, at most, a few thou-sand years?96

DISCUSSION

My overall conclusion is that what-ever weight we may attach to the ca-pacity of the climatic and environ-mental oscillations of OIS-3 to fosteradaptive changes in the behavioralpatterns of later Neanderthal commu-nities, this still remains at best a highlyinadequate explanation to account forthe broad range of radical technologi-cal, social, and cognitive changes thatdefine the classic Middle-Upper Paleo-lithic transition in Europe and westernAsia. I certainly am not suggesting thatthe technological and cultural adapta-tions of Neanderthal populations werestatic throughout this period. Inevita-bly, there would have been significantadaptations in both the technology andeconomic patterns and, no doubt, therelated social organization of the hu-man groups in response to the manyepisodes of climatic change throughoutthe 200,000-year span of the Middle Pa-leolithic sequence, as I have discussedin detail elsewhere.27,31 The critical ob-jections to a strictly in situ model forthe emergence of fully Upper Paleo-lithic culture in Europe remain simplythose of the radical scale and complex-ity of the behavioral changes involved,the clear evidence for the emergence ofmost if not all of these features at amuch earlier date in Africa than in Eu-rope (in close association with the bio-logical emergence of our own species),and what I have described as the ex-traordinary “coincidence” that all ofthese behavioral innovations appear inthe archeological records of Europeand western Asia at almost precisely thesame time as the well-documented ex-pansion of anatomically and geneticallymodern populations across these re-gions, with a clear chronological clinein the appearance of these elementsfrom east to west across the continent(Fig. 3). As I discussed earlier, is it reallyplausible that the dispersal of an en-tirely new population across Europe, bygroups who are generally now seen as aseparate biological species from the Ne-anderthals,29,97 would not bring with it

some new behavioral elements derivedultimately from either African or Asiansources? And if the Neanderthals inde-pendently developed all of these fea-tures, why did they so rapidly becomeextinct in the face of a biologically andenvironmentally less adapted species?

Interaction Scenarios

One element that is, of course, im-plicit and inescapable in any model ofmodern human dispersal across Eu-rope is the occurrence of variousforms of contact, and therefore poten-tial interaction, between the expand-ing sapiens and indigenous Neander-

thal populations across effectively thewhole of the continent. These contactsmust have been repeated and musthave occurred in all the areas occu-pied by Neanderthals at the time ofthe modern human dispersal. Onecritical and unavoidable issue in anyconsideration of modern human dis-persal must therefore be the precisenature of these interactions betweenNeanderthals and modern humansand their potential reflections in thearcheological records of the differentregions of Europe.

There is hardly space here to re-

hearse all of the long-running debatesover potential contact and related “ac-culturation” scenarios between Nean-derthals and modern humans thathave occupied much of the archeolog-ical literature on modern human ori-gins over the past decade.3,4,10,98–102

Ultimately, many of these debates willrest heavily on the accuracy and pre-cision of the associated dating evi-dence, which, in the case of radiocar-bon dates in the region of 30,000 to40,000 BP are notoriously problem-atic, due mainly to the massive prob-lems of contamination effects in thistime range,103 and to the current un-certainties over the precise patterns ofatmospheric 14C fluctuations andtheir effects on associated calibrationcurves.104–106 It is now apparent thatmany of these uncertainties will notbe resolved decisively in the immedi-ate future.

The one point that is now clear is thatin the case of the best-documented andmost widely discussed of these accul-turation scenarios, the French Chatelp-erronian, the totality of the availabledating evidence from radiocarbon,thermoluminescence, uranium-series,electron-spin-resonance, and othermethods now leaves no significantroom for doubt that at least the greaterpart of the Chatelperronian develop-ment in central and western France, in-cluding the much debated levels fromArcy-sur-Cure, must be seen as broadlycontemporaneous with the presence ofvarious forms of “Aurignacian” technol-ogies and associated anatomically mod-ern populations in the adjacent areas ofboth Central Europe and, almost cer-tainly, along the Mediterranean coastand northern Spain.8,10,56,67,107 Theavailable radiocarbon dates for theChatelperronian levels at Arcy-sur-Curecluster around 33,000 to 35,000 BP, andare reinforced by the results of radio-carbon, thermoluminescence, and elec-tron-spin-resonance dating from arange of other sites, including St. Ce-saire, Les Cottes, Le Moustier, CombeSauniere, Roc de Combe, and GrotteXVI, all of which put the time range ofthe Chatelperronian back to, at most,ca. 39,000 to 40,000 BP in uncalibratedradiocarbon terms.10,67,108 By compari-son, we now have multiple radiocarbondates for clear occurrences of early Au-rignacian technology from the sites of

. . . if the EuropeanNeanderthals were socognitively advancedand had developedmost if not all of theelements ofcharacteristically“modern” culture andcognition, why did theysuccomb so rapidly to abiologically andenvironmentally less welladapted species withina space of, at most, afew thousand years?

20 Mellars ARTICLES

Geissenklosterle (level III) and Keil-bergkirche in Germany, and Willendorf(levels 2 and 3) in Austria, clearly withinthe time range of 36,000 to 39,000 BP.These points have now been docu-mented clearly in recent papers by Co-nard and Bolus,8 Conard, Dippon, andGoldberg,109 Haesaerts and Tey-ssandier,110 and Richter and cowork-ers.111 And from France itself, we nowhave a series of 14C dates for early Au-rignacian levels ranging between35,000 and 37,000 BP, with the possi-bility of even earlier dates for the cur-rently undated bladelet Aurignacianlevel (layer K) at the base of the longAurignacian sequence at Le Piage.67,107

Even if we set aside the disputed inter-stratifications of Aurignacian and Chat-elperronian levels in three separateFrench sites (Le Piage, Roc de Combe,and Chatelperron itself)112 there can beno serious doubt that the greater part ofthe Chatelperronian sequence inFrance, including the occurrence ofsimple bone tools and associatedgrooved or perforated animal-toothpendants at Arcy-sur-Cure, are contem-poraneous with the presence of bothAurignacian technologies and appar-ently associated anatomically modernpopulations in the closely adjacent ar-eas of Central Europe. Similarly, therecan be no doubt that distinctively“proto-Aurignacian” bladelet industrieswere being manufactured at the AbriFumane and other sites along the Med-iterranean coast at broadly the samedate, between ca. 36,000 and 39,000BP.10,67,113–115

The critical question in this contextis exactly what significance we shouldattach to the presence of these simplebone tools and animal-tooth pendantsin the Chatelperronian levels at Arcy-sur-Cure and, in a few isolated cases,in other French Chatelperronian sites.As I have discussed elsewhere,10 theNeanderthals were clearly expertcraftsmen. The ability to shape simplebone tools or to incise grooves or per-forations in the roots of animal teethwould have posed little challenge togroups who could shape woodenspears or produce elegantly controlledLevallois points or cordiform bifaces,given the opportunity to observe thesetechnologies (or their products at firsthand).102 Clearly, the critical issue iswhether the production and use of

these items carried precisely the samesocial and cultural meanings amongthe final Neanderthal communities ofwestern Europe as they did among theintrusive populations of biologicallyand behaviorally modern people. Thealternative, of course, is that these ar-tifacts served as various forms of per-sonal or sexual display or prestigebehavior within the social and demo-graphic context of the late Neander-thal communities and in this wayplayed a vital role in their demo-graphic selection and competitivestrategies.10,17,116 As I have com-

mented elsewhere,10 if the earliest an-atomically modern populations arrivedin western Europe manufacturing com-plex bone and antler tools and wearinga variety of personal ornaments andother items of social display, as de-monstrably they did, then some ex-change or replication of these behav-iors by the local Neanderthal groupswould seem an inevitable and totallypredictable reaction, as observed ineffectively all recent contact situa-tions between indigenous and intru-

sive, more technologically “advanced”groups. Put differently “in a contract-ing, competitive, late Neanderthalworld, it may have been precisely theability to copy the habits or appear-ance of the new, intrusive groupswhich conveyed increased social orpersonal prestige, or even improvedmating success, within the local or re-gional groups. If this were the case,then this could have had a critical im-pact on the evolutionary survivalstrategies of the final Neanderthalgroups”67 (p 44). The exchange, ofcourse, is unlikely to have been a one-sided process; it is equally predictablethat several other aspects of behavior,such as specific hunting strategies orthe use of new raw-material supplieswould have been exchanged betweenthe Neanderthals and the incomingmodern groups. In this sense the word“acculturation” should perhaps beabandoned, if only because of its po-tential to be misrepresented in socialor socio-political terms.40 But to as-sume that some exchange of technol-ogy between the indigenous and intru-sive populations necessarily impliesidentical social and cognitive mean-ings for the technological elements in-volved would not simply be logicallyunwarranted, but positively bad an-thropology, as numerous ethno-graphic and anthropological studiesof recent ethnic contact situationshave revealed.117 To argue in theseterms seems to me not so much reac-tionary, hidebound, and politically in-correct conservatism, as Zilhao40 hasrecently suggested, but the most bal-anced and economical way of ac-counting for the totality of the avail-able archeological, biological, andchronological data.

Needless to say, one would not ex-pect the transfer of technology be-tween the sapiens and Neanderthalpopulations (or vice versa) to involveexact replication of the various tech-nological elements in question. Eachelement would, no doubt, be assimi-lated and integrated into the recipientcommunities in terms of their ownpreexisting technological practicesand ideological structures.102,117 Thisis clearly apparent in both the lithictechnology and the majority of boneartifacts of the late Chatelperroniangroups, neither of which replicates

. . . if the earliestanatomically modernpopulations arrived inwestern Europemanufacturing complexbone and antler toolsand wearing a variety ofpersonal ornaments andother items of socialdisplay, asdemonstrably they did,then some exchange orreplication of thesebehaviors by the localNeanderthal groupswould seem aninevitable and totallypredictable reaction . . .


precisely those of the earliest Aurigna-cian populations. Nevertheless, Ran-dall White118 has shown that certainspecific elements of the nonlithic arti-facts from Arcy-sur-Cure do exhibitsuch specific similarities to thosefrom nearby Aurignacian sites (suchas the frequent use of fox canines aspersonal ornaments and the presenceof distinctive bone tubes and ivoryring-like forms) that probability thatthese forms originated entirely inde-pendently in the two groups seemsvirtually inconceivable. While manyof the bone artifacts at Arcy-sur-Curecan reliably be shown to have beenproduced on the site,3 the possibilityof an actual exchange of certain itemssuch as personal ornaments betweenthe Chatelperronian and Aurignaciangroups can in no way be ruled out, asHublin98 and others have stressed.The possibility that these exchangesinvolved some limited degree of inter-breeding between the two populationscannot be ruled out from either theDNA or skeletal evidence29,47,49 andshould also be taken into account.

In this context, one should recallFrancesco d’Errico’s4 recent sugges-tion that “it may have been preciselythe new situation involving contactbetween anatomically modern peopleand Neanderthals, and the conse-quent problems of cultural and bio-logical identity, that stimulated an ex-plosion in the production of symbolicobjects on both sides.” While this sug-gestion seems to me astute and poten-tially highly germane to the presentdiscussion, it is, of course, a specifi-cally interactive model, which impliesand assumes a close contemporaneityand direct interaction between thetwo groups. It is frankly difficult tovisualize in this situation how onewould ever discriminate definitivelybetween the independent-evolutionmodel versus acculturation scenariosfor the emergence of distinctively Up-per Paleolithic features among the fi-nal Neanderthal populations.

“Bow-Wave” Diffusion Effects

All of these arguments about directinteraction or acculturation effects ofcourse rest heavily on the detailedspace-time patterning of the final Ne-anderthal and earliest anatomicallymodern populations, and on the accu-

racy and precision of the associateddating evidence. There is, however, afurther major factor to be taken intoaccount in this context, which mightbe most conveniently referred to asthe ripple or “bow-wave” effect of cul-tural and technological diffusion, po-tentially extending well in advance ofthe actual dispersal of behaviorallyand anatomically modern populationsacross Europe.10,31 The premise, quitesimply, is that among the later Nean-derthal populations of Europe theremust inevitably have been variousforms of communication or interac-tion between geographically adjacentgroups. Whether visualized in termsof systems of local mate exchange orthe exchange of flint or other raw ma-terials,12,119,120 these linkages arelikely to have provided potential chan-

nels of communication for particularelements of technology or technologi-cal innovations extending across largeareas of Europe, and potentially be-tween communities that were onlydistantly related in social and demo-graphic terms. These “chains of con-nection” as John Mulvaney121 has de-scribed them, have been widelydocumented among recent hunter-gatherer groups, and are known tohave carried both technological ideasand particular elements of materialculture, such as prized species of ma-rine shells and especially valued rawmaterials, over distances of severalhundred and, in some cases, thou-sands of kilometres.122 Similar pat-terns can be seen in the diffusion ofspecific elements of European tech-

nology, such as metal knives, guns,and horse transportation, among thenative populations of North Americaand Canada at the time of Europeancontact.117 One critical factor in therate of dispersal of any technologicalinnovations of this kind would pre-sumably have been the relative func-tional efficiency of the innovations inquestion in comparison with the pre-ceding Middle Paleolithic techniques.But it is not difficult to visualize howcertain technological elements thathad strong adaptive advantages, suchas new forms of skin-working technol-ogy, reflected in the use of new end-scraper forms, or simple forms ofbone and antler technology, couldhave dispersed in this kind of “bow-wave” diffusion process well in ad-vance of the dispersal of anatomicallymodern populations into the morecentral and western parts of Europe.Once again, such patterns are notmerely plausible, but arguably inevi-table and predictable in the social anddemographic context of the late Nean-derthal groups. To describe this kindof diffusion process as “acculturation”may or may not be appropriate. But itcould well have served as an impor-tant factor in the earliest appearanceof certain distinctively Upper Paleo-lithic elements of technology overmany areas of western Asia and Eu-rope in the period between ca. 45,000and 35,000 BP.

“Contextual” Factors in EarlyModern Culture

All expressions of human cultureare, of course, ultimately dependentnot only on the underlying cognitiveand technological repertoires of thesocieties involved, but also on theirinteraction with purely local condi-tions of various environmental fac-tors, population densities, and so on.9

Recently there has been considerabledebate on the contribution of theseso-called contextual factors in thevarying geographical expressions ofearly “modern” culture, centering onthe archeological records of both Af-rica and Europe.5,7,8,73 In southern Af-rica, most of the debate has focusedon how the archeological expressionsof new cultural and cognitive patternsmay have been influenced by chang-

. . . among the laterNeanderthal populationsof Europe there mustinevitably have beenvarious forms ofcommunication orinteraction betweengeographicallyadjacent groups.

22 Mellars ARTICLES

ing population densities of local com-munities and the potential impact ofthese episodes of population increaseor decrease on local social and eco-nomic patterns.5,7,72,73 It goes withoutsaying that these local contextual fac-tors can be invoked only in contextswhere both the innate cognitive ca-pacities for particular patterns of be-havior and the essential technologicalexpertise for the behaviors in questionare already present in the populationsinvolved.

These factors, however, may be cen-tral to understanding the varying ex-pressions of characteristically earlyUpper Paleolithic culture in differentregions of Europe and Western Asia.It has often been suggested, for exam-ple, that the earliest stages of the Up-per Paleolithic sequence in the MiddleEast and parts of Mediterranean Eu-rope are poorly equipped in terms ofbone and antler technology.39 In real-ity, this is a considerable overstate-ment, since a wide range of bone andantler artifacts are well represented inthe early Aurignacian levels at Hay-onim, Kebara Cave, and elsewhere inIsrael, dated to around 34,000 to36,000 BP60,123 and in the similar Au-rignacian levels (before 32,000 BP) atKsar Akil in Lebanon.124 But in theseareas, where a large part of the foodsupply was almost certainly derivedfrom plant foods rather than animalresources, and where wood is likely tohave been far more readily availablefor tool manufacture than in contem-porary sites in most of northern andwestern Europe, a reduced emphasison bone and antler for tool productionis no doubt largely predictable in en-vironmental terms. The same could besaid of many parts of southern andMediterranean Europe, where earlyUpper Paleolithic bone tools are sim-ilarly relatively sparse.

Conard and Bolus8 have recently ar-gued that similar environmental fac-tors are likely to have been effective inthe emergence of highly complexforms of bone, antler, and ivory tech-nology in the early Aurignacian sitesin southern Germany, and perhapsalso in the florescence of both per-sonal ornaments and the impressivemobiliary art objects from sites suchas Vogelherd, Geissenklosterle, andHohlenstein Stadel. In brief, their ar-

gument is that local climatic and eco-logical conditions in this region couldhave fostered relatively high densitiesof local populations, which may havebeen largely sedentary over at leastpart of the annual cycle. By analogywith the behavior of recent hunter-gatherer groups in similar arctic andperiglacial environments, such as theInuit, it could be argued that thiscould well have fostered more com-plex patterns of both technology andvarious kinds of ceremonial thanthose practiced by groups in moretemperate or forested environ-ments.34,125,126 One could add to theirarguments that a strong focus on spe-cifically animal-centered art and tech-nology would hardly be surprisingamong groups who are likely to havebeen almost entirely dependent on an-imal resources for their daily and an-nual food supplies. It is therefore un-likely to be a coincidence that themost technologically and artisticallycomplex expressions of Aurignacianculture in Europe are found in themost northerly, periglacial parts of itsgeographical range. Jochim,127 I,128

and others have suggested similar en-vironmentally related factors for theextraordinary concentration of bothUpper Paleolithic cave and mobiliaryart within the densely occupied re-gions of southwestern France, thePyrenees, and Cantabrian Spain. Inmy view, none of this detracts fromthe striking uniformity of most as-pects of early Upper Paleolithic cul-ture over large areas of Europe andthe adjacent Middle East, as reflectedabove all in the widespread distribu-tion of the highly distinctive Aurigna-cian and Proto-Aurignacian technolo-gies.11,56,70,71,129 But we shouldcertainly not fall into the trap of ex-pecting to find an identical expressionof these early forms of Upper Paleo-lithic culture over the whole of thehighly environmentally diverse re-gions of Europe and southwest Asia. Itgoes without saying that even greatertechnological, economic, and socialadaptations would be expected in thepreceding dispersal of anatomicallymodern populations from Africa tothe vastly differing environments ofwestern and northern Eurasia.93

When allowance is made for these fac-tors, the broad similarities of many

aspects of early modern technologyand culture extending from the south-ern tip of Africa to the Atlantic coastof western Europe becomes, arguably,even more remarkable.

The Human Revolution?

In conclusion, we might ask whatrelevance all of this has to the notionof an “Upper Paleolithic Revolution”associated with the appearance ofmodern humans in Europe or, indeed,a more general “human revolution”associated with the emergence of ourspecies as a whole, both of which havegenerated lively debate in the recentliterature.1,2,5–7,73 Clearly, there hasbeen confusion in some of the recentdiscussions of these issues. Those ofus who have argued for the notion ofan effective revolution in human be-havioral patterns over the period ofthe conventional Middle to Upper Pa-leolithic transition in Europe andwestern Asia have always tried tomake it clear that we were visualizingthis phenomenon essentially as a be-fore-and-after scenario, associated di-rectly with the appearance of newpopulations in Europe and derivingultimately from regions beyond Eu-rope, in the ways discussed in the ear-lier part of this paper.1,2,9,14,90,116 Inother words, this pattern could beseen as a revolution in terms of itsreflection in the archeological recordsof the classic Middle to Upper Paleo-lithic transition, but emphatically notas implying an autochtonous, in situevolution of these behavioral patternswithin Europe itself. My own publica-tions from 1989 onward have alwaystried to make this implication clear.Whether this behavioral revolutionoriginated in some closely adjacentcore area, such as the Nile valley orNortheast Africa, or in more distantparts of Africa remains the central el-ement in most of the recent de-bates.1,2,5,6,9,90,93

How far we choose to visualizewhat happened in Africa as reflectinga revolution seems to me largely aquestion of semantics and, no doubt,personal taste. McBrearty andBrooks6 were quite right to stress thecontrasts between the archeologicalrecords of Europe and those of Africain this context in their influential pa-per entitled, engagingly, “The Revolu-


tion That Wasn’t.” Indeed, I had triedto make the same points myself in1989, when I discussed in detail thearcheological records from KlasiesRiver Mouth and elsewhere showing amuch earlier emergence of many dis-tinctively “modern” (or even UpperPaleolithic) technological features insouthern Africa than in Europe or theNear East.130 Subsequent discoveriesat the Blombos Cave and elsewherehave only served to underscore thispoint.

Whether or not the whole notion of“revolutions” in early human develop-ment (or, indeed, in more recentphases of prehistory) is of any value inthis context could no doubt be de-bated at some length, as Ofer Bar-Yo-sef1,2 has recently discussed very ef-fectively. But it could certainly beargued that discoveries over the pastfew years have pointed to a muchmore rapid emergence of many of themost widely accepted hallmarks ofsupposedly modern behavioral pat-terns in Africa than was apparent evena decade ago. From the combined dis-coveries at Klasies River Mouth andthe Blombos Cave, for example, wecan now show that at least six or sevenof the most striking features of “mod-ern” technology had appeared in thisregion of southern Africa over, atmost, ca. 10,000 years. As discussedearlier, these include typically UpperPaleolithic end scraper and burinforms, extensively shaped bone tools,large-scale transport of high-qualityraw materials, carefully shaped insetsfor multi-component hafted tools,clearly imposed form (or “style”) intool manufacture, abundant seashellornaments, and the earliest unambig-uous examples of complex design or“abstract-art” motifs (Figs. 4–6). In-terestingly, these include most of thefeatures that Henshilwood and Mar-ean7 have recently discussed in their“trait list” of conventionally modernbehavioral features. While they appar-ently attribute this list to an article Ipublished in 1973,68 it should be re-called that this was never intended asmore than an empirical contrast be-tween the archeological records of theUpper versus Middle Paleolithic inone small area of Europe, the classicPerigord region of southwesternFrance. It was never intended or pre-

sented as any kind of global charac-terization of “modern” behavioral pat-terns across Europe as a whole, letalone on a more intercontinentalscale! To find most of the elements onthis 30-year-old French “trait list”cropping up in the archeologicalrecords of southern Africa between70,000 and 80,000 years ago is at leastintriguing and, as I have argued in thepreceding sections, potentially highlysignificant in evolutionary and cogni-tive terms. In this context, it may wellbe significant that we now have DNAevidence of a major demographic andgeographical expansion of geneticallymodern populations in Africa ataround 60,000 to 80,000 BP, best re-flected in the expansion of the L2 andL3 mitochondrial lineages.42,131

How far other elements of these

supposedly modern behavioral fea-tures can be identified significantlyearlier than ca. 80,000 BP in Africa orelsewhere will no doubt remain a crit-ical focus for future research. Asnoted earlier, there are slightly con-troversial claims for highly shapedbarbed bone spear points from theKatanda sites in former Zaire provi-sionally dated to around 90,000BP84,85 and unambiguous indicationsof ceremonial burials associated witha range of perforated seashell orna-ments and large quantities of redochre at the site of Qafzeh in northernIsrael, dated to ca. 90,000 to 100,000BP and associated with essentiallymodern skeletal populations.60,89 Thefact that the lithic technology associ-

ated with the Qafzeh burials is in allrespects typically Middle Paleolithicin character could be seen as a strongindication that at least certain basicfeatures of unambiguously symbolicand ceremonial behavior hademerged among these early anatomi-cally modern populations before anyobvious technological transition totypically Upper Paleolithic technol-ogy. The same inference might bedrawn from the presence of clearlyceremonial burials and human crema-tions in Australia dated to at least40,000 BP and again associated withessentially Middle Paleolithic technol-ogy.122,132,133 Presumably these reflectan early dispersal of anatomically andgenetically modern populations fromAfrica—via Asia—to Australia some-time before the emergence of moreadvanced technologies in the pre-sumed African homeland.29,30 Thereare also some claims for potentiallyritualistic or ceremonial treatment ofthe early anatomically modern re-mains recently reported from Herto inEthiopia, extending back to ca.150,000 to 160,000 BP.92 All of thesediscoveries could be seen as reflectingthe emergence of a strong symboliccomponent in human behavioral pat-terns substantially before any majorchange in the associated lithic andbone technologies.

The remaining features that aresometimes cited for the emergence of“modern” behavioral patterns in Af-rica prior to ca. 100,000 to 150,000 BPare arguably of more questionable sig-nificance. These include the presenceof highly developed blade technologyat sites such as Kapthurin in Kenya,dated to ca. 250,000 BP, the extensiveuse of red ochre at the Kapthurin sitesand the Twin Rivers site in Zambia ata broadly similar date, and the occa-sional occurrence of backed segmentforms at apparently early MiddleStone Age sites.6,86,87,134 However, allof these features have potential paral-lels from unquestionably Mousterianor Middle Paleolithic sites in eitherEurope or Western Asia4,27,80 andcould most economically be seen aspart of the basic cultural repertoireassociated with pre-anatomicallymodern human populations in bothAfrica and Eurasia. Foley andLahr30,135 have argued that these be-

Those of us who haveargued for the notion ofan effective revolution inhuman behavioralpatterns . . . have alwaystried to make it clearthat we were visualizingthis phenomenonessentially as a before-and-after scenario . . .

24 Mellars ARTICLES

havioral elements could be associatedwith an earlier population dispersalfrom Africa to Eurasia associated withfully developed Middle Paleolithic(Mode 3) technologies, and perhapswith the hypothetical common ances-tor of both the European Neander-thals and the African sapiens popula-tions, which they have attributed tothe Homo helmei lineage.

The full cognitive and evolution-ary implications of all these recentdiscoveries in the archeologicalrecords of Africa and Eurasia havestill to be worked out. As I have ar-gued, the most striking feature over-all is the very much earlier appear-ance of a range of unambiguous andrelatively complex symbolic compo-nents of material culture in associa-tion with populations of anatomi-cally modern humans in Africa andthe immediately adjacent parts ofsouthwest Asia than among the con-temporaneous populations of Euro-pean Neanderthals. How far thesedevelopments may be associatedwith the emergence of more complexlanguage patterns, changes in theneurological structure of the brain,or specific genetic mutations, suchas the recently discovered FOXP2

gene,36 have been debated at lengthin the recent literature, and I will notattempt to pursue these argumentshere.5,7,17,20 –28,73 Collectively, how-ever, these features could be arguedto reflect a significant “revolution” inhuman behavioral and cognitive pat-terns, associated closely with the bi-ological and evolutionary emergenceof our own species. As the evidencestands at present I suggest that thesefeatures can be accommodated moreeconomically in terms of a single-species model for the emergence ofat least most of the basic elements ofbehavioral “modernity,” howeverthat concept is defined, than interms of a massively coincidence-de-pendent model of “multiple-species”origins.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to Marta Lahr for in-viting me to submit this article, and toher, Robert Foley, Chris Stringer, OferBar-Yosef, Richard Klein, JanuszKozlowski, Peter Forster, BradGravina, Terry Hopkinson, Christo-

pher Henshilwood, Francescod’Errico, and other colleagues forvaluable discussions of the pointsraised in the paper. The research wassupported by grants from the BritishAcademy and Corpus Christi College,Cambridge.

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the impossible coincidence. a single-species model...

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