All,
The following articles are part of the “advanced” listing. Unless I am wrong, it seems that they can only be accessed through individual or institutional subscriptions.
Jacques Cinq-Mars
de Lumley, Henry. 2006. Il y a 400 000 ans : la domestication du feu, un formidable moteur d’hominisation. C. R. Palevol 5.
Abstract:
400 000 years ago: Domestication of fire, an extraordinary motor of hominization.
About 400 000 years ago, with the appearance of the first structured fire-places, a more organized social life may have developed around fire. Fire was an extraordinary motor of hominization. It illuminates and prolongs the day at the expense of the night; it allowed man to penetrate into caverns. It warms and extends summer at the expense of winter; it allowed man to invade the moderate cold zones of the planet. It enabled man to cook and thus to reduce parasitosis. It improves tool manufacture by allowing spear points to be hardened in the fire. But above all, it is a factor of conviviality. In fact, around hearths, a group spirit is strengthened and, without doubt, the first myths are born. The first regional cultural traditions emerge, as well as the first cultural identities, with the appearance of styles in the fabrication of certain tools, of designs.
Keywords:
Fire domestication; Fire-places; Middle Pleistocene; Acheulean; Prehistorical sites
de Lumley , Henry. 2006. Il y a 2,5 millions d’années… un seuil majeur de l’hominisation. L’émergence de la pensée conceptuelle et des stratégies maîtrisées du débitage de la Pierre. C. R. Palevol 5.
Abstract:
Two and a half million years ago… A great step in hominization. Appearance of conceptual thinking and mastered strategies of stone débitage.
The oldest manufactured tools, dating back to 2.5 Myr in Gona, region of Hadar, in the Northeast of Ethiopia (Kada Gona, EG 10, EG 12, OG 6, OG 7), the slightly more recent ones of Omo 71 (2.3 Myr), of Fejej FJ-1 (2 Myr), also in Ethiopia, or the Lokalelei ones (2.3 Myr) in Kenya, bear evidence to the emergence of conceptual thinking and of the possibility for the first men to conceive a model. As man had become a meat consumer, his concern when making a tool was to obtain a sharp instrument intended to disarticulate the flesh of big herbivores or to cut meat. A tool conceived and then manufactured in the light of a project, not always immediate but sometimes remote in time, is part of the chaîne opératoire. In order to make the planned model, the craftsman collects rocks at a certain distance and chooses them according to their petrographic and morphologic nature. Once transported to the workplace, he knaps them, using well-mastered strategies of débitage governed by know-how, which imply transmitted instruction. The tools manufactured this way will be then transported to the place where they will be used, for instance around the carcass of a big herbivore in order top cut it. In inventing the manufactured tool, man introduced a new dimension to the History of the Universe and Life: culture.
Keywords:
Stone splitting; Conceptual thought; Outset of hominization
de Lumley, Henry, Ousmane Chérif Touré, Mouamar Ould Rachid,
Anne-Marie Moigne, Anne Dambricourt-Malassé, Thibaud Saos,
David Pleurdeau, Christine Seaseau, Michel Diebold et Yves Kernaleguen. 2006. Découverte d’un assemblage lithique sous un encroûtement calcaire à El Beyyed Yeslem II, Mauritanie. C R Palevol 5.
Abstract:
Discovery of a lithic assemblage under a calcrete at El Beyyed Yeslem II, Mauritania.
Scientific field trips in the Adrar area are the result of a scientific collaboration between the Institute of Human Palaeontology (Paris, France), the European Prehistoric Research Centre of Tautavel (France) and the Mauritanian Scientific Institute of Research to study the Early Palaeolithic of Adrar in Mauritania. In this area, all the evolution stages of civilizations were found from the Palaeolithic to the Neolithic. The site of El Beyyed, discovered by T. Monod in 1934, revealed a concentration of prehistoric sites with a material of Acheulean age. Other sites recently discovered, Yeslem II and Yeslem III, respectively a site with lithic assemblage in situ found in stratigraphy and a site with fauna associated with lithic tools inside a calcareous crust, make it possible to explore the questions relating to palaeoenvironments and diversity of the human occupations in Mauritanian Adrar.
Keywords:
Acheulean; Stratigraphy; Fauna
Le Tensorer, Jean-Marie. 2006. Les cultures acheuléennes et la question de l’émergence de la pensée symbolique chez Homo erectus à partir des données relatives à la forme symétrique et harmonique des bifaces. C R Palevol 5.
Abstract:
The Acheulean cultures and the question of the emergence of symbolic thought among Homo erectus from the data related to morphological symmetry and aesthetic of the bifaces.
It is usually considered that artistic creativity is a trait of the modern human and that art appears only with Homo sapiens, at the beginning of the Upper Palaeolithic. If this fact seems well established, however it looks likely that the emergence of symbolic thought and aesthetic feeling has to be dated back to the Old Palaeolithic. Indeed, the Acheulean biface shows a morphological symmetry and a remarkable aesthetic. Whenever this tool exclusively constitutes the lithic assemblage of a culture, as it is the case in the site of Nadaouiyeh Aïn Askar (central Syria), it can be suggested that it represents a strong symbolic component. The question is, was this harmonic aspect of the form really conceived by the tool maker or does it result from an unconscious phenomenon related to the knapping of the artefact? If it is indeed a conscious and desired symmetry, it is not impossible that the artisan tried to project a part of him into the tool. Through this harmonic component of the bifaces, it seems that Homo erectus was already capable of symbolic behaviour and a kind of artistic creativity. It is not a question of art as traditional conception, but probably of its first steps.
Keywords:
Old Palaeolithic; Acheulean; Homo erectus; Biface; Art; Symbolic thought
Paterne, Martine. 2006. Les variations climatiques au Pléistocène en région méditerranéenne. C R Palevol 5.
Abstract:
Climatic variations in the Mediterranean Region during the Pleistocene.
One peculiar feature of the Mediterranean Sea is the existence of numerous layers of dark pelagic sediments, rich in organic carbon, known as sapropels. They occurred during warm climatic periods as well as during cold and transitional periods since 7 Ma, and similar deposits were recognised from tectonically uplifted marine cliffs since 25 Ma. They attest brief periods of bottom water anoxia, attributed to a decrease in the Mediterranean Sea surface density and consequently a reduction of the Mediterranean Sea overturning. Such a decrease may be related either to huge floods of the Nile related to the intensity of the African monsoon or to a change of the precipitation– evaporation budget over the Mediterranean region. As precisely dated by orbital tuning, these events permit the attainment of a global time-scale of the geological record for the Late Neogene.
Keywords:
Mediterranean Sea; Sapropels; African monsoon; Hydrological cycle
Sonakia, Arun, et Henry de Lumley. 2006. Narmada Homo erectus – A possible ancestor of the modern Indian. C R Palevol 5.
Abstract:
Tracing continuity of evolving humans with the aid of their scanty skeletal remains is an intricate puzzle. In the specific case of Indian sub-continent, the so-far oldest human ancestor, the Narmada hominid, has wider spatial distance both from the antecedents on one side and the descendents on the other side. Ramapithecus, a geographically closely located primate earlier considered of hominidae affinity, is now far out of human lineage. Distance to the nearest possible Homo erectus remains for Southeast and East Asia and the westward located Levantine, African and European remains are no less than exorbitant three to four thousand kilometres from the Hathnora fossil locality. The nearest possible 25 000–30 000-year-old descendents of Batadombalena (Sri Lanka), Darra-i-Kur (Afghanistan), Kurnool District caves, or even younger Bhimbetka, Sarai Nahar, Mahadaha, Lothal, Dholavira of 4000–10 000-year-old antiquity are closely located (Fig. 1). A possible hierarchical relationship is attempted.
Keywords:
Homo erectus; Modern Indian; Narmada; India
Vandermeersch, Bernard. 2006. Ce que nous apprennent les premières sepultures. C R Palevol 5.
Abstract:
What the first burials tell us?
Burials are the only one of the multiple practices used in funerary purposes that can be interpreted by archaeologists without ambiguity. Normally, it is easy to recognise a burial, even if the limits of the grave have disappeared. If the skeleton is preserved in anatomical position or if the bones are bundled together in a small place a human intervention to protect them can be inferred. The most ancient burials have been found in the Near East in the caves of Qafzeh (95 ± 5 kyr) and Skhul (101 ± 12 kyr). It is possible that the Tabun-1 burial (Israel) is older (165 ± 16 kyr), but its stratigraphic position and the age of the layer in which it was uncovered are uncertain. If Tabun is the oldest, it is a Neandertal burial; if the oldest are those of Skhul and Qafzeh, they are morphologically modern human burials. But, more importantly, in all these cases, the burials are associated with artefacts of the Mousterian culture. The custom of burying the dead was ‘invented’ by the Mousterians. During tens of millennia, the burials were limited to the Mousterian culture before to diffusing, together with the Upper Palaeolithic implements, all over the world. Males, females and children were buried, but only a very few individuals seemed to have received this particular treatment. We know of a maximum of 30 Mousterian burials; however, the remains of more than 400 individuals have been discovered. At the very least, these burials demonstrate that Mousterian people had some respect for the dead. But, when offerings are part of the internment, like the antler over the hands of the Qafzeh 11 adolescent, the burial appears to have greater significance. Even in these cases, however, it is difficult to associate this as part of a religious ritual. Burial is not a mark of religiosity, but of social practices. Even if we suspect that there was a belief in an afterlife, this does not offer proof of the presence of religion. Finally, the diversity of the burials in the Mousterian probably means that the cultural diversity of this widespread Middle Palaeolithic civilisation was greater than it appears from the technological remains.
Keywords:
Burials; Mousterian; Near East; Neandertals; Modern Humans
