Late Pliocene fossiliferous sedimentary record and the environmental context of early
            <i>Homo</i>
            from Afar, Ethiopia

The Late Pleistocene Campanian Ignimbrite (CI) super-eruption (Southern Italy) is the largest known volcanic event in the Mediterranean area. The CI tephra is widely dispersed through western Eurasia and occurs in close stratigraphic association with significant palaeoclimatic and Palaeolithic cultural events. Here we present new high-precision 14C (34.29 ± 0.09 14C kyr BP, 1σ) and 40Ar/39Ar (39.85 ± 0.14 ka, 95% confidence level) dating results for the age of the CI eruption, which substantially improve upon or augment previous age determinations and permit fuller exploitation of the chronological potential of the CI tephra marker. These results provide a robust pair of 14C and 40Ar/39Ar ages for refining both the radiocarbon calibration curve and the Late Pleistocene time-scale at ca. 40 ka. In addition, these new age constraints provide compelling chronological evidence for the significance of the combined influence of the CI eruption and Heinrich Event 4 on European climate and potentially evolutionary processes of the Early Upper Palaeolithic.

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“…Further details of the multicollection protocol is provided in ref. 58. Complete degassing of the grains was achieved in 10–28 steps.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

High-precision 14C and 40Ar/39Ar dating of the Campanian Ignimbrite (Y-5) reconciles the time-scales of climatic-cultural processes at 40 ka

Giaccio

Hajdas²,

Isaia

et al. 2017

Sci Rep

195

145

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“…Isotopic analyses of carbon show that Sivatherium shifted from a browsing to a grazing diet in the Afar by at least~2.8 Ma, roughly one million years earlier than elsewhere in eastern Africa. This is likely linked to the expansion of open (Reed 2008;DiMaggio et al 2015) and C 4 -dominated habitats in the LAV during the late Pliocene. Levin et al (2015) …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Fossil Giraffidae (Mammalia, Artiodactyla) from Lee Adoyta, Ledi-Geraru, and Late Pliocene Dietary Evolution in Giraffids from the Lower Awash Valley, Ethiopia

et al. 2016

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The giraffid fossils recovered from~2.8-2.6 million year old (Ma) sediments from Lee Adoyta, Ledi-Geraru, Ethiopia, are described here. Sivatherium maurusium and Giraffa cf. G. gracilis are the two identified taxa, with the former being more abundant than the latter. We interpret this skew of relative abundance to be of paleoenvironmental significance, as Sivatherium is rare and Giraffa is common in the adjacent, but older sediments of the Hadar Formation at Hadar (~3.4 to 2.95 Ma), which was characterized by wooded and well-watered habitats through most of its sequence. Stable carbon isotope analyses show that Giraffa remained an obligate browser throughout the lower Awash Valley (LAV) sequence while Sivatherium underwent a dietary transition from a browser in the Hadar Formation to a grazer at Lee Adoyta. This dietary shift in Sivatherium reflects local environmental change through time in the LAVas open habitats spread during the late Pliocene. A compilation of isotopic data from other sites in eastern Africa shows that the LAV dietary shift in Sivatherium occurred roughly one million years earlier than in the Turkana Basin, Kenya, reflecting a spatiotemporally staggered expansion of C 4 vegetation across eastern Africa.

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“…Arid climate that intensified in around 2.8 million years ago transformed the mixed forest-woodland habitat into the mixed woodland-savanna habitat [56].…”

Section: From Early Hominins To Early Homosmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language Neuromechanics: The Human Biological-Language Evolution

Chung¹

2018

JBBS

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The paper proposes that the understanding of human language evolution requires the comprehensive understanding of language in terms of language types, formations, and learnings and the comprehensive understanding of human biological evolution in terms of the emergences of various hominin species with various language capacities. This paper proposes language neuromechanics and the human biological-language evolution. Language is derived from bodily movement. Language neuromechanics combines neuroscience to study language brain and biomechanics to study language movement. Language neuromechanics consists of language type, language formation, and language learning. Language types for advanced animals include gestural language verse vocal language, instinctive language verse controllable language, and symbolic language verse iconic language. Language formation involves the developments of the different types of languages from different bodily movements phylogenetically and ontogenetically. Language learning involves the learning of controllable language to adapt to communicative environment through language brain regions and language genes. This paper proposes a gradual and step-by-step human language evolution from the language of great apes to the human language through the human biological evolution which chronologically and geographically consists of early hominins, early Homos, middle Homos, and late Homos with different language capacities. For hominins, vocal language and gestural language were evolved together. In conclusion, combining neuroscience and biomechanics, language neuromechanics provides the comprehensive understanding of language. The combination of language neuromechanics and the human biological-language evolution provides the clear evolutionary path from great apes' articulate gestural language without articulate speech to human articulate gestural language and articulate speech.

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Late Pliocene fossiliferous sedimentary record and the environmental context of early Homo from Afar, Ethiopia

Cited by 65 publications

References 30 publications

High-precision 14C and 40Ar/39Ar dating of the Campanian Ignimbrite (Y-5) reconciles the time-scales of climatic-cultural processes at 40 ka

High-precision 14C and 40Ar/39Ar dating of the Campanian Ignimbrite (Y-5) reconciles the time-scales of climatic-cultural processes at 40 ka

Fossil Giraffidae (Mammalia, Artiodactyla) from Lee Adoyta, Ledi-Geraru, and Late Pliocene Dietary Evolution in Giraffids from the Lower Awash Valley, Ethiopia

Language Neuromechanics: The Human Biological-Language Evolution

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