A Middle Palaeolithic burial of a modern human at Taramsa Hill, Egypt

Abstract

Discussion about a possible African origin of modern humans is hampered by the lack of Late Pleistocene skeletal material from the Nile valley, the likely passage-way from East Africa to Asia and Europe. Here we report the discovery of a burial of an anatomically modern child from southern Egypt. Its clear relation with Middle Palaeolithic chert extraction activities and a series of OSL dates, from correlative aeolian sands, suggests an age between 49,800 and 80,400 years ago, with a mean age of 55,000.

A critique of the chronometric evidence for hominid fossils: I. Africa and the Near East 500–50ka

“…The site at Taramsa has a stratigraphic sequence equivalent to this case, where averaging obtained a quite precise age of 63-48 ka, at 95% probability (Vermeersch et al, 1998), but the application of a Bayesian approach yielded a range of 73-40 ka (see below for full discussion of the site). Millard (2006a,b) are necessary to account for uncertainties that are correlated and/or not normally distributed.…”

“…A child"s skeleton in a burial was recovered from Middle Paleolithic quarry deposits (Vermeersch et al, 1998). The sequence of OSL dates for the quarrying are inadequately reported for a full model to be constructed.…”

“…The dates are all associated with late Middle Paleolithic contexts, as is the child"s burial. Vermeersch et al (1998) averaged a wide range of imprecise dates to obtain a date of 55.5 ± 3.7 ka. Using a model in OxCal that treats all of the dates and the skeleton as coming from a single coherent phase of deposition yields a date of 72.9-40.7 ka with a uniform prior or an almost identical date of 72.7-40.7 ka with a uniform span prior.…”

Oldowan or Pebble-Flake Industry? Levantine Mousterian or Levantine Middle Paleolithic?

“…Этот афро-аравийский ну-бийский технокомплекс, по мнению исследователей, состоял из ряда индустрий с признаками, характер-ными для нубийского варианта леваллуазской тех-ники обработки нуклеуса [Usik et al, 2013, p. 244]. Создателями ранненубийской индустрии были люди современного анатомического вида [Vermeersch et al, 1998;Van Peer, 1998;Rose, 2010;Rose, Marks, 2014;Usik et al, 2013;и др. ].…”

The Middle Paleolithic of the Levant

“…Слабое влияние нубийской тех-нологии на индустрию среднего палеолита Леван-та можно объяснить тем, что популяции людей дви-гались из Африки в Аравию по южному маршруту, а с установлением на Ближнем Востоке аридного климата миграционные потоки значительно уменьши-лись. Мигрантов с нубийской индустрией из Африки исследователи ассоциируют с людьми современного анатомического вида [Vermeersch et al, 1998;Armitage et al, 2011;Van Peer, 1998;Usik et al, 2013;Rose, Marks, 2014;и др. ].…”