The Emergence of Ornaments and Art: An Archaeological Perspective on the Origins of “Behavioral Modernity”

Abstract

The earliest known personal ornaments come from the Middle Stone Age of southern Africa, c. 75,000 years ago, and are associated with anatomically modern humans. In Europe, such items are not recorded until after 45,000 radiocarbon years ago, in Neandertal-associated contexts that significantly predate the earliest evidence, archaeological or paleontological, for the immigration of modern humans; thus, they represent either independent invention or acquisition of the concept by long-distance diffusion, implying in both cases comparable levels of cognitive capability and performance. The emergence of figurative art postdates c. 32,000 radiocarbon years ago, several millennia after the time of Neandertal/modern human contact. These temporal patterns suggest that the emergence of "behavioral modernity" was triggered by demographic and social processes and is not a species-specific phenomenon; a corollary of these conclusions is that the corresponding genetic and cognitive basis must have been present in the genus Homo before the evolutionary split between the Neandertal and modern human lineages.

Neandertal-Modern Human Contact in Western Eurasia: Issues of Dating, Taxonomy, and Cultural Associations

“…In fact, contra what one would expect under such a hypothesis, Protoaurignacian level VII yielded only 8 ornaments, while 39 were found in the Châtelperronian sequence and, of these, three quarters came not from the level immediately underlying the Protoaurignacian, level VIII, but from the deepest one, level X (Zilhão 2006a(Zilhão , 2007(Zilhão , 2011. A similar objection applies to the third hypothesis, originally proposed by Bar-Yosef ( 2006 ) and Bar-Yosef and Bordes ( 2010 ), as, conversely, of the 34 Neandertal teeth found at the Grotte du Renne, three came from basal Mousterian level XIV, 29 from the Châtelperronian, and only two from the immediately underlying Mousterian levels XI and XII.…”

“…The three dates in the Protoaurignacian age range are consistent with the presence in the stone tool assemblage of level D of a component with clear Aurignacian affi nities, as pointed out by Gioia ( 1990 ). Based on this lithic evidence, I had previously suggested (Zilhão 2007 ) that the perforated Columbella rustica and Cyclope neritea shells from the "Evolved" and "Final" Uluzzian of Cavallo were likely to be intrusive items and, indeed, the Early Epigravettian date (~22.7 ka cal BP, confi rmed by a repeat) was obtained on a specimen of the latter species. This Early Epigravettian date raises the question of whether the ash lenses capping level D really are Campanian Ignimbrite, but signifi cant disturbance at this stratigraphic interface and affecting deeper levels in the sequence is additionally shown by the OxA-19257 result for level D; at ~45.3 ka cal BP, this date is some two millennia older than the single result obtained for underlying level E (OxA-19242, ~43.6 ka cal BP), and, given the relatively small standard deviations, the difference is statistically signifi cant.…”

“…From Caron et al ( 2011 ), modifi ed In a response to such claims, Caron et al ( 2011 ) and Zilhão et al ( 2011 ) countered that the new results could at best signify limited post-depositional displacement across the boundaries of adjacent levels. That such limited displacement existed was already known for levels VII and VIII, on the basis of the distribution of small fragments of ivory beads Zilhão 2007 ), and for levels IX and X, on the basis of stone tool refi ts (Bodu 1990 (Fig. 3.3 ).…”

“…My null chronological hypothesis is a model of the Middleto-Upper and Neandertal-to-modern human transitions in western Eurasia fi rst proposed by d 'Errico et al ( 1998 ) and Zilhão and d'Errico ( 1999 ), and further elaborated in Zilhão and d'Errico ( 2003 ), Zilhão ( 2006aZilhão ( , 2007Zilhão ( , 2011 and Banks et al ( 2013 ). This model can be summarized as follows: (a) The Châtelperronian, Uluzzian, Altmühlian, Bohunician, Szeletian and Bachokirian underlie the earliest Aurignacian across the whole of their shared geographic range, and, therefore, they must predate the Aurignacian in each of their particular areas of occurrence.…”

“…Moreover, as discussed at greater length elsewhere (Zilhão 2007 ), at the time the Châtelperronian emerged in France, Southwest Asia was, overland, the closest place where a modern human presence is conceivable; therefore, if the Grotte du Renne's Châtelperronian resulted from long distance acculturation, the same sort of process should be apparent in the intervening geography, which is not the case. In addition, the ornamental material in use at that time in the Levant consists entirely of marine shells, mostly Nassarius and similar small-sized species recovered in some of the region's Initial Upper Paleolithic (IUP) or Emiran contexts (Kuhn et al 2001 ).…”