Neandertals, competition, and the origin of modern human behavior in the Levant

Abstract

The East Mediterranean Levant is a small region, but its paleoanthropological record looms large in debates about the origin of modern humans and the fate of the Neandertals. For most of the twentieth century, the Levantine paleoanthropological record supported models of continuity and evolutionary transition between Neandertals and early modern humans. Recent advances in radiometric dating have challenged these models by reversing the chronological relationship between Levantine Neandertals and early modern humans. This revised chronostratigraphy for Levantine Middle Paleolithic human fossils raises interesting questions about the evolutionary relationship between Neandertals and early modern humans. A reconsideration of this relationship moves us closer to understanding the long delay between the origin of morphologically modern‐looking humans during the Middle Paleolithic (>130 Kyr) and the adaptive radiation of modern humans into Eurasia around the time of the transition from the Middle to Upper Paleolithic (50 to 30 Kyr).

Empirical approaches to the study of language evolution

“…Despite the excellent record, and their obvious cognitive sophistication, Neanderthals did not show the exponential rate of cultural change characterizing our own species from about 80,000 years ago to the present (Mellars, 1998b(Mellars, , 2004Tattersall, 1999). As already noted, most archaeologists and anthropologists conclude that, despite their many similarities to us, Neanderthals lacked some cognitive and/or linguistic features of our species (Gunz, Neubauer, Maureille, & Hublin, 2010;Hublin, 2009;Mellars, 1998a;Mithen, 2005;Schepartz, 1993;Shea, 2003;Wynn & Coolidge, 2004; for a dissenting view, see Dediu & Levinson, 2013). While I agree with the premise that Neanderthals lacked something, I think it unlikely that they lacked language entirely; rather, a multicomponent perspective suggests that they already possessed some aspects of modern language and cognition, but lacked one or more others.…”

The Middle Paleolithic of the East Mediterranean Levant

“…Only Neandertal fossils are known from Levantine MP sites dating to 47-80 Kyr. If the absence of early modern human fossils from these contexts reflects their genuine absence from the region, then this could suggest the Skhul/Qafzeh humans and their immediate descendants lacked the behavioral capacities that enabled subsequent modern humans to compete successfully against Neandertals (Shea, 2003b).…”

“…This hypothesis is supported by the discovery of a recent (<200 Kyr) point mutation of the FOXP2 gene, a mutation that is linked to precise control of orofacial muscles, language production, speech recognition (Enard et al, 2002). It has also been argued that Neandertal adaptations to cold climates were so effective that early modern humans were unable to make inroads into their territory until the onset of wide, short-term variation in climate during OIS 3 (D' Errico and Goñi, 2003;Shea, 2003b).…”

“…Currently, the major explanations for the success of modern human dispersal after 40-50 Kyr focus on population pressure among African early modern human populations (Bar-Yosef, 2002;McBrearty and Brooks, 2000), and neurological changes in modern humans' capacity for complex behavior (Klein, 1999;Klein and Edgar, 2002;Shea, 2003b). Although the increasing representation of small prey species in Later MP, IUP, and UP zooarchaeological assemblages has been interpreted as evidence for population increase , more recent studies of these assemblages suggest it may be difficult to sort out the effects of population growth from those resulting from climate change (Speth and Tchernov, 2003).…”

Untitled

“…Though conclusive evidence for competitive encounters between Neandertals and Homo sapiens remains controversial, many paleoanthropologists believe such encounters occurred (Shea 2003b;Banks et al 2008;Conard 2006;Finlayson and Carríon 2007). If competition did occur, projectile technology would have conferred decisive advantages.…”