When to generalise and when to specialise? Climate change and hominin biocultural adaptability in the African early and middle stone age

被引:0
作者
Clark, James [1 ]
Linares-Matas, Gonzalo J. [2 ]
机构
[1] Univ Cambridge, Leverhulme Ctr Human Evolutionary Studies, Dept Archaeol, Fitzwilliam St, Cambridge CB2 1QH, England
[2] Univ Cambridge, Emmanuel Coll, St Andrews St, Cambridge CB2 3AP, England
来源
QUATERNARY SCIENCE ADVANCES | 2024年 / 15卷
基金
英国艺术与人文研究理事会;
关键词
Seasonality; Climatic variability; Biocultural evolution; Lithic technology; Early stone age; Middle stone age; EARLY HUMAN HABITATS; UPPER BED II; OLDUVAI GORGE; EAST-AFRICA; HUNTER-GATHERERS; EARLY HOMO; FLK-ZINJ; LITHIC TECHNOLOGY; EARLIEST OLDOWAN; HUMAN-EVOLUTION;
D O I
10.1016/j.qsa.2024.100218
中图分类号
P9 [自然地理学];
学科分类号
0705 ; 070501 ;
摘要
A growing number of authors have discussed the role of climate change in periods of important biological and cultural transition along the hominin lineage. This paper establishes a biocultural framework elucidating human behavioural adaptations during the African Early and Middle Stone Age, centred on three crucial dimensions of hunter-gatherer adaptation: mobility, social network dynamics, and technology. We contend that landscape properties, specifically resource diversity and seasonal to inter-annual resource variability, can be used to model the specific responses of hominin groups to climate change over time, based on their awareness of these properties. Specifically, we focus on hominin technological generalisation and specialisation, meaning the extent to which there is a high degree of specificity (or fit) between final tool form and the task(s) in which the tool is deployed. In this regard, we argue that the archaeological record reveals punctuated and discontinuous specialisation during certain phases of the Early Stone Age driven by landscape predictability. These periods encourage the expression of relevant innovations and stepwise increases in technological complexity. While some of them become lost to demographic or cultural stochasticity, others end up forming the basis for a standardisation of generalised forms within the context of unexpected climatic deterioration. This is highlighted by the late Acheulean: following a period of greater generalisation in the late Early Pleistocene correlating with repeated and severe orbitally-forced periods of aridity, smaller biface forms become more common (or absent) and regional experimentation with prepared-core technology in Eastern Africa takes place in the context of a return to more humid and stable climatic conditions. The onset of more arid and variable climates associated with the emergence of the Middle Stone Age led to the continental expansion of the prepared-core technological substrate underpinning generalised assemblages. The cycle continues in the Middle Stone Age with a return to climatic stability in the Late Pleistocene and subsequent regional diversification of this techno-complex, in which hominins responded with greater toolkit specialisation in a number of different ways. In this context, we support the existence of a cyclical and non-linear relationship between environmental adaptation and cognitive evolution, as part of a wider biocultural feedback loop, which contributes to explain the evolutionary roots of our "generalist specialist" niche.
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页数:18
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