Behavioral modernity
These human universal patterns include cumulative cultural adaptation, social norms, language, and extensive help and cooperation beyond close kin.
[3][17] Anthropologist John Shea outlines a variety of problems with this concept, arguing instead for "behavioral variability", which, according to the author, better describes the archaeological record.
Anthropologist Richard Klein specifically describes that evidence of fishing, tools made from bone, hearths, significant artifact diversity, and elaborate graves are all absent before this point.
[clarification needed][23] Building on the FOXP2 gene hypothesis, cognitive scientist Philip Lieberman has argued that proto-language behaviour existed prior to 50,000 BP, albeit in a more primitive form.
Lieberman has advanced fossil evidence, such as neck and throat dimensions, to demonstrate that so-called “anatomically modern” humans from 100,000 BP continued to evolve their SVT (supralaryngeal vocal tract), which already possessed a horizontal portion (SVTh) capable of producing many phonemes which were mostly consonants.
[26] Contrasted with this view of a spontaneous leap in cognition among ancient humans, some anthropologists like Alison S. Brooks, primarily working in African archaeology, point to the gradual accumulation of "modern" behaviors, starting well before the 50,000-year benchmark of the Upper Paleolithic Revolution models.
[8][3][27] Howiesons Poort, Blombos, and other South African archaeological sites, for example, show evidence of marine resource acquisition, trade, the making of bone tools, blade and microlithic technology, and abstract ornamentation at least by 80,000 years ago.
[8][9] Given evidence from Africa and the Middle East, a variety of hypotheses have been put forth to describe an earlier, gradual transition from simple to more complex human behavior.
Some authors have pushed back the appearance of fully modern behavior to around 80,000 years ago or earlier in order to incorporate the South African data.
These features include blade and microlithic technology, bone tools, increased geographic range, specialized hunting, the use of aquatic resources, long-distance trade, systematic processing and use of pigment, and art and decoration.
Between these extremes is the view—currently supported by archaeologists Chris Henshilwood,[29] Curtis Marean,[3] Ian Watts[30] and others—that there was indeed some kind of "human revolution" but that it occurred in Africa and spanned tens of thousands of years.
[31] In other words, it was a relatively accelerated process, too rapid for ordinary Darwinian "descent with modification" yet too gradual to be attributed to a single genetic or other sudden event.
Recently discovered at sites such as Blombos Cave and Pinnacle Point, South Africa, pierced shells, pigments and other striking signs of personal ornamentation have been dated within a time-window of 70,000–160,000 years ago in the African Middle Stone Age, suggesting that the emergence of Homo sapiens coincided, after all, with the transition to modern cognition and behaviour.
[32] While viewing the emergence of language as a "revolutionary" development, this school of thought generally attributes it to cumulative social, cognitive and cultural evolutionary processes as opposed to a single genetic mutation.
[33] A further view, taken by archaeologists such as Francesco d'Errico[28] and João Zilhão,[34] is a multi-species perspective arguing that evidence for symbolic culture, in the form of utilised pigments and pierced shells, are also found in Neanderthal sites, independently of any "modern" human influence.
Analysis shows that a liquefied pigment-rich mixture was produced and stored in the two abalone shells, and that ochre, bone, charcoal, grindstones, and hammer-stones also formed a composite part of the toolkits.
Evidence for the complexity of the task includes procuring and combining raw materials from various sources (implying they had a mental template of the process they would follow), possibly using pyrotechnology to facilitate fat extraction from bone, using a probable recipe to produce the compound, and the use of shell containers for mixing and storage for later use.
[57][58][59] Modern behaviors, such as the making of shell beads, bone tools and arrows, and the use of ochre pigment, are evident at a Kenyan site by 78,000–67,000 years ago.
[60] Evidence of early stone-tipped projectile weapons (a characteristic tool of Homo sapiens), the stone tips of javelins or throwing spears, were discovered in 2013 at the Ethiopian site of Gademotta, and date to around 279,000 years ago.
[9] Establishing a reliance on predictable shellfish deposits, for example, could reduce mobility and facilitate complex social systems and symbolic behavior.
[8] Humans in North Africa (Nazlet Sabaha, Egypt) are known to have dabbled in chert mining, as early as ≈100,000 years ago, for the construction of stone tools.
[61][62] Evidence was found in 2018, dating to about 320,000 years ago, at the Kenyan site of Olorgesailie, of the early emergence of modern behaviors including: long-distance trade networks (involving goods such as obsidian), the use of pigments, and the possible making of projectile points.
[40][41][42] In 2019, further evidence of early complex projectile weapons in Africa was found at Aduma, Ethiopia, dated 100,000–80,000 years ago, in the form of points considered likely to belong to darts delivered by spear throwers.
In light of a growing body of evidence of Neanderthal culture and tool complexes some researchers have put forth a "multiple species model" for behavioral modernity.
