Prehistory: Cro Magnon Was Never The Revolution

Other discoveries: the traces of cultural activities, or very old technology – tens of thousands of years, and yet looking “modern” that relativize the reputation of “revolutionary” Cro-Magnon.

I published last Friday in a release article based on a report in Toulouse, here below, complete with links and images that could not fit into the newspaper sold on newsstands.
Toulouse, special envoy. “Look at that skull, archaic, no? An air of Neanderthal or Homo erectus, see these prominent brow ridges, the low forehead, thrown back …. ” José Braga sports a mischievous smile. Sitting in his office at the Paul Sabatier University, he is holding a casting head, being presented to the public. A very incomplete skull. Reduced to the top – as if one man had slashed at eye level and then cut horizontally – and shows highlighting his appearance at will “archaic” according to the usual criteria to separate it from the “modern ‘, ie Cro-Magnon or your next door neighbor.

When this skull was discovered in 2006 in an icy and desolate steppe of Northeastern Mongolia Mongolia DO steppe landscape (photo: Project First Modern Humans in Mongolia) on the site of Salkhit by illegal gold prospectors, these they say they found something really old, so … worth of gold for scientists. They sell to illico paleoanthropologists Mongolian. These contact Yves Coppens, the famous co-discoverer of our distant cousin Lucy Australopithecus. And no doubt when this relic was very old.

When Braga (CNRS, Molecular Anthropology Laboratory and imaging paper) was warned by Coppens, the latter entrusted him with the object by saying that it was an archaic representative of humanity. In an article published in February 2008, Yves Coppens and his co-signatories even mention, in addition to archaic sapiens in favor of the title, Neanderthal and Homo erectus Chinese industry to describe the fossil.

But with nuclear physics, the direct dating complement the morphological and geological pursued by José Braga, Yves Coppens and other experts on the BN Mongolia mining lr Braga, and Teyssandier Duranthon Salkhit site (photo, José Braga, Francis and Nicolas Teyssandier Duranthon rummaging Salkhit). A tiny piece of skull, studied carbon-14 in a U.S. laboratory in Florida, gave a date between 21,860 and 22,150 years. Another study in progress, with better ways, might grow old, “but, at most 30,000 years,” said José Braga.

Conclusion? “The man is a Salkhit sapiens sapiens, as we do. The morphological variability of our species is underestimated … which also means that the design that was his kinship with Neanderthal and Homo erectus could be wrong, too from the perspective of a violent break ” .

Anthropologist – he is a professor at the University of Toulouse – is a specialist art-Crane Salkhit global human morphologies. As medical imaging is a virtuoso of the reconstruction of anatomy in three dimensions using digital data from modern and fossil bones and computer. And it is a biologist, so in love with Darwin, evolution and variability, it discusses his favorite subject, those rights.

Variability often obscured in the minds of anthropologists. However, he points out “the true dimension of the volume of brain sapiens sapiens, it is not canonical to 1400 cm3 which one should bow erectus to 1000 cm3. Buschmen in southern Africa, there are people very close to the famous but now obsolete “cerebral Rubicon” to 800 cm3, supposed necessary for complex thought. It is between 800 and 2000 cm3 as are the skulls of sapiens sapiens. And nothing, then the distance between a fool and a super-intelligent, as Anatole France showed just over 1100 cm3. “

In this classic example, the anthropologist adds its own work on the development of teeth. A recent study using the synchrotron in Grenoble (ESRF) on the teeth of 10 young Neanderthals and sapiens fossils, wants to show that became the first adult faster? It Braga in his office contends that the age of emergence of first permanent molars from 4 to 7 years in current populations. And said, “I’m sure in the anatomical collections of museums, we find individuals Neanderthal-like, in any case very close to certain qualified Neanderthal fossil.”

That seeks to José Braga, and erasing, in sips ironic, the boundaries between the human species carefully laid by decades of anthropology? Simply to argue that “the Mass is not known” about the kinship between human forms. Vulgate that a population of Homo sapiens emerged in Africa suddenly there are about 200,000 years, and having experienced no sexual reproductive with other groups, is not the end of the story of our ancestors. The discovery (Libération, 7 May 2010) small traces of Neanderthal DNA specifically in modern populations rather indicates that the boundaries between these groups were not completely sealed (read a paper on this discovery).

In pre-historian, a specialist in “the stone industry, flint knapping, the main witness of our cultural ancestors” that Nicolas Teyssandier (laboratory work and Archaeological Research on Cultures, Spaces and Societies at the Toulouse-2 Mirail) joined José Braga. In his office and in his speech dissonant from the Vulgate now in the history of man.

The dissonance of Nicolas Teyssandier and could be called “Cro-Magnon was never the Revolution.” Casually, it’s a huge quack in the community of discourse on prehistory.

Since Abbe Breuil, a century ago, the prehistoric paradigm asserts that there are about 37,000 years old Cro-Magnon (below the skull found at Cro Magnon princeps) arrived in Europe and it is conducted as a revolutionary. Moult inventing techniques lithic, with that out in force for tens of thousands of years, called Cro-Magnon 509px-Mousterian. By creating ex nihilo technology of the bone. By carving and painting the walls of caves. All interpreted as signs and components of a cultural revolution known as Aurignacian, the Christian name of the technology of flint knapping identified in the cave of Aurignac, in Haute-Garonne.

A similar revolution, writes Henri Breuil, the invention of agriculture in the Neolithic age, when man became a producer and not only hunter / gatherer.

Having believed prehistorians coincidence in time between the emergence of modern man, Cro-Magnon – or at least its arrival in Europe – and a cultural revolution, nothing more tempting for them to combine the two well in a duet necessary and sufficient. The idea that Cro-Magnon came armed with a full civilization – art, language, religious thought, technology, social organization – has persisted. She has even strengthened to the point of imposing its consequence: Cro-Magnon has invaded the European area, has ousted Neanderthal one and the fast movement. The dominant paradigm

Now, says Nicolas Teyssandier this central paradigm of anthropology for nearly a century must be “overthrown”. It is even the official target, the scientific program of the team he leads in the laboratory Traces (University of Toulouse le Mirail and CNRS).

This paradigm, he explains, survived “despite repeated signs that the excavations showed that innovations deemed” cro-magnon “have avatars much older.”

Signs? The latter is an article in the journal Science whose first author is Vincent Mourre (INRAP and Traces). He recounts a surprising discovery: there are 75,000 years old, men living on the site of Blombos tools Blombos (Science (South Africa) used a very sophisticated lithic technology. With the aid of pressure on the stone, before heated, instruments made of bone or antler possible to obtain ultra-sharp edges, thin, acute, removing any small pieces. However, only the artists of the Solutrean in Europe 20,000 years ago, were expected to know this technology. (Photo tools Blombos, Science)

Other archaeologists have discovered in Europe, but also in the Middle East, Africa, engraved signs, ornaments, shells drilled – all characters previously assigned to the Aurignacian revolution – yet that show dates ranging from 90,000 to 45,000 years. The period, large areas of Europe and the Middle East, Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal coexisted. Never intersect or influence one? Difficult to imagine a worse situation for a scientist: there is no evidence on … and nothing forbidden.

Even the “revolution Aurignacian,” says Teyssandier, can not resist re-analysis of the Grotte Chauvet archaeological documents that were used to invent it. When we take the stratigraphy – a high precision work that has occupied for several years – it’s a trend that is emerging between 37,000 and 30,000. Evolution millennia therefore completely insensitive to the scale of a human life, invisible to men, but erases the idea of ​​a Cro-Magnon came fully armed to civilization. (Photo, Chauvet cave, Ardèche, dated between 32,000 and 26,000 years)

The unit of that civilization Aurignacian not stand it either, the more accurate analysis of regional differences, said Teyssandier.

Worse, the associations between tools and human fossils, supposedly settle disputes specialists on their allocation to Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal are very rare, and often contested.

Nicolas Teysssandier even said: “There is no guarantee combining archaeological context of the first Upper Paleolithic cultures, between 45 000 and 35 000 years, human remains unquestionably modern. The man responsible for these productions remains mysterious. ” The lack of clear documentation fossil blurs the view of scientists. So, where the public receives from writers and filmmakers (see the recent film by Jacques Malaterre Ao) a history of relations between the two humanities – whether that of a friendly or a conflict bloody ending with the extinction of Neanderthals – the pre-historian, having been perhaps too confident, hesitant …

The radical views of Braga and José Nicolas Teyssandier, breaking with the speeches by other prehistorians as Jean-Jacques Hublin (Max Planck Gesellschaft in Leipzig), are they a step backward? To the views prevailing before molecular genetics comes to his two cents in the matter? Rudimentary in its initial approach, it was first invented the famous “Eve” African and an “Adam” equally mythical. She has directed an out of Africa of Homo sapiens sapiens erasing, violently or not, other people of our origins. To finally find a part of Neanderthal in us (the note on the discovery) … which means to turn up before the barrier between modern man and the other humanity. At this point, it would be especially “unwise to conclude,” Teyssandier fun.