Groups of hunter-gatherers in what is today Senegal continued to use Middle Stone Age technologies associated with our species’ earliest prehistory as late as 11 thousand years ago.
West Africa “a real frontier for human evolutionary studies”
How like the Neanderthals are we?
” A Neanderthal skeleton (dated at 50 ka) found in a cave at La Chappelle-aux-Saints appears to have been buried and made safe from scavengers and erosion. “
Earliest sign of a sense of aesthetics
“In 1925 Wilfred Eitzman, a school teacher, investigated a cave in the Makapansgat Valley in Limpopo Province, South Africa that had been exposed by quarry workers.”
More Denisovan connections
“In 2006 mining operations in NE Mongolia uncovered a human skull cap with prominent brow ridges.”
Environmental change and early-human innovation
The Olorgesailie Basin in Southern Kenya is possibly the world’s richest source for evidence of ancient stone-tool manufacture.
Did early humans learn to cook in Olduvai Gorge?
“How did what seems to be a ‘golden spike’ in human culture first take material form in Olduvai?”
Isotopic clues to diet of early hominins
“‘We are what we eat’ is certainly a truism, but it is neither a trope nor a cliché. “
Why did anatomically modern humans replace Neanderthals?
“Many Neanderthal skeletons show signs of extremely hard, repetitive physical effort and senescence” Steve Drury
