TY - JOUR
T1 - Multiple hominin dispersals into Southwest Asia over the past 400,000 years
AU - Groucutt, Huw S.
AU - White, Tom S.
AU - Scerri, Eleanor M. L.
AU - Andrieux, Eric
AU - Clark-wilson, Richard
AU - Breeze, Paul S.
AU - Armitage, Simon J.
AU - Stewart, Mathew
AU - Drake, Nick
AU - Louys, Julien
AU - Price, Gilbert J.
AU - Duval, Mathieu
AU - Parton, Ash
AU - Candy, Ian
AU - Carleton, W. Christopher
AU - Shipton, Ceri
AU - Jennings, Richard P.
AU - Zahir, Muhammad
AU - Blinkhorn, James
AU - Blockley, Simon
AU - Al-omari, Abdulaziz
AU - Alsharekh, Abdullah M.
AU - Petraglia, Michael D.
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgements We thank the Heritage Commission, Ministry of Culture, Saudi Arabia for fieldwork support and permission to conduct this research. The research was funded by the Max Planck Society, the European Research Council (295719 to M.D.P.), the British Academy (H.S.G.), the Leverhulme Trust (ECF-2019-538 to S.B., ECF-2019-538 to P.S.B. and PG-2017-087 to S.B., E.A., S.J.A. and M.D.P.), the Research Council of Norway, through its Centres of Excellence funding scheme, SFF Centre for Early Sapiens Behaviour (SapienCE), project number 262618 (S.J.A.), the Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC) through its London DTP studentship funding (R.C.-W.), The Nature and Science Researchers Supporting Project (NSRSP-2021-5), DSFP, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (A.M.A.), the Leakey Foundation (M.S.) the Australian Research Council (FT160100450 to J.L. and FT150100215 to M.D.), and the Spanish Ramón y Cajal Fellowship (RYC2018-025221-I to M.D.). We thank L. Clark-Balzan for assistance with the luminescence dating, I. Cartwright for lithic photography and M. O’Reilly for assistance with figures. We thank the museums listed in the Supplementary Information for access to comparative collections.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Author(s).
Copyright:
Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2021/9/16
Y1 - 2021/9/16
N2 - Pleistocene hominin dispersals out of, and back into, Africa necessarily involved traversing the diverse and often challenging environments of Southwest Asia
1–4. Archaeological and palaeontological records from the Levantine woodland zone document major biological and cultural shifts, such as alternating occupations by Homo sapiens and Neanderthals. However, Late Quaternary cultural, biological and environmental records from the vast arid zone that constitutes most of Southwest Asia remain scarce, limiting regional-scale insights into changes in hominin demography and behaviour
1,2,5. Here we report a series of dated palaeolake sequences, associated with stone tool assemblages and vertebrate fossils, from the Khall Amayshan 4 and Jubbah basins in the Nefud Desert. These findings, including the oldest dated hominin occupations in Arabia, reveal at least five hominin expansions into the Arabian interior, coinciding with brief ‘green’ windows of reduced aridity approximately 400, 300, 200, 130–75 and 55 thousand years ago. Each occupation phase is characterized by a distinct form of material culture, indicating colonization by diverse hominin groups, and a lack of long-term Southwest Asian population continuity. Within a general pattern of African and Eurasian hominin groups being separated by Pleistocene Saharo-Arabian aridity, our findings reveal the tempo and character of climatically modulated windows for dispersal and admixture.
AB - Pleistocene hominin dispersals out of, and back into, Africa necessarily involved traversing the diverse and often challenging environments of Southwest Asia
1–4. Archaeological and palaeontological records from the Levantine woodland zone document major biological and cultural shifts, such as alternating occupations by Homo sapiens and Neanderthals. However, Late Quaternary cultural, biological and environmental records from the vast arid zone that constitutes most of Southwest Asia remain scarce, limiting regional-scale insights into changes in hominin demography and behaviour
1,2,5. Here we report a series of dated palaeolake sequences, associated with stone tool assemblages and vertebrate fossils, from the Khall Amayshan 4 and Jubbah basins in the Nefud Desert. These findings, including the oldest dated hominin occupations in Arabia, reveal at least five hominin expansions into the Arabian interior, coinciding with brief ‘green’ windows of reduced aridity approximately 400, 300, 200, 130–75 and 55 thousand years ago. Each occupation phase is characterized by a distinct form of material culture, indicating colonization by diverse hominin groups, and a lack of long-term Southwest Asian population continuity. Within a general pattern of African and Eurasian hominin groups being separated by Pleistocene Saharo-Arabian aridity, our findings reveal the tempo and character of climatically modulated windows for dispersal and admixture.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85114594885&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s41586-021-03863-y
DO - 10.1038/s41586-021-03863-y
M3 - Article
SN - 0028-0836
VL - 597
SP - 376
EP - 380
JO - Nature
JF - Nature
IS - 7876
ER -