Evolution And History

Reconciling the Evidence 211

Epoch

PLEISTOCENE

400,000 300,000 200,000 100,000

Years ago

Sima de los Huesos

Qafzeh and Skhul

Kabwe

Herto

Levalloisian

technique

begins

Large-brained Homo found throughout Old World

Mousterian tool industries

Upper Paleolithic

traditions begin

Neandertals

found in

Southwest Asia

and Europe

European

Upper

Paleolithic

traditions begin

Figure 9.4 Around 400,000 years ago, large-brained members of the genus Homo began to be

found throughout Africa and Eurasia; corresponding cultural changes are evident as well.

the skeletal nor the archaeological evidence supports

cultural difference between the fossil groups or absolute

biological difference. Although Neandertal skeletons are

clearly present at sites such as the caves of Kebara and

Shanidar in Israel and Iraq, respectively, skeletons from

some older sites have been described as anatomically

modern.

At the cave site of Qafzeh near Nazareth in Israel,

for example, 90,000-year-old skeletons are said to show

none of the Neandertal hallmarks; although their faces

and bodies are large and heavily built by today’s stan-

dards, they are nonetheless claimed to be within the

range of living peoples. Yet, a statistical study comparing

a number of measurements from among Qafzeh, Upper

Paleolithic, and Neandertal skulls found those from

Qafzeh to fall in between the anatomically modern and

advancements practiced by anatomically modern humans.
In some respects, however, Neandertals outdid their ana-
tomically modern contemporaries, as in the use of red ochre,
a substance less frequently used by Aurignacian peoples than
by their late Neandertal neighbors.^19 This cannot be a case of
borrowing ideas and techniques from Aurignacians, as these
developments clearly predate the Aurignacian.^20

Coexistence and Cultural Continuity

Neandertals and anatomically modern humans also coex-
isted in Southwest Asia long before the cultural innova-
tions of the Upper Paleolithic (Figure 9.4). Here neither

(^19) Bednarik, p. 606.
(^20) Zilhão, p. 40.
Figure 9.3 Between 30,000 and 36,500 years
ago, Upper Paleolithic industries developed from
the Mousterian tradition by European Neandertals
coexisted with the Aurignacian industry, usually
associated with anatomically modern humans.
Aurignacian
Châtelperronian
and other
Upper
Paleolithic
industries
developed
by Neandertals