The Alan Sondheim Mail Archive

October 11, 2010


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2010 00:57:19
From: Portside Moderator <moderator@PORTSIDE.ORG>
To: PORTSIDE@LISTS.PORTSIDE.ORG
Subject: Neanderthal Innovation

Independent Neanderthal Innovation - Some Additional
Considerations
Julien Riel-Salvatore
A Very Remote Period Indeed
September 28, 2010
http://averyremoteperiodindeed.blogspot.com/

One of my upcoming papers (Riel-Salvatore 2010) was
written-up in a series of mainstream news outlets,
including the New York Times, the BBC, Discovery News,
AOLNews, MSNBC and sundry others. The original,
reproduced in Science Daily, was published under the
headline "Neanderthals More Advanced Than Previously
Thought: They Innovated, Adapted Like Modern Humans,
Research Shows." In the original UC Denver press
release, I'm quoted as saying, among other things, that
this study helps 'rehabilitate' Neanderthals by showing
that they were able to develop some of the accoutrements
of behavioral modernity independent of any contact with
modern humans. While I've caught a bit of flak from some
friends and colleagues for that turn of phrase, I stand
by my statement -this study helps to cast Neanderthals
in a much more positive light than they have been for a
long while now.

In any case, it's always exciting to see your work
written-up, but also a bit daunting. In a few days, I'm
going to try to put together a post on the whole 'going
to the press' experience, but I figured I'd seize the
opportunity to provide a bit more detail on the paper
currently making the rounds in various news outlets, to
clear up confusion and preemptively answer some of the
questions it might raise. Here goes...

So,  what is it I did? The short answer: I showed that,
among, other things, around 42,000 calendar years ago
(ca. 36.5 radiocarbon years BP), a new culture (better,
behavioral adaptation) - the Uluzzian - emerged in
southern Italy and is widely believed to have been made
by Neanderthals. The thing is, the Uluzzian is
associated with bone tools, stone armatures likely used
as part of composite projectile weapons, shell
ornaments, coloring material (ochre, limonite), and
possible evidence of small game exploitation. These
features are all generally associated with modern human
groups, not so much with Neanderthals. Because the
timing of the origins of the Uluzzian matches that of
the appearance of the Aurignacian generally attributed
to modern humans, many people (e.g., Mellars 2005) have
argued that the Uluzzian was the result of Neanderthals
being acculturated by modern humans, and creating hybrid
cultures that ultimately proved to be too little, too
late for the Neanderthals.

Here's the rub, though: for acculturation to be a likely
explanation, two conditions need to be met, proximity in
time (i.e., they need to overlap in time) and proximity
in space (they need to be found next to one another). As
I show in the paper, for the Uluzzian, while proximity
in time to the Aurignacian is established, proximity in
space isn't. That's because when the earliest
Aurignacian appears in northern Italy and the Uluzzian
appears in southern Italy ca. 42,000 years ago, the
center of the Italian peninsula is occupied by
Neanderthals making the Mousterian tools they'd been
making for over 100,000 years. So, in essence, you have
a 'Mousterian buffer' (and a long-lasting one at that)
between the regions where the Aurignacian and Uluzzian
develop. If the acculturation scenario was right in this
case, you would expect the Uluzzian to first spring up
immediately next to where you find the Aurignacian.
Since the condition of proximity in space is not
satisfied, it is very unlikely that acculturation is the
explanation for the origins of the Uluzzian.

Given that the Uluzzian is assumed to have been made by
Neanderthals, this implies that Neanderthals developed
it on their own, independent of modern human influence.
If that's the case, though, a natural follow-up question
is why the Uluzzian should emerge at the same time as
you first see the Aurignacian implant itself in northern
Italy. To answer this, in my view, you have to consider
the ecology of that time period. To keep it short, it's
one of the most climatically turbulent periods of the
Late Pleistocene, which was climatically turbulent to
begin with. In southern Italy, this translated into
cooler, more arid conditions that stand in contrast to
the Mediterranean scrub-woodland that characterized the
region earlier. Given the suddenness with which
conditions shifted between one and the other (there was
a lot of fluctuation), people would have had to develop
behavioral strategies that allowed them to cope with
uncertainty so as to minimize the risk of not being able
to find the resources they needed to survive. The
Uluzzian seems to fit that description, what with
stoneworking strategies that minimize production waste;
new tools that would have allowed people to better hunt
at a distance; mobility patterns that reflect a
conscious effort to provision hospitable spots with
resources they may have lacked; the exploitation of a
wider range of animals; and the development of artifacts
to ease social friction when other groups were
encountered.

It's hard to establish with certainty a link between
paleoenvironments and behavioral innovation. In fact,
naysayers would probably point out that Neanderthals
were perfectly able to survive shift of the magnitude of
those documented ca. 42kya. That's true but it ignores
the fact that what Neanderthals hadn't been faced with
previously, however, is the close spacing at which these
fluctuations started happening ca. 42kya (Finlayson and
Carrion 2007) - that was something new, and something
that would stress any population, setting the stage for
a moment where technological innovation could have been
selected for. Now, this is an interpretation based on
correlation as opposed to causation; however, any
explanation for the origins of the Uluzzian (and the
Aurignacian in northern Italy for that matter) that
doesn't at least take them into consideration is likely
oversimplistic.

Overall then, what I'm proposing in this paper is that
climatic instability selected for behavioral innovation,
one manifestation of which was the Uluzzian in southern
Italy. If Neanderthals are responsible for the Uluzzian,
that means they reacted in very 'modern' ways to these
conditions by developing some of the very same
innovations that seem to have made modern humans so
evolutionary successful in the long term.

On to the preemptive questions and answers to them...

OK, but the paper's 33 pages long, is that all you're
saying?

The short answer to that is no. The paper is an effort
to use niche construction theory (Odling-Smee et al.
2003) as a conceptual framework in paleoanthropology to
yield new insights on how to best integrate behavioral,
ecological and biological evidence. It's by using that
approach, however, that I'm able to propose an
alternative explanation for the emergence of the
Uluzzian that accounts for its timing, the lack of
spatial proximity to the Aurignacian, and the
paleoecological evidence. Because it explains more of
the evidence, I argue that it's a much more parsimonious
explanation than any of the ones that have been proposed
in the past, which mostly focus on social factors.

The main advantage of using NCT as a conceptual
framework here is that it encourages people to move
beyond the identification of single prime movers to
explain the Middle-Upper Paleolithic transition and the
eventual disappearance of Neanderthals from the fossil
record. Specifically, I argue that it's only by
documenting the changing relationship between
behavioral, ecological and biological dimensions of the
record that we're likely to get at how this process
really unfolded. In this case, I suggest that we can
identify three phases of the transition interval, each
of which is characterized by distinct dynamics between
these three systems of inheritance, that are in part
influenced by the interactions between them in earlier
phases.

I get it... so is this the same mechanism that accounts
for the origins of the Chatelperronian of the Franco-
Cantabrian region?

Not exactly. The situation of the Chatelperronian,
another 'transitional' industry attributed to
Neanderthals and for many decades argued to be the
result of their acculturation by modern humans, is
slightly different. In that case, the condition of
proximity in space is met. In other words, you find
Chatelperronian sites in and next to regions where
Aurignacian assemblages are found. What people like
d'Errico and Zilhao have shown, however, is that the
condition of proximity in time is not met, since the
earliest Chatelperronian appears to predate the
appearance of the Aurignacian in those regions by
several thousand years (d'Errico et al. 1998, Zilhao
2006).

Therefore, while an origin independent of modern human
influence can be postulated for both the Uluzzian and
the Chatelperronian, the evidence for why this is the
case is different in the two cases. For the Uluzzian,
the reason is that, geographically, its only neighbors
appear to have been Neanderthals. It is perhaps not
surprising that a consideration of ecological conditions
has come to the forefront in models for the development
of these 'transitional' industries, which are called
transitional, because they fall within the interval of
the Middle-Upper Paleolithic transition, starting some
45,000 years ago.

But wait! Aren't there reports of Uluzzian occupations
in northern Italy? How does this affect your
conclusions?

Peresani and colleagues have recently been making a case
for an Uluzzian presence in level A3 and A4-I at Grotta
di Fumane, in the Veneto region of NE Italy (Peresani
2008; Higham et al. 2009). I talk about Fumane briefly
in the paper, but let me discuss it in a bit more depth
here. These are intriguing data. I've seen the material
described as Uluzzian presented at a conference but I'm
still uncertain about how closely it compares to what is
found in southern Italy, since I haven't had a chance to
see a detailed typological and technological publication
of these objects and since I don't feel right using
figures/numbers based on ongoing analyses that I've only
seen fleetingly during a talk. Chronologically, they'd
fit right in, no question. But there are a number of
possibly contemporaneous assemblages in northern Italy
associated with some evidence bipolar technology and
with backed knives that somewhat resemble Uluzzian
crescents (e.g., La Fabbrica, Paina) but that otherwise
more closely align themselves with Late Mousterian
assemblages, notably La Fabbrica (Bietti and Negrino
2007). So for the time being, it's not really possible
to exclude that the Fumane assemblages claimed to be
Uluzzian belong to this distinctive Mousterian
tradition.

That said, let's consider for a moment what it might
mean if Fumane A3 and A 4-I were to be shown to be
Uluzzian. For one thing, it doesn't invalid the gist of
what I have argued, namely that the Uluzzian could very
well be an independent development. That's because in
this case, while the condition of spatial proximity
would be met (i.e., there are Aurignacian assemblages in
the vicinity), the condition for proximity in time
wouldn't since the earliest Uluzzian (dated to about
43,000BP) predates any Aurignacian assemblage in the
region by as much as 2,000 years (Higham et al. 2009).
Furthermore, the Uluzzian in southern Italy lasts until
almost 35,000 calibrated years BP, while it would seem
to not last beyond 40,000 BP at Fumane. This raises the
question of the relationship of the Uluzzian in the two
regions, and why it isn't found at all in Central Italy.
Could the Uluzzian have originated in northern Italy? If
so, how did it reach southern Italy? One obvious
explanation would be to argue that people with Uluzzian
technology sprinted down the Northern Adriatic Plain
exposed during OIS3. However, since that area is now
under water, we're unlikely to ever be able to
demonstrate this one way or the other. Additionally, it
still doesn't explain why Central Italy wouldn't have
been explored by these people. The argument that they
stuck to the coast is pretty weak in light of the fact
that in southern Italy, Uluzzian assemblages are found
along the Western coast of the Salento peninsula in the
Bay of Uluzzo, and in southwestern Italy, in the
foothills of the Alburni Moutains.

One possible explanation is that the Uluzzian originated
somewhere else and diffused both in northern and
southern Italy from that original homeland. The
assemblage from Level 5 at Klisoura Cave, Greece has
been proposed as one such potential source of origin.
There are two problems with this, however: First,
technologically, Klisoura 5 is very different from the
Uluzzian in southern Italy. Notably, it displays much
less bipolar technology, an almost complete reliance on
blade technology, many more microliths, and a different
way of making microliths. Second, in light of new dates
from Fumane, the timing might be a problem since the
assemblages would be almost contemporaneous. Third,
there is nothing even remotely resembling an Uluzzian
assemblage between the Peloponnese and the Italian
peninsula. On the basis of current evidence, then, there
is little solid data on which to base a solid link
between Level 5 at Klisoura and the Uluzzian as a whole
(Papagianni 2009). If that's the case, there are
currently no assemblages on which to base the notion of
an extra-Italian origin of the Uluzzian.

I'll buy that. But if Neanderthals were so smart and
able to innovate in the face of change, what happened to
them and their Uluzzian culture?

That's a good question, and before I answer it, let me
highlight a few things. First, the Uluzzian is by no
means a flash in the pan... currently available dates
indicate that it lasted some 7,000 years. If a
generation lasts 20 years, that's 350 generation of
'Uluzzians' - that's a hell of a long time, if you think
about it, almost as long as the entire Gravettian. That
means that, just because it disappears doesn't mean that
the Uluzzian wasn't a successful adaptation. So there's
that. Second, what I propose in the paper is that the
Uluzzian is ultimately supplanted by a series of
assemblages that have traditionally been called 'proto-
Aurignacian' (a label for the earliest Aurignacian along
the Mediterranean coast), but that really bear little in
common with 'proto-Aurignacian' assemblages from
northern Italy. For one thing, the proto-Aurignacian is
characterized by very high frequencies of retouched
bladelets in their tool inventories. In fact, as I
detail in the paper, formal tools in most proto-
Aurignacian assemblages in northern Italy on average
comprise about two-thirds retouched bladelets. "Proto-
Aurignacian" assemblages in southern Italy, in contrast,
comprise on average only about 25% of retouched
bladelets. In fact the bladelet frequency of the most
bladelet-rich southern assemblages doesn't even surpass
that of the least bladelet-rich northern assemblage. In
addition, southern Italian 'proto-Aurignacian'
assemblages tend to be associated with proportionally
more evidence of bipolar technology (an Uluzzian trait
in the region). These observations suggest that whatever
comes after the Uluzzian in southern Italy may not, in
fact, be the same as the proto-Aurignacian in the north,
but really more of an amalgam or a form of cultural
'middle ground' between the two traditions.

This means that the makers of the Uluzzian probably
weren't dispatched by people making proto-Aurignacian
technology. Rather, it seems they were probably absorbed
in the growing population from the north that would have
been slowly spreading southwards over many millennia.
This 'incorporation' makes sense of both the
archaeological record, fossil evidence that there was
some interbreeding between modern humans and
Neanderthals (Trinkaus et al. 2003), and recent genetic
research that shows that Neanderthals contributed a
small portion (1-4%) of modern non-African populations
(Green et al. 2010).

I only see the dates you mention in support of your
argument for a lack of geographical proximity graphed in
Fig. 2. Are the raw dates available?

All of the dates used in Fig. 2 are already published
(see Riel-Salvatore and Negrino 2009, Table 1), with the
exception of a series of dates from Grotta del Cavallo.
These are reported in my PhD dissertation (Riel-
Salvatore 2007), which is available upon request. These
new dates will soon be published in full with colleagues
from the University of Siena. In the meantime, they're
presented here in graphical form to underscore a point,
but since they're not the central thesis of the paper,
the raw dates are not included in the paper itself.

What about recent claims that the Chatelperronian wasn't
made by Neanderthals? Do they have any impact on your
conclusions?

The short answer here is not directly. I'm the first one
to admit that the fossil evidence for the 'transition
interval' in Italy is extremely scant. The attribution
of the proto-Aurignacian to modern humans is based on a
couple of loose while the attribution of the Uluzzian to
Neanderthals is based on three milk teeth from two
layers in one site, Grotta del Cavallo. The only
certainty seems to be for central Italy, where
Neanderthal remains are associated with some of the Late
Mousterian assemblages. In the past, the consensus view
- no doubt in part informed by the Chatelperronian
situation - has been that some of those teeth from
Cavallo display some affinities to Neanderthals, in
spite of the lowermost tooth originally having been
described as more modern in appearance (Palma di Cesnola
and Messeri 1967), although recent revisions suggest
that it falls within the Neanderthal range (Churchill
and Smith 2000).

Whatever the case may be, the fossil record is extremely
thin here, and while people have traditionally been
comfortable with the proto-Aurignacian = modern human
and Uluzzian = Neanderthal equations, my own preference
is to remain agnostic about who made what industry
during the transition interval in the Italian peninsula
(Riel-Salvatore 2009). However, because the generally
accepted view is that the Uluzzian was made by
Neanderthals, I've used it as an operating assumption in
this new paper, even though I derive none of my
hypotheses from that assumptions. In fact, I think that
considering whoever made the Uluzzian first and foremost
as foragers helps to avoid predetermining
interpretations about what the Uluzzian was, how it came
to be and how it disappeared.

That said, it's worth considering what the implications
would be for my new paper of a modern human authorship.
First, would it alter my main conclusion, that the
Uluzzian was developed independent of proto-Aurignacian
influence. Here, the answer is a clear no. Authorship
has no fundamental impact on what the Uluzzian was. Even
if it turned out to have been made by modern humans, it
would seem to emerge in southern Italy independently of
whatever was going on in the north at that time. The
only wrench modern human authorship really would throw
in my interpretation would relate to where those modern
humans would have come from - in that case, people would
probably start looking east towards Klisoura with
renewed attention, but as I've detailed earlier, this is
an unlikely source for the Uluzzian, unless we're
willing to accept that modern humans diffused along the
northern coast of the Mediterranean without a single
defining industry. While not impossible, this scenario
opens a whole new can of worms, though, because then you
need to demonstrate the modern human authorship of
everything between the Peloponnese and southern Italy,
which would be no small feat.However, given that the
homogeneity of most new cultures associated with modern
humans during the transition is generally interpreted as
a positive indication of their adaptability (Roebroeks
and Corbey 2000), we'd then have to explain why this
feature was not selected for in that specific region,
and why/how the Uluzzian grew out of this strategy to
last for several millennia. As a thought exercise,
though, it is interesting to ponder the ramifications of
what it might mean if the Uluzzian had been made by
modern humans in the context of the traditional
acculturation scenario, since Homo sapiens-Homo sapiens
confrontation is not usually taken to be a feature of
the transitions... (Riel-Salvatore 2009: 390-391)

OK, I'm posting this now so that it's available for
interested readers to peruse in order to complement the
press coverage this has been getting... if you have
questions/comments, feel free to leave them below, and
I'll answer them in short order... if they're
substantive enough, I might even incorporate them in the
list of questions comprised in this post!

_____________________________________________

Portside aims to provide material of interest
to people on the left that will help them to
interpret the world and to change it.

Submit via email: moderator@portside.org
Submit via the Web: portside.org/submit
Frequently asked questions: portside.org/faq
Subscribe: portside.org/subscribe
Unsubscribe: portside.org/unsubscribe
Account assistance: portside.org/contact
Search the archives: portside.org/archive

i am s sure i am flying so fast away fro

http://www.alansondheim.org/flight.mov

ithings keepi tryingkeep totrying getto awayget fromaway thingsfrom
thatthings botherthat mebother addedthings makethings moremake therethem
arethere tooare manytoo andthings flyi themfrom ofmany fasttoo allthem
theyup can'tthey asfly ami catchand upcatch fallthey behindfall seecan't
goingme sogoing aloneget goneare nowhereare beto seenbe cannotthey
hearcannot muchso moveto atfrom slowat speedfast suream thinkthey
flyingare flowthey

i am s sure they are flying so fast away fro

http://www.alansondheim.org/flight.mov

i keep trying to get wi keep trying to get
wy from things
w
y from things
y from things

y from things tht bother me
t bother me

t bother me
to get
things dded to things mthings
dded to things mke more things
dded to things m
ke more things
ke more things

nd i fly wthere
y from them
ny things
y from mny of them
ny of them

ny of them
i fly
y from them ll of them
i fly too f
ll of them
st
st s i they c
m nd cs f
nd ctch up
st
tch up
s i
nd they cn't see me going so fst

n't see me going so fst
they f
st
ll behind
re gone nd i get
nd re nowhere to be seen
lone
re nowhere to be seen
nd they
they cn't see me n't see me
n't see me nd i nd i
nd i m nowhere to be seen
m nowhere to be seen

m nowhere to be seen
they c
nnot her me nnot he
nd i cnnot hethey c
r them
r me
t slow nd fso much to move
nd fst speed
w
st speed
y from
i m sure they st
y from me
re flying so f
nnot see them nd ctch up

nnot see them going so fst
i f

http://www.alansondheim.org/flight.mov

are can't from are up flying they be many i i cannot of seen they are
catch are from see and fast fast they and i am are and am speed can't seen
of and i am many nowhere so see and i nowhere can't get and up so behind
be away and i hear them seen catch sure catch to that me gone going so
can't up get am things me am am fly seen all at i to and nowhere going i
behind get i to they things gone they away and be i hear i so fly seen and
i and be me me are see going see fall alone i make see am sure fast seen
from from i be i to me so fall alone trying to seen away they they me they
be them cannot i much too seen i too and seen added and they and me see
them and and to they and think as seen away move i seen away to can't they
fall and get be be get and fall they can't to away seen i move away seen
as think and they to and and them see me and they and added seen and too i
seen too much i cannot them be they me they they away seen to trying alone
fall so me to i be i from from seen fast sure am see make i alone fall
can't going see are me me be and i and seen fly so i hear i be and away
they gone things they to i get behind i going nowhere and to i at all seen
fly am am me things am get up can't so going gone me that to catch sure
catch seen them hear i and away be behind so up and get can't nowhere i
and see so nowhere many am i and of seen can't speed am and are am i and
they fast fast and see from are catch are they seen of cannot i i many be
they flying up are from can't are fast fast they them fast am are i am
fast they seen them and i i too nowhere fast them and i fast are can't
away and up flying fall be from and i hear of seen up they catch nowhere
things see and so so they catch i am there me am i can't seen of slow i
nowhere things nowhere going cannot behind get nowhere they to gone up
fast behind be fly me i them i seen and am catch to bother me gone them
going can't i get i more see am sure as seen them from i to i to me fast
behind alone keep to seen from are they from and be i cannot i much fly
seen am too and be things and are cannot going see behind and i things
can't am they fast seen from away i seen fly to see flow fall and to be
seen get they fall they can't to from they i to fast seen i so and they to
and they them me me them they and to they and so i seen fast to i they
from to can't they fall they get seen be to and fall flow see to fly seen
i away from seen fast they am can't things i and behind see going cannot
are and things be and i am seen fly much i cannot i be and from they are
from they to keep alone behind fast me to i to i from them seen as sure am
see more i get i can't going them gone me bother to catch am and seen i
them i me fly be behind fast up gone to they nowhere get behind cannot
going nowhere things nowhere i slow of seen can't i am me there am i catch
they so so and see things nowhere catch they up seen of hear i and from be
fall flying up and away can't are fast i and them fast nowhere too i i and
them seen they fast am i are am fast them they fast fast are can't from
are up flying they be many i i cannot of seen they are catch are from see
and fast fast they and i am are and am speed can't seen of and i am many
nowhere so see and i nowhere can't get and up so behind be away and i hear
them seen catch sure catch to that me gone going so can't up get am things
me am am fly seen all at i to and nowhere going i behind get i to they
things gone they away and be i hear i so fly seen and i and be me me are
see going see fall alone i make see am sure fast seen from from i be fly
to me so fall alone trying to seen away they they me they be them cannot i
much too seen i too and seen added and they and me see them and and to
they and think as seen away move i seen away to can't they fall and get be
be get and fall they can't to away seen i move away seen as think and they
to and and them see me and they and added seen and too i seen too much i
cannot them be they me they they away seen to trying alone fall so me to i
be i from from seen fast sure am see make i alone fall can't going see are
me me be and i and seen fly so i hear i be and away they gone things they
to i get behind i going nowhere and to i at all seen fly am am me things
am get up can't so going gone

http://www.alansondheim.org/flight.mov

fly away i as them hear them fast nowhere get from can't so fly fall i
from cannot keep so they from of am behind and going i am i to are gone to
from and them more they away am be me they fast too too fast they me be am
away they more them and from to gone are to i am i going and behind am of
from they so keep cannot from i fall fly so can't from get nowhere fast
them hear them as i away fly fast me to at they i of all many catch them
much and am and things fly fast see away can't them and be away am to
bother fly they up are get they think see from away and more and me fast
to are are are are to fast me and more and away from see think they get
too up they fly bother to am away be and them can't away see fast fly
things and am and much them catch many all of i they at to me fast fly
away i as them hear them fast nowhere get from can't so fly fall i from
cannot keep so they from of am behind and going i am i to flying gone to
from and them more they away am be me they fast too too fast they me be am
away they more them and from to gone are to i am i going and behind am of
from they so keep cannot from i

http://www.alansondheim.org/flight.mov

Generated by Mnemosyne 0.12.