One Kind of Stone: What 60 Butchered Bison Reveal About Middle Pleistocene Planning The site where hominins don’t behave the way they’re supposed to

At Gran Dolina ~400 ka, hominins butchered 60+ bison using tools made almost exclusively from one type of stone. New research links this rare pattern to some of the earliest evidence of communal hunting. #Paleoanthropology #Atapuerca #MiddlePleistocene www.anthropology.net/p/one-kind-o...

Homo heidelbergensis and The Origins of The Middle Stone Age: The Kabwe (Broken Hill) Lithic Assemblage - African Archaeological Review The Middle Stone Age (MSA) saw the emergence of novel behaviours in the archaeological record and is generally associated with our own species, Homo sapiens. Yet, most archaeological assemblages contain no fossil remains, with those rare assemblages with a fossil association giving a less than clear-cut picture. Here, we describe the lithic assemblage from Kabwe, Zambia, a cave site that was originally discovered in the early twentieth century and is most famous for the Kabwe cranium, an exceptionally well-preserved Middle Pleistocene Homo fossil. The nature of the assemblage’s excavation means that it is not well-provenanced. To address this issue, we draw on archival data related to the original excavations and discoveries during the 1920s and use the remains of original matrix still adhering to several of the lithic artefacts to separate out the assemblage stratigraphically. This indicates no significant difference in technological strategies across the assemblage. Whilst there is an Early Stone Age component to the assemblage in the form of spheroids, it is generally consistent with MSA technological strategies, including notably Levallois-like and laminar modes of production evident from cores and debitage. We thus interpret the Kabwe assemblage as a transitional ESA/MSA industry. Due to the possible association with Homo heidelbergensis sensu lato fossils in the form of both the Kabwe cranium and postcranial remains, this hints that the early MSA could have included other members of our clade rather than just Homo sapiens, complicating current models of MSA origins.

The #Kabwe lithic assemblage in #Zambia

#Hheidelbergensis and the origin of the #MiddleStoneAge

#archaeology #Africa #MiddlePleistocene

link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10437-0...

Published in the Journal of Geographical Sciences, a research team integrates multi-proxy evidence to reconstruct local ecological conditions.
#MiddlePleistocene #PaleoenvironmentalReconstruction
Details: doi.org/10.1007/s11442-025-2386-4

Petralona cranium, possibly H heidelbergensis

New U-series dating on the #Petralona cranium

#MiddlePleistocene #Europe #fossils

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004...

Original post on c.im

Wooden tools -- an assemblage of 35 wooden implements from the site of Gantangqing in southwestern China, which was found associated with stone tools, antler billets (soft hammers), and cut-marked bones and is dated from ~361,000 to ~250,000 years at a 95% confidence interval. The wooden […]

PNAS Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

Plant-based diets date back 780,000 years 🌾. Stone tools show early hominins in Israel processed acorns, water lilies, and more—evidence of evolving cognition and behavior.
#HumanOrigins #MiddlePleistocene #AncientPlants www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...