The Paisley Caves in Oregon record the oldest directly dated human remains (DNA) in the Western Hemisphere. More than 100 high-precision radiocarbon dates show that deposits containing artifacts and coprolites ranging in age from 12,450 to 2295 (14)C years ago are well stratified. Western Stemmed projectile points were recovered in deposits dated to 11,070 to 11,340 (14)C years ago, a time contemporaneous with or preceding the Clovis technology. There is no evidence of diagnostic Clovis technology at the site. These two distinct technologies were parallel developments, not the product of a unilinear technological evolution. "Blind testing" analysis of coprolites by an independent laboratory confirms the presence of human DNA in specimens of pre-Clovis age. The colonization of the Americas involved multiple technologically divergent, and possibly genetically divergent, founding groups.

stones and bones are the fundamental building blocks of prehistory, especially the deep hominin prehistory. The only thing that survives from the earliest humans, except in rare instances of the humans themselves, is stones and bones in that order. it was in this context that the late archaeologist Glynn isaac (1977) characterized the archaeology of the earliest humans as "squeezing blood from stones." stones and bones must, however, be placed in context, and that largely comes from profiles or rather stratigraphy. stones, bones, and profiles thus constitute the three building blocks of much of the early archaeology from the appearance of earliest humans to the advent of the neolithic or its equivalents on various continents. so it is no wonder that this book, dedicated to two prominent scholars whose careers focused on the earliest americans, the Paleoindians, is about stones, bones, and profiles. in fact, tools and tool making from raw stone material and the remains of food residues, or one of these, are what we find at nearly all Paleoindian sites in western north america. Where we find them and in what contexts are key to understanding the implications of these remains for reconstructing the lifeways of ancient peoples. and by and large, other items are rare or absent, except in a few cases, and often these are likewise made of either stone or bone. We are referring to such things as bone tools (needles, awls, gaming pieces, and others), ornaments (beads), and possibly in a few instances

Abstract. The role that climate and environmental history may have played in influencing human evolution has been the focus of considerable interest and controversy among paleoanthropologists for decades. Prior attempts to understand the environmental history side of this equation have centered around the study of outcrop sediments and fossils adjacent to where fossil hominins (ancestors or close relatives of modern humans) are found, or from the study of deep sea drill cores. However, outcrop sediments are often highly weathered and thus are unsuitable for some types of paleoclimatic records, and deep sea core records come from long distances away from the actual fossil and stone tool remains. The Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project (HSPDP) was developed to address these issues. The project has focused its efforts on the eastern African Rift Valley, where much of the evidence for early hominins has been recovered. We have collected about 2 km of sediment drill core from six basins in Kenya and Ethiopia, in lake deposits immediately adjacent to important fossil hominin and archaeological sites. Collectively these cores cover in time many of the key transitions and critical intervals in human evolutionary history over the last 4 Ma, such as the earliest stone tools, the origin of our own genus Homo, and the earliest anatomically modern Homo sapiens. Here we document the initial field, physical property, and core description results of the 2012-2014 HSPDP coring campaign.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Samples of dental calculus were taken from 11 human individuals buried at Nemrik 9, a Pre-Pottery Neolithic site in Northern Iraq. All of them represented the time span of ca. 9100-8600 BP. In total, 95 microfossils were retrieved from these samples, including 70 phytoliths, 9 starch granules or clusters of starch, 3 pollens, and 1 xylem fragment. Most microfossils could be attributed to C 3 cool season cereals, most likely wheat and barley, which is consistent with previous knowledge about the composition of crops in early farming communities living in the Fertile Crescent. In addition, three phytoliths and one starch granule typical of C 4 warm season grasses were recovered including one subangular and faceted starch granule, which might derive from a native grass, but is not diagnostic of any genus. Prior to assigning diagnostic status to this starch, exhaustive reference work on native grass seeds is necessary. The presence of one Phragmites phytolith suggests non-alimentary processing of reeds using teeth or perhaps using the stem of this grass as a toothbrush or toothpick.