# Introduction to Paleoanthropology/Hominids MiddlePaleolithic

## The second phase of human migration

The time period between 250,000 and 50,000 years ago is commonly called
the Middle Paleolithic.

At the same time that Neanderthals occupied Europe and Western Asia,
other kinds of people lived in the Far East and Africa, and those in
Africa were significantly more modern than the Neanderthals.

These Africans are thus more plausible ancestors for living humans, and
it appears increasingly likely that Neanderthals were an evolutionary
dead end, contributing few if any genes to historic populations.

Topics to be covered in this chapter:

-   Summary of the fossil evidence for both the Neanderthals and some of
    their contemporaries;
-   Second phase of human migration (\"Out-of-Africa 2\" Debate)

## Neanderthals

### History of Research

In 1856, a strange skeleton was discovered in Feldhofer Cave in the
Neander Valley (in German \"Neandertal\" but previously it was called
\"Neanderthal\", \"thal\" = valley) near Dusseldorf, Germany. The skull
cap was as large as that of a present-day human but very different in
shape. Initially this skeleton was interpreted as that of a congenital
idiot.

The Forbes Quarry (Gibraltar) female cranium (now also considered as
Neanderthal) was discovered in 1848, eight years before the Feldhofer
find, but its distinctive features were not recognized at that time.

Subsequently, numerous Neanderthal remains were found in Belgium,
Croatia, France, Spain, Italy, Israel and Central Asia.

Anthropologists have been debating for 150 years whether Neanderthals
were a distinct species or an ancestor of Homo sapiens sapiens. In 1997,
DNA analysis from the Feldhofer Cave specimen showed decisively that
Neanderthals were a distinct lineage.

These data imply that Neanderthals and *Homo sapiens sapiens* were
separate lineages with a common ancestor, Homo heidelbergensis, about
600,000 years ago.

### Anatomy

!Full skeletons of modern *Homo Sapiens* (left) and Neanderthal
(right) and Neanderthal (right)")
Unlike earlier hominids (with some rare exceptions), Neanderthals are
represented by many complete or nearly complete skeletons. Neanderthals
provide the best hominid fossil record of the Plio-Pleistocene, with
about 500 individuals. About half the skeletons were children. Typical
cranial and dental features are present in the young individuals,
indicating Neanderthal features were inherited, not acquired.

Morphologically the Neanderthals are a remarkably coherent group.
Therefore they are easier to characterize than most earlier human types.

Neanderthal skull has a low forehead, prominent brow ridges and
occipital bones. It is long and low, but relatively thin walled. The
back of the skull has a characteristic rounded bulge, and does not come
to a point at the back.

!Skulls of *Homo Sapiens* (left) and Neanderthal
(right) and Neanderthal (right)")
Cranial capacity is relatively large, ranging from 1,245 to 1,740 cc and
averaging about 1,520 cc. It overlaps or even exceeds average for *Homo
sapiens sapiens*. The robust face with a broad nasal region projects out
from the braincase. By contrast, the face of modern Homo sapiens sapiens
is tucked under the brain box, the forehead is high, the occipital
region rounded, and the chin prominent.

Neanderthals have small back teeth (molars), but incisors are relatively
large and show very heavy wear.

Neanderthal short legs and arms are characteristic of a body type that
conserves heat. They were strong, rugged and built for cold weather.
Large elbow, hip, knee joints, and robust bones suggest great
muscularity. Pelvis had longer and thinner pubic bone than modern
humans.

All adult skeletons exhibit some kind of disease or injury. Healed
fractures and severe arthritis show that they had a hard life, and
individuals rarely lived past 40 years old.

### Chronology

Neanderthals lived from about 250,000 to 30,000 years ago in Eurasia.

The earlier ones, like at Atapuerca (Sima de Los Huesos), were more
generalized. The later ones are the more specialized, \"classic\"
Neanderthals.

The last Neanderthals lived in Southwest France, Portugal, Spain,
Croatia, and the Caucasus as recently as 27,000 years ago.

### Geography

!Distribution of
Neanderthals
The distribution of Neanderthals extended from Uzbekistan in the east to
the Iberian peninsula in the west, from the margins of the Ice Age
glaciers in the north to the shores of the Mediterranean sea in the
south.

South-West France (Dordogne region) is among the richest in Neanderthal
cave shelters:

-   La Chapelle-aux-Saints;
-   La Ferrassie;
-   Saint-Césaire (which is one of the younger sites at 36,000).

Other sites include:

-   Krapina in Croatia;
-   Saccopastore in Italy;
-   Shanidar in Iraq;
-   Teshik-Tash (Uzbekistan). The 9-year-old hominid from this site lies
    at the most easterly known part of their range.

No Neanderthal remains have been discovered in Africa or East Asia.

## Homo sapiens

### Chronology and Geography

The time and place of Homo sapiens origin has preoccupied
anthropologists for more than a century. For the longest time, many
assumed their origin was in South-West Asia. But in 1987, anthropologist
Rebecca Cann and colleagues compared DNA of Africans, Asians,
Caucasians, Australians, and New Guineans. Their findings were striking
in two respects:

-   the variability observed within each population was greatest by far
    in Africans, which implied the African population was oldest and
    thus ancestral to the Asians and Caucasians;
-   there was very little variability between populations which
    indicated that our species originated quite recently.

The human within-species variability was only 1/25th as much as the
average difference between human and chimpanzee DNA. The human and
chimpanzee lineages diverged about 5 million years ago. 1/25th of 5
million is 200,000. Cann therefore concluded that Homo sapiens
originated in Africa about 200,000 years ago. Much additional molecular
data and hominid remains further support a recent African origin of Homo
sapiens, now estimated to be around 160,000-150,000 years ago.

### Earliest Evidence

The Dmanisi evidence suggests early Europeans developed in Asia and
migrated to Europe creating modern Europeans with minor interaction with
African Homo types. July 5 2002 issue of the journal Science and is the
subject of the cover story of the August issue of National Geographic
magazine. New Asian finds are significant, they say, especially the 1.75
million-year-old small-brained early-human fossils found in Dmanisi,
Georgia, and the 18,000-year-old \"hobbit\" fossils (Homo floresiensis)
discovered on the island of Flores in Indonesia.

Such finds suggest that Asia\'s earliest human ancestors may be older by
hundreds of thousands of years than previously believed, the scientists
say. Robin Dennell, of the University of Sheffield in England, and Wil
Roebroeks, of Leiden University in the Netherlands, describe their ideas
in the December 22, 2005 issue of Nature. The fossil and archaeological
finds characteristic of early modern humans are represented at various
sites in East and South Africa, which date between 160,000 and 77,000
years ago.

#### Herto (Middle Awash, Ethiopia)

In June 2003, publication of hominid remains of a new subspecies: *Homo
sapiens idaltu*. Three skulls (two adults, one juvenile) are interpreted
as the earliest near-modern humans: 160,000-154,000 BP. They exhibit
some modern traits (very large cranium; high, round skull; flat face
without browridge), but also retain archaic features (heavy browridge;
widely spaced eyes). Their anatomy and antiquity link earlier archaic
African forms to later fully modern ones, providing strong evidence that
East Africa was the birthplace of *Homo sapiens*.

#### Omo-Kibish (Ethiopia)

In 1967, Richard Leakey and his team uncovered a partial hominid
skeleton (Omo I), which had the features of Homo sapiens. Another
partial fragment of a skull (Omo II) revealed a cranial capacity over
1,400 cc. Dating of shells from the same level gave a date of 130,000
years.

#### Ngaloba, Laetoli area (Tanzania)

A nearly complete skull (LH 18) was found in Upper Ngaloba Beds. Its
morphology is largely modern, yet it retains some archaic features such
as prominent brow ridges and a receding forehead. Dated at about 120,000
years ago.

#### Border Cave (South Africa)

Remains of four individuals (a partial cranium, 2 lower jaws, and a tiny
buried infant) were found in a layer dated to at least 90,000 years ago.
Although fragmentary, these fossils appeared modern.

#### Klasies River (South Africa)

Site occupied from 120,000 to 60,000 years ago. Most human fossils come
from a layer dated to around 90,000 years ago. They are fragmentary:
cranial, mandibular, and postcranial pieces. They appear modern,
especially a fragmentary frontal bone that lacks a brow ridge. Chin and
tooth size also have a modern aspect.

#### Blombos Cave (South Africa)

A layer dated to 77,000 BCE yielded 9 human teeth or dental fragments,
representing five to seven individuals, of modern appearance.

### Anatomy

African skulls have reduced browridges and small faces. They tend to be
higher, more rounded than classic Neanderthal skulls, and some approach
or equal modern skulls in basic vault shape. Where cranial capacity can
be estimated, the African skulls range between 1,370 and 1,510 cc,
comfortably within the range of both the Neanderthals and anatomically
modern people.

Mandibles tend to have significantly shorter and flatter faces than did
the Neanderthals.

Postcranial parts indicate people who were robust, particularly in their
legs, but who were fully modern in form.

## Out-of-Africa 2: The debate

Most anthropologists agree that a dramatic shift in hominid morphology
occurred during the last glacial epoch. About 150,000 years ago the
world was inhabited by a morphologically heterogeneous collection of
hominids: Neanderthals in Europe; less robust archaic Homo sapiens in
East Asia; and somewhat more modern humans in East Africa (Ethiopia) and
also SW Asia. By 30,000 years ago, much of this diversity had
disappeared. Anatomically modern humans occupied all of the Old World.

In order to understand how this transition occurred, we need to answer
two questions:

1.  Did the genes that give rise to modern human morphology arise in one
    region, or in many different parts of the globe?
2.  Did the genes spread from one part of the world to another by gene
    flow, or through the movement and replacement of one group of people
    by another?

Unfortunately, genes don\'t fossilize, and we cannot study the genetic
composition of ancient hominid populations directly. However, there is a
considerable amount of evidence that we can bring to bear on these
questions through the anatomical study of the fossil record and the
molecular biology of living populations. The shapes of teeth from a
number of hominid species suggest that arrivals from Asia played a
greater role in colonizing Europe than hominids direct from Africa, a
new analysis of more than 5,000 ancient teeth suggests. (Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences Aug 2007)

Two opposing hypotheses for the transition to modern humans have been
promulgated over the last decades:

-   the \"multi-regional model\" sees the process as a localized
    speciation event;
-   the \"out-of-Africa model\" sees the process as the result of
    widespread phyletic transformation.

### The \"Multi-regional\" model

This model proposes that ancestral Homo erectus populations throughout
the world gradually and independently evolved first through archaic Homo
sapiens, then to fully modern humans. In this case, the Neanderthals are
seen as European versions of archaic sapiens.

Recent advocates of the model have emphasized the importance of gene
flow among different geographic populations, making their move toward
modernity not independent but tied together as a genetic network over
large geographical regions and over long periods of time. Since these
populations were separated by great distances and experienced different
kinds of environmental conditions, there was considerable regional
variation in morphology among them.

One consequence of this widespread phyletic transformation would be that
modern geographic populations would have very deep genetic roots, having
begun to separate from each other a very long time ago, perhaps as much
as a million years.

This model essentially sees multiple origins of Homo sapiens, and no
necessary migrations.

### The \"Out-of-Africa\"/\"Replacement\" model

This second hypothesis considers a geographically discrete origin,
followed by migration throughout the rest of the Old World. By contrast
with the first hypothesis, here we have a single origin and extensive
migration.

Modern geographic populations would have shallow genetic roots, having
derived from a speciation event in relatively recent times. Hominid
populations were genetically isolated from each other during the Middle
Pleistocene. As a result, different populations of Homo erectus and
archaic Homo sapiens evolved independently, perhaps forming several
hominid species. Then, between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago,
anatomically modern humans arose someplace in Africa and spread out,
replacing other archaic sapiens including Neanderthals. The replacement
model does not specify how anatomically modern humans usurped local
populations. However, the model posits that there was little or no gene
flow between hominid groups.

### Hypothesis testing

If the \"Multi-regional Model\" were correct, then it should be possible
to see in modern populations echoes of anatomical features that stretch
way back into prehistory: this is known as regional continuity. In
addition, the appearance in the fossil record of advanced humans might
be expected to occur more or less simultaneously throughout the Old
World. By contrast, the \"Out-of-Africa Model\" predicts little regional
continuity and the appearance of modern humans in one locality before
they spread into others.

### Out-of-Africa 2: The evidence

Until relatively recently, there was a strong sentiment among
anthropologists in favor of extensive regional continuity. In addition,
Western Europe tended to dominate the discussions. Evidence has expanded
considerably in recent years, and now includes molecular biology data as
well as fossils. Now there is a distinct shift in favor of some version
of the \"Out-of-Africa Model\".

Discussion based on detailed examination of fossil record and
mitochondrial DNA needs to address criteria for identifying:

-   regional continuity;
-   earliest geographical evidence (center of origin);
-   chronology of appearance of modern humans.

### Fossil record

#### Regional Continuity

The fossil evidence most immediately relevant to the origin of modern
humans is to be found throughout Europe, Asia, Australasia, and Africa,
and goes back in time as far as 300,000 years ago.

Most fossils are crania of varying degrees of incompleteness. They look
like a mosaic of Homo erectus and Homo sapiens, and are generally termed
archaic sapiens. It is among such fossils that signs of regional
continuity are sought, being traced through to modern populations.

For example, some scholars (Alan Thorne) argue for such regional
anatomical continuities among Australasian populations and among Chinese
populations. In the same way, some others believe a good case can be
made for regional continuity in Central Europe and perhaps North Africa.

#### Replacement

By contrast, proponents of a replacement model argue that, for most of
the fossil record, the anatomical characters being cited as indicating
regional continuity are primitive, and therefore cannot be used uniquely
to link specific geographic populations through time.

The equatorial anatomy of the first modern humans in Europe presumably
is a clue to their origin: Africa. There are sites from the north, east
and south of the African continent with specimens of anatomical
modernity. One of the most accepted is Klasies River in South Africa.
The recent discovery of remains of H. sapiens idaltu at Herto (Ethiopia)
confirms this evidence. Does this mean that modern Homo sapiens arose as
a speciation event in Eastern Africa (Ethiopia), populations migrating
north, eventually to enter Eurasia? This is a clear possibility.

The earlier appearance of anatomically modern humans in Africa than in
Europe and in Asia too supports the \"Out-of-Africa Model\".

### Molecular biology

Just as molecular evidence had played a major role in understanding the
beginnings of the hominid family, so too could it be applied to the
later history, in principle.

However, because that later history inevitably covers a shorter period
of time - no more than the past 1 million years - conventional genetic
data would be less useful than they had been for pinpointing the time of
divergence between hominids and apes, at least 5 million years ago.
Genes in cell nuclei accumulate mutations rather slowly. Therefore
trying to infer the recent history of populations based on such
mutations is difficult, because of the relative paucity of information.
DNA that accumulates mutations at a much higher rate would, however,
provide adequate information for reading recent population history. That
is precisely what mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) offers.

MtDNA is a relatively new technique to reconstruct family trees. Unlike
the DNA in the cell nucleus, mtDNA is located elsewhere in the cell, in
compartments that produce the energy needed to keep cells alive. Unlike
an individual\'s nuclear genes, which are a combination of genes from
both parents, the mitochondrial genome comes only from the mother.
Because of this maternal mode of inheritance, there is no recombination
of maternal and paternal genes, which sometimes blurs the history of the
genome as read by geneticists. Potentially, therefore, mtDNA offers a
powerful way of inferring population history.

MtDNA can yield two major conclusions relevant for our topic: the first
addresses the depth of our genetic routes, the second the possible
location of the origin of anatomically modern humans.

### Expectations

#### Multiregional model:

-   extensive genetic variation, implying an ancient origin, going back
    at least a million years (certainly around 1.8 million years ago);
-   no population would have significantly more variation than any
    other. Any extra variation the African population might have had as
    the home of *Homo erectus* would have been swamped by the subsequent
    million years of further mutation.

#### Replacement model:

-   limited variation in modern mtDNA, implying a recent origin;
-   African population would display most variation.

#### Results

1.  If modern populations derive from a process of long regional
    continuity, then mtDNA should reflect the establishment of those
    local populations, after 1.8 million years ago, when populations of
    Homo erectus first left Africa and moved into the rest of the Old
    World. Yet the absence of ancient mtDNA in any modern living
    population gives a different picture. The amount of genetic
    variation throughout all modern human populations is surprisingly
    small, and implies therefore a recent origin for the common ancestor
    of us all.
2.  Although genetic variation among the world\'s population is small
    overall, it is greatest in African populations, implying they are
    the longest established.
3.  If modern humans really did evolve recently in Africa, and then move
    into the rest of the Old World where they mated with established
    archaic sapiens, the resulting population would contain a mixture of
    old and new mtDNA, with a bias toward the old because of the
    relative numbers of newcomers to archaic sapiens. Yet the evidence
    does not seem to support this view.

The argument that genetic variation among widely separated populations
has been homogenized by gene flow (interbreeding) is not tenable any
more, according to population geneticists.

### Intermediate Model

Although these two hypotheses dominate the debate over the origins of
modern humans, they represent extremes; and there is also room for
several intermediate models.

-   One hypothesis holds that there might have been a single geographic
    origin as predicted by replacement model, but followed by migrations
    in which newcomers interbred with locally established groups of
    archaic sapiens. Thus, some of genes of Neanderthals and archaic H.
    sapiens may still exist in modern populations;
-   Another hypothesis suggests that there could have been more
    extensive gene flow between different geographic populations than is
    allowed for in the multi-regional model, producing closer genetic
    continuity between populations. Anatomically modern humans evolved
    in Africa, and then their genes diffused to the rest of the world by
    gene flow, not by migration of anatomically modern humans and
    replacement of local peoples.

In any case the result would be a much less clearcut signal in the
fossil record.

## Case studies

### Southwest Asia

Neanderthal fossils have been found in Israel at several sites: Kebara,
Tabun, and Amud. For many years there were no reliable absolute dates.
Recently, these sites were securely dated. The Neanderthals occupied
Tabun around 110,000 years ago. However, the Neanderthals at Kebara and
Amud lived 55,000 to 60,000 years ago. By contrast, at Qafzeh Cave,
located nearby, remains currently interpreted as of anatomically modern
humans have been found in a layer dated to 90,000 years ago.

These new dates lead to the surprising conclusion that Neanderthals and
anatomically modern humans overlapped - if not directly coexisted - in
this part of the world for a very long time (at least 30,000 years). Yet
the anatomical evidence of the Qafzeh hominid skeletons reveals features
reminiscent of Neanderthals. Although their faces and bodies are large
and heavily built by today\'s standards, they are nonetheless claimed to
be within the range of living peoples. Yet, a recent statistical study
comparing a number of measurements among Qafzeh, Upper Paleolithic and
Neanderthal skulls found those from Qafzeh to fall in between the Upper
Paleolithic and Neanderthal norms, though slightly closer to the
Neanderthals.

### Portugal

The Lagar Velho 1 remains, found in a rockshelter in Portugal dated to
24,500 years ago, correspond to the complete skeleton of a four-year-old
child.

This skeleton has anatomical features characteristic of early modern
Europeans:

-   prominent chin and certain other details of the mandible;
-   small front teeth;
-   characteristic proportions and muscle markings on the thumb;
-   narrowness of the front of pelvis;
-   several aspects of shoulder and forearm bones.

Yet, intriguingly, a number of features also suggest Neanderthal
affinities:

-   the front of the mandible which slopes backward despite the chin;
-   details of the incisor teeth;
-   pectoral muscle markings;
-   knee proportions and short, strong lower-leg bones.

Thus, the Lagar Velho child appears to exhibit a complex mosaic of
Neanderthal and early modern human features. This combination can only
have resulted from a mixed ancestry; something that had not been
previously documented for Western Europe. The Lagar Velho child is
interpreted as the result of interbreeding between indigenous Iberian
Neanderthals and early modern humans dispersing throughout Iberia
sometime after 30,000 years ago. Because the child lived several
millennia after Neanderthals were thought to have disappeared, its
anatomy probably reflects a true mixing of these populations during the
period when they coexisted and not a rare chance mating between a
Neanderthal and an early modern human.

## Population dispersal into Australia/Oceania

Based on current data (and conventional view), the evidence for the
earliest colonization of Australia would be as follows:

-   archaeologists have generally agreed that modern humans arrived on
    Australia and its continental islands, New Guinea and Tasmania,
    about 35,000 to 40,000 years ago, a time range that is consistent
    with evidence of their appearance elsewhere in the Old World well
    outside Africa;
-   all hominids known from Greater Australia are anatomically modern
    Homo sapiens;
-   the emerging picture begins to suggest purposeful voyaging by groups
    possessed of surprisingly sophisticated boat-building and navigation
    skills;
-   the only major feature of early Greater Australia archaeology that
    does NOT fit comfortably with a consensus model of modern human
    population expansion in the mid-Upper Pleistocene is the lithic
    technology, which has a pronounced Middle, rather than Upper,
    Paleolithic cast.

Over the past decade, however, this consensus has been eroded by the
discovery and dating of several sites:

-   Malakunanja II and Nauwalabila I, located in Arnhem Land, would be
    50,000 to 60,000 years old;
-   Jinmium yielded dates of 116,000 to 176,000 years ago.

Yet these early dates reveal numerous problems related to stratigraphic
considerations and dating methods. Therefore, many scholars are
skeptical of their value.

If accurate, these dates require significant changes in current ideas,
not just about the initial colonization of Australia, but about the
entire chronology of human evolution in the early Upper Pleistocene.
Either fully modern humans were present well outside Africa at a
surprisingly early date or the behavioral capabilities long thought to
be uniquely theirs were also associated, at least to some degree, with
other hominids.

As a major challenge, the journey from Southeast Asia and Indonesia to
Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea would have required sea voyages, even
with sea levels at their lowest during glacial maxima. So far, there is
no archaeological evidence from Australian sites of vessels that could
have made such a journey. However, what were coastal sites during the
Ice Age are mostly now submerged beneath the sea.

## Summary

Overall the evidence suggested by mitochondrial DNA is the following:

-   the amount of genetic variation in human mitochondrial DNA is small
    and implies a recent origin for modern humans;
-   the African population displays the greatest amount of variation;
    this too is most reasonably interpreted as suggesting an African
    origin.


# Introduction to Paleoanthropology/MiddlePaleolithic Technology

## Stone tool industry

!Flint tool found in the Valley of the Kings,
Egypt
Neanderthals and their contemporaries seem to have been associated
everywhere with similar stone tool industries, called the Mousterian
(after Le Moustier Cave in France). Therefore no fundamental behavioral
difference is noticeable. The implication may be that the anatomical
differences between Neanderthals and near-moderns have more to do with
climatic adaptation and genetic flow than with differences in behavior.

Archaeological sites are dominated by flake tools. By contrast,
Acheulean sites are dominated by large handaxes and choppers. Handaxes
are almost absent from Middle Paleolithic sites. Oldowan hominids used
mainly flake tools as well. However, unlike the small, irregular Oldowan
flakes, the Middle Paleolithic hominids produced quite symmetric,
regular flakes using sophisticated methods.

The main method is called the Levallois and it involves three steps in
the core reduction:

1.  the flintknapper prepares a core having one precisely shaped convex
    surface;
2.  then, the knapper makes a striking platform at one end of the core;
3.  finally, the knapper hits the striking platform, knocking off a
    flake whose shape is determined by the original shape of the core.

Mousterian tools are more variable than Acheulean tools. Traditionally
tools have been classified into a large number of distinct types based
on their shape and inferred function. Among the most important ones are:

-   points;
-   side scrapers, flake tools bearing a retouched edge on one or both
    sides;
-   denticulates, flake tools with a succession of irregular adjacent
    notches on one or both sides.

!Flint points found in Loiret,
France
Francois Bordes found that Middle Paleolithic sites did not reveal a
random mix of tool types, but fell into one of four categories that he
called Mousterian variants. Each variant had a different mix of tool
types. Bordes concluded that these sites were the remains of four
wandering groups of Neanderthals, each preserving a distinct tool
tradition over time and structured much like modern ethnic groups.

Recent studies give reason to doubt Bordes\' interpretation. Many
archaeologists believe that the variation among sites results from
differences in the kinds of activity performed at each locality. For
example, Lewis Binford argued that differences in tool types depend on
the nature of the site and the nature of the work performed. Some sites
may have been base camps where people lived, while others may have been
camps at which people performed subsistence tasks. Different tools may
have been used at different sites for woodworking, hide preparation, or
butchering prey.

Recently, however, microscopic studies of wear patterns on Mousterian
tools suggest that the majority of tools were used mainly for
woodworking. As a result, there seems to be no association between a
tool type (such as a point or a side-scraper) and the task for which it
was used.

!Mousterian points and
scrapers
Microscopic analyses of the wear patterns on Mousterian tools also
suggest that stone tools were hafted, probably to make spears.

Mousterian hominids usually made tools from rocks acquired locally. Raw
materials used to make tools can typically be found within a few
kilometers of the site considered.

## Subsistence Patterns

Neanderthal sites contain bones of many animals alongside Mousterian
stone tools. European sites are rich in bones of red deer, fallow deer,
bison, aurochs, wild sheep, wild goat and horse, while eland,
wildebeest, zebra are found often at African sites. Archaeologists find
only few bones of very large animals such as hippopotamus, rhinoceros
and elephant, even though they were plentiful in Africa and Europe.

This pattern has provoked as much debate at similar ambiguity as for
earlier hominids, regarding the type of food procurement responsible for
the presence of these bones: hunting or scavenging.

Several general models have be offered to explain the Mousterian faunal
exploitation:

### Obligate Scavenger Model

Some archaeologists (such as Lewis Binford) believe that Neanderthals
and their contemporaries in Africa never hunted anything larger than
small antelope, and even these prey were acquired opportunistically, not
as a result of planned hunts. Any bones of larger animals were acquired
by scavenging. As evidence in support of this view, the body parts which
dominate (skulls and foot bones) are commonly available to scavengers.
Binford believes that hominids of this period did not have the cognitive
skills necessary to plan and organize the cooperative hunts necessary to
bring down large prey. Mousterian hominids were nearly as behaviorally
primitive as early Homo.

### Flexible Hunter-Scavenger Model

Other scientists argue that Neanderthals likely were not obligate
scavengers, but that during times when plant foods were abundant they
tended to scavenger rather than hunt. At other times, when plant foods
were less abundant, Neanderthals hunted regularly. Their interpretation
is of a flexible faunal exploitation strategy that shifted between
hunting and scavenging.

### Less-Adept Hunter Model

Other scientists believe that Neanderthals were primarily hunters who
regularly killed large animals. But they were less effective hunters
than are modern humans. They point out that animal remains at Mousterian
sites are often made up of one or two species:

:

    :   For example, at Klasies River, vast majority of bones are from
        eland.

The prey animals are large creatures, and they are heavily
overrepresented at these sites compared with their occurrence in the
local ecosystem. It is hard to see how an opportunistic scavenger would
acquire such a non-random sample of the local fauna. One important
feature of this model is that animal prey hunted such as eland are not
as dangerous prey as buffalo. Middle Paleolithic hominids were forced to
focus on the less dangerous (but less abundant) eland, because they were
unable to kill the fierce buffalo regularly.

### Fully Adept Hunter Model

Finally some scientists argue that scavenging was not a major component
of the Middle Paleolithic diet and there is little evidence of a less
effective hunting strategy. Skeletal element abundance and cut mark
patterning would be consistent with hunting.

Overall, there is currently no evidence that Middle Paleolithic hominids
differed from Upper Paleolithic hominids in scavenging or hunting, the
most fundamental aspect of faunal exploitation. The differences that
separate Middle Paleolithic hominids from modern hominids may not reside
in scavenging versus hunting or the types of animals that they pursued.
Differences in the effectiveness of carcass use and processing, with
their direct implications for caloric yield, may be more important.

Neanderthals lacked sophisticated meat and fat storage technology, as
well as productive fat rendering technology. At a minimum, the lack of
storage capabilities and a lower caloric yield per carcass have forced
Neanderthals to use larger foraging ranges to increase the likelihood of
successful encounters with prey.

## Cannibalism

Marks on human bones from Middle Paleolithic can be the result of two
phenomena: violence and cannibalism.

### Violence

Violence can be recognized on bone assemblages by:

-   marks of weapons;
-   cutmarks on skull produced by scalping;
-   removal of heads and hands as trophies;
-   breakage of faces;
-   much less \"body processing\" than in case of cannibalism.

Evidence for violence in the Middle Paleolithic is extremely rare.

### Body processing and cannibalism

By contrast, evidence of body processing and cannibalism is becoming
more widespread at different times and in different geographical areas.

### Chronology

:

    :   Lower Paleolithic

        :   Sterkfontein (South Africa): cannibalism
        :   Bodo cranium (Ethiopia): cannibalism
        :   Atapuerca (Spain): cannibalism

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:

    :   Middle Paleolithic (Neanderthals)

        :   Krapina (Croatia): body processing
        :   Moula-Guercy (France): cannibalism
        :   Marillac (France): cannibalism
        :   Combe-Grenal (France): cannibalism

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:

    :   Middle Paleolithic (Homo sapiens idaltu)

        :   Herto (Ethiopia): body processing

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:

    :   Upper Paleolithic (with Neanderthals)

        :   Vindija (Croatia): cannibalism
        :   Zafarraya (Spain): cannibalism

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:

    :   Neolithic

        :   Fontbrégoua (France): cannibalism

### Criteria

Criteria required for a \"minimal taphonomic signature\" of cannibalism:

-   breakage of bones (to get at marrow and brain);
-   cut marks suggesting butchery;
-   so-called anvil abrasions left where a bone has rested on a stone
    anvil whilst it is broken with a hammer stone;
-   burning (after breakage and cutting);
-   virtual absence of vertebrae (crushed or boiled to get at marrow and
    grease);
-   \"pot polishing\" on the ends of bones which have been cooked and
    stirred in a clay pot.

These criteria **must** be found on **both** hominid and ungulate
remains. Finally the types of bones usually broken are the crania and
limb bones.

## Patterns

Different behavioral patterns toward the dead among Middle Paleolithic
Neanderthals:

-   Cannibalism: Moula-Guercy
    -   Human individuals defleshed and disarticulated.
    -   Bones smashed for marrow and brain.
-   Mortuary practices with body processing: Krapina, Herto
    -   Postmortem processing of corpses with stone tools, probably in
        preparation for burial of cleaned bones.
    -   No evidence of marrow processing.
-   Mortuary practices without body processing: Southwest Asia (Amud,
    Kebara, Shanidar)
    -   Intentional burials; dead bodies placed carefully in burial pits
        with tools and grave goods.


# Introduction to Paleoanthropology/UpperPaleolithic

## Early Upper Paleolithic Cultures

### Aurignacian

The Aurignacian indicates a
tool industry from the Upper Paleolithic in Europe. A tool industry
contains standardized tools and production techniques that indicate a
shared cultural knowledge. The Aurignacian industry contains blades
(long, thin stone flakes), burins (stone chisels for working bone and
wood), bone points, as well as the beginning of prehistoric art.

#### First Discovered

The name is associated with the Aurignac Rockshelter in the Pyrenees in
Southwestern France.

#### Chronology

-   ca. 35,000-27,000 BC

#### Geography

-   Widespread distribution over Eurasia
-   Siberia (Sungir)

#### Hominid

-   Modern humans (Homo sapiens)

#### Material Culture

The tools of the Aurignacian are quite standardized which shows planning
and foresight in their creation. In addition, the inclusion of tools to
work bone and wood show a wider variety of raw materials being used in
tool production.

-   Upper Paleolithic-type lithic industry
-   Aurignacian blades, burins, endscrapers, etc.
-   Bone Tools

#### Mortuary practices

The Aurignacian period includes definitive elaborate burials with grave
goods. Burials can indicate the social status of the deceased as well as
the beginning of religious concept associated with life and death. Grace
goods provide archaeologists important social and cultural information.

#### Symbolic Expression

Proliferation of various forms of personal ornaments:

-   perforated animal-teeth;
-   distinctive \"bead\" forms carved out of bone and mammoth ivory;
-   earliest perforated marine shells

##### Artistic Expression

Types of evidence:

-   Engraved limestone blocks
-   Animal and human figurines
-   Parietal art

Engraved block characteristics:

-   Stiffness of outlines;
-   Deep incisions;
-   Work executed mainly on limestone slabs or blocks;
-   Sexual symbols realistically represented;
-   Animals (usually heads, forequarters and dorsal lines) extremely
    crudely rendered;
-   This type of artistic expression limited to southwest France (mainly
    Dordogne).

Figurine characteristics:

-   Earliest evidence of artwork in the Upper Paleolithic:
    Geissenklösterle - 37,000-33,000 BC
-   Present in Central Europe, presently Germany
-   Sophisticated and naturalistic statuettes of animal (mammoth,
    feline, bear, bison) and even human figures
-   Carved from mammoth ivory

### Gravettian

#### First Discovered

-   La Gravette (Dordogne, France)

#### Chronology

-   ca. 27,000-21,000 BC

#### Geography

-   Widespread distribution over Eurasia

#### Major cultural centers

-   Southwest France
-   Northern Italy (Grimaldi)
-   Central Europe (Dolni Vestonice, Pavlov)

#### Architecture

-   Mammoth huts

#### Material Culture

-   Upper Paleolithic-type lithic industry
-   Gravette Points, etc.

#### Other Economic Activities

-   Pyrotechnology
-   Basketry

#### Complex mortuary practices

-   Dolni Vestonice triple burial

#### Artistic Expression

Types:

-   Animal figurines
-   Female figurines (\"Venuses\")
-   Parietal art

Animal figuring characteristics: Animals most frequently depicted are
dangerous species (felines and bears), continuing Aurignacian tradition

-   In Moravia, 67 animal statuettes recorded:
    -   21 bears
    -   11 small carnivores
    -   9 felines
    -   8 mammoths
    -   6 birds
    -   6 horses
    -   4 rhinoceroses
    -   1 caprid
    -   1 cervid

By contrast, Magdalenian animal statuettes from the same region show
very different patterns (N=139):

-   56 horses, 44 bisons
-   9 bears,
-   2 felines,
-   1 mammoth
-   2 birds
-   1 caprid, 1 cervid
-   5 miscellaneous, 18 indeterminates
-   No rhinoceros

Dangerous animals represent only 10% of total

Female figurine characteristics: Widespread distribution over Europe and
Russia; except Spain where no evidence of Venuses

-   Raw materials:
    -   ivory
    -   clay
-   Various types of research performed by anthropologists:
    -   technological
    -   stylistic
    -   details of clothing, ornaments
    -   chronological/geographical
    -   interpretational
-   Most of baked clay figurines found fragmented
    -   Lack of skill or deliberate action? Intentional fracturation
        through heating process
    -   Fragmented figurines were intended products Involved and
        by-products of ritual ceremonies rather than art objects

Parietal art characteristics: From 21 sites, a list of 47 animals
identified:

-   9 ibexes
-   9 cervids
-   7 horses
-   4 mammoths
-   3 bovids
-   1 megaceros
-   1 salmon
-   10 indeterminates

Dangerous animals (rhinoceros, bear, lion) depicted during the
Gravettian do not constitute more than 11% of determinable animals:

-   3 times less than in Aurignacian period);
-   yet still higher frequency than during Solutrean and Magdalenian

Strong preponderance of hunted animals, with horse very widely dominant

-   Example: Gargas with a list of 148 animals identified:
    -   36.5% bovids (bison and aurochs)
    -   29% horses
    -   10% ibexes
    -   6% cervids
    -   4% mammoths
    -   8% indeterminates
    -   (2 birds, 1 wild boar)
    -   **No** feline, rhinoceros, bear

## Late Upper Paleolithic Cultures

### Solutrean

#### First Discovered

-   Solutré (NE France)

#### Chronology

-   ca. 21,000-18,000 BC

#### Geography

-   Limited distribution over SW France and Iberia

#### Material Culture

-   Upper Paleolithic-type lithic industry
-   Heat Treatment, Pressure Retouch
-   Solutrean points: bifacially retouched leaf points, shouldered
    points, etc.
-   burins, endscrapers, etc.

#### Settlements

-   Some sedentary groups (Fourneau-du-Diable)
-   Long stratigraphic sequences

#### Human remains

-   Complex mortuary practices:

:   No evidence of burials, but manipulation of dead (e.g., reuse of
    skull: Le Placard)

#### Artistic expression

Types:

-   Engraved limestone blocks
-   Engraved Bones
-   Parietal art

Characteristics:

-   Various techniques applied: painting, engraving
-   Distribution and amount of animals represented in tradition of Late
    Upper Paleolithic: mainly horses and bisons
-   Several novelties from Gravettian:
    -   First association of parietal art with occupation sites
        \[Low-relief scupture on blocks detached from walls\];
    -   Representation of animals in line or opposed

### Magdelenian

#### First Discovered

-   La Madeleine (Dordogne, France)

#### Chronology

-   ca. 19,000-10,000 BC

#### Geography

-   Widespread distribution over Eurasia

#### Major cultural centers

-   Southwest France (Charente, Dordogne, Pyrénées)
-   Northeast Spain
-   Central Europe

#### Material Culture

-   Upper Paleolithic-type lithic industry
-   Magdalenian blades, burins, etc.
-   Rich bone tool industry (harpoons)

#### Complex mortuary practices

-   Children burials

#### Artistic expression

Types:

-   Raw Materials: Great diversity (limestone cave walls and slabs,
    sandstone, shale, bone, ivory, clay, etc.)
-   Techniques: All techniques employed: Engraving, Sculpture, Molding,
    Cutting, Drawing, Painting
-   Both mobiliary and parietal arts present. Out of about 300 sites
    with parietal art, 250 are attributed to Magdalenian period.
-   Types of Figurations:
    -   Animals (mainly horses and bisons)
    -   Humans (male and female)
    -   Hands (positive and negative)
    -   Signs (dots, lines)


# Introduction to Paleoanthropology/Dating Techniques

of reconstructing how anatomical and behavioral characteristics of early
hominids evolved. \_\_toc\_\_ Researchers who are interested in knowing
the age of particular hominid fossils and/or artifacts have options that
fall into two basic categories:

-   Relative dating methods
-   Chronometric dating methods

## Relative dating methods

Relative dating methods allow one to determine if an object is earlier
than, later than, or contemporary with some other object. It does not,
however, allow one to independently assign an accurate estimation of the
age of an object as expressed in years. The most common relative dating
method is stratigraphy. Other methods include fluorine dating, nitrogen
dating, association with bones of extinct fauna, association with
certain pollen profiles, association with geological features such as
beaches, terraces and river meanders, and the establishment of cultural
seriations. Cultural seriations are based on typologies, in which
artifacts that are numerous across a wide variety of sites and over
time, like pottery or stone tools. If archaeologists know how pottery
styles, glazes, and techniques have changed over time they can date
sites based on the ratio of different kinds of pottery. This also works
with stone tools which are found abundantly at different sites and
across long periods of time.

### Principle of stratigraphy

Stratigraphic dating is based on the principle of depositional
superposition of layers of sediments called strata. This principle
presumes that the oldest layer of a stratigraphic sequence will be on
the bottom and the most recent, or youngest, will be on the top. The
earliest-known hominids in East Africa are often found in very specific
stratigraphic contexts that have implications for their relative dating.
These strata are often most visible in canyons or gorges which are good
sites to find and identify fossils. Understanding the geologic history
of an area and the different strata is important to interpreting and
understanding archaeological findings.

## Chronometric dating methods

The majority of chronometric dating methods are radiometric, which means
they involve measuring the radioactive decay of a certain chemical
isotope. They are called chronometric because they allow one to make a
very accurate scientific estimate of the date of an object as expressed
in years. They do not, however, give \"absolute\" dates because they
merely provide a statistical probability that a given date falls within
a certain range of age expressed in years. Chronometric methods include
radiocarbon, potassium-argon, fission-track, and thermoluminescence.

The most commonly used chronometic method is radiocarbon analysis. It
measures the decay of radioactive carbon (14C) that has been absorbed
from the atmosphere by a plant or animal prior to its death. Once the
organism dies, the Carbon-14 begins to decay at an extremely predictable
rate. Radioactive carbon has a half-life of approximately 5,730 years
which means that every 5,730 years, half of the carbon-14 will have
decayed. This number is usually written as a range, with plus or minus
40 years (1 standard deviation of error) and the theoretical absolute
limit of this method is 80,000 years ago, although the practical limit
is close to 50,000 years ago. Because the pool of radioactive carbon in
the atmosphere (a result of bombardment of nitrogen by neutrons from
cosmic radiation) has not been constant through time, calibration curves
based on dendrochronology (tree ring dating) and glacial ice cores, are
now used to adjust radiocarbon years to calendrical years.

The development of Atomic Absorption Mass Spectrometry in recent years,
a technique that allows one to count the individual atoms of 14C
remaining in a sample instead of measuring the radioactive decay of the
14C, has considerably broadened the applicability of radiocarbon dating
because it is now possible to date much smaller samples, as small as a
grain of rice, for example.

Dendrochronology is another archaeological dating technique in which
tree rings are used to date pieces of wood to the exact year in which
they were cut down. In areas in which scientists have tree rings
sequences that reach back thousands of years, they can examine the
patterns of rings in the wood and determine when the wood was cut down.
This works better in temperate areas that have more distinct growing
seasons (and thus rings) and relatively long-lived tree species to
provide a baseline.

## Methods of dating in archaeology

Techniques of recovery include:

-   Surveys
-   Excavations

Types of archaeological remains include:

-   Perishable: plant remains, animal bones, wooden artifacts, basketry,
    and other easily degradable objects
-   Nonperishable materials: stone tools, pottery, rocks used for
    structures.

Data collection and analysis is oriented to answer questions of
subsistence, mobility or settlement patterns, and economy.

## Methods in physical anthropology

Data collections based on study of hard tissues (bones and teeth),
usually the only remains left of earlier populations, which include:

-   Identification of bones/Which part of skeleton is represented?
-   Measurement of the cranium and other elements of a skeleton.
    Carefully defined landmarks are established on the cranium, as well
    as on the long bones, to facilitate standardization of measurements.
-   Superficial examination of bone for any marks (for instance,
    cutmarks)
-   Further examination using specific techniques:
    -   X-ray to identify evidence of disease and trauma in bones
    -   DNA extraction to determine genetic affiliations


# Introduction to Paleoanthropology/Evolution Culture

## The concept of progress

**Progress** is defined as a gradual but predictable bettering of the
human condition over time, that is, things are always getting better
over time.

### History of Progressivism

-   Progressivism has been one of the cornerstones of Western historical
    and philosophical thought since ancient Greek times.
-   For most of its history (from the Greek period to the 15th century),
    Progressivism was a purely philosophical or ideological doctrine: in
    the absence of any empirical evidence of improvement in the human
    condition, early progressivists devised imaginary scenarios of human
    history in which they pictured the gradual emergence of enlightened
    present-day institutions out of earlier and ruder institutions. The
    defining characteristics of any primitive society, thus conceived,
    were wholly negative: they were whatever civilization was not.
-   Starting in the late 15th century, ethnographic information about
    living \"primitives,\" especially in the Americas, increased,
    providing the progressivists with empirical confirmation for their
    ideas. Living conditions of these \"primitive peoples\" conformed in
    a general way to the imagined early condition of humankind; they
    were therefore considered as \"fossilized\" survivals from ancient
    times, who had somehow failed to progress.
-   In the 19th century, archaeology also began to provide confirmation:
    evidence of early peoples who had indeed lived without metals,
    agriculture, or permanent dwellings, just as the progressivists had
    always imagined.
-   Out of the conjunction of progressivist theory with ethnographic and
    archaeological researches, the discipline of anthropology was born
    in the latter half of the 19th century. Early anthropologists
    arranged that evidence in orderly progression to provide seemingly
    irrefutable confirmation for what had long been only a philosophical
    doctrine. Progressivism was transformed into a science named
    anthropology; \"Progress\" was renamed \"Social Evolution\" or
    \"Cultural Evolution.\" These ideas drew upon Darwinian evolution
    but incorrectly assigned a directionality and value to evolution.
    Where Darwinian evolution is not about progress, but rather adapting
    to a given environmental condition, social evolution was very much
    about progress, usually conceived in terms of military and economic
    power over other societies.

### Characteristics

Progressivism flourished mainly in optimistic times, that is, times of
scientific advances and expanding imaginations:

-   pre-Socratic Greece
-   the Enlightenment (18th century)
-   the Victorian age (19th century)
-   the generation following World War II

Progressivism has been the doctrine that legitimizes all scientific
discoveries and labels them as \"advances\".

-   All progressivists agree, however, that their age is superior to
    those that preceded it.
-   Human history is perceived with a basic directionality, from worse
    to better.

### What is better?

-   What constitutes \"the better\"? What causes it? How can it be
    measured?
-   Answers to these questions have changed in accordance with the
    ideological preoccupation of different eras, and different
    philosophies:
    -   improved material circumstances
    -   intellectual maturation
    -   aesthetic achievements

### Us vs. Them mentality

The problem with categorizing \"progressive\" judgments must be viewed
in long-term perspective as a struggle between two basically
incompatible cultural systems:

-   in the present, us and the others: states/civilizations vs.
    bands/tribes;
-   in paleoanthropology, us (*Homo sapiens*) and the others (other
    hominid species, e.g. Neandertals, *Homo erectus*).

## Historical background of Western nations

Hunting and gathering was predominant as a way of life for about 7
million years, with agriculture and plant domestication beginning around
10,000 years ago, and life in cities or states has been around for only
the past 5,000 years or so.

Changes, or progress, since the first appearance of urban life and state
organization (5,000 yrs ago):

-   non-state tribal peoples persisted in a dynamic equilibrium or
    symbiotic relationship with states/civilizations
-   states/civilizations developed and remained within their own
    ecological boundaries
-   this situation lasted for thousands of years

This situation shifted 500 years ago:

-   In the 15th century, Europeans began to expand beyond their
    long-established frontiers.
-   For about 250 years (until 1750), the expansion was relatively slow,
    as non-state tribal peoples still seemed secure and successfully
    adapted to their economically \"marginal\" refuges.
-   In the mid-eighteenth century, the industrial revolution launched
    the developing Western nations on an explosive growth in population
    and consumption called \"progress.\"

## The Industrial Revolution

This period marks a major explosion at the scale of humankind:

-   phenomenal increase in population
-   increase in per capita consumption rates
-   totally unparalleled scope
-   these two critical correlates (population and consumption rates) of
    industrialization quickly led to overwhelming pressure on natural
    resources

Very quickly, industrial nations could no longer supply from within
their own boundaries the resources needed to support further growth or
even to maintain current consumption levels.

As a consequence:

-   Industrial revolution led to an unprecedented assault on the
    world\'s relatively stable non-Western tribal peoples and their
    resources.
-   Many of the \"underdeveloped\" resources controlled by the world\'s
    self-sufficient tribal peoples were quickly appropriated by
    outsiders to support their own industrial progress.
-   In the last 200 years, these tribal cultures have virtually
    disappeared or have been completely marginalized.

Increased rates of resource consumption, accompanying industrialization,
have been even more critical than mere population increase:

-   Industrial civilization is a culture of consumption. In this
    respect, it differs most strikingly from tribal cultures.
-   Industrial economies are founded on the principle that consumption
    must be ever expanded.
-   Complex systems of mass marketing and advertising have been
    developed for that specific purpose.
-   Social stratification in industrial societies is based primarily on
    inequalities in material wealth and is both supported and reflected
    by differential access to resources.

Industrial ideological systems and prejudices:

-   place great stress on belief in
    -   continual economic growth
    -   progress
-   measure \"standard of living\" in terms of levels of material
    consumption.

## Ethnocentrism

Ethnocentrism is the belief in the superiority of one\'s own culture. It
is vital to the integrity of any culture, but it can be a threat to the
well-being of other peoples when it becomes the basis for forcing
Western standards upon non-Western tribal cultures.

The impact of modern civilization on tribal peoples is a dominant
research theme in anthropology and social sciences.

Among economic development writers, the consensus is the clearly
ethnocentric view that any contact with superior industrial culture
causes non-Western tribal peoples to voluntarily reject their own
cultures in order to obtain a better life.

In the past, anthropologists also often viewed this contact from the
same ethnocentric premises accepted by government officials, developers,
missionaries, and the general public. But in recent years, there has
been considerable confusion in the enormous culture change literature
regarding the basic question of why tribal cultures seem inevitably to
be acculturated or modernized by industrial civilization.

-   There is therefore a problem to conceptualize the causes of the
    transformation process in simple nonethnocentric terms.
-   This apparent inability may be due to the fact that the analysts are
    members of the culture of consumption that today happens to be the
    dominant world culture type.
-   The most powerful cultures have always assumed a natural right to
    exploit the world\'s resources wherever they find them, regardless
    of the prior claims of indigenous populations.

Arguing for efficiency and survival of the fittest, old-fashioned
colonialists elevated this \"right\" to the level of an ethical and
legal principle that could be invoked to justify the elimination of any
cultures that were not making \"effective\" use of their resources.

This viewpoint has found its way into modern theories of cultural
evolution, expressed as the \"Law of Cultural Dominance\": *any cultural
system which exploits more effectively the energy resources of a given
environment will tend to spread in that environment at the expense of
other less effective (indigenous) systems.*

-   These old attitudes of social Darwinism are deeply embedded in our
    ideological system.
-   They still occur in the professional literature on culture change.

While resource exploitation is clearly the basic cause of the
destruction of tribal peoples, it is important to identify the
underlying ethnocentric attitudes that are often used to justify what
are actually exploitative policies.

Apart from the obvious ethical implications involved here, upon close
inspection all of these theories expounding the greater adaptability,
efficiency, and survival value of the dominant industrial culture prove
to be quite misleading.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

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*Of course, as a culture of consumption, industrial\
civilization is uniquely capable of consuming resources at tremendous\
rates, but this certainly does not make it a more effective culture
than\
low-energy tribal cultures, if stability or long-run ecological success
is\
taken as the criterion for \"effectiveness.\"*

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</div>
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------------------------------------------------------------------------

Likewise, we should expect, almost by definition, that members of the
culture of consumption would probably consider another culture\'s
resources to be underexploited and to use this as a justification for
appropriating them.

Among some writers, it is assumed that all people share our desire for
what we define as material wealth, prosperity, and progress and that
others have different cultures only because they have not yet been
exposed to the superior technological alternatives offered by industrial
civilization. Supporters of this view seem to minimize the difficulties
of creating new wants in a culture and at the same time make the
following highly questionable and clearly ethnocentric assumptions:

1.  The materialistic values of industrial civilization are cultural
    universals.
2.  Tribal cultures are unable to satisfy the material needs of their
    peoples.
3.  Industrial goods are, in fact, always superior to their handcrafted
    counterparts.

**Assumption 1 -** Unquestionably, tribal cultures represent a clear
rejection of the materialistic values of industrial civilization, yet
tribal individuals can indeed be made to reject their traditional values
if outside interests create the necessary conditions for this rejection.
The point is that far more is involved here than a mere demonstration of
the superiority of industrial civilization.

**Assumption 2 -** The ethnocentrism of the second assumption is
obvious. Clearly, tribal cultures could not have survived for millions
of years if they did not do a reasonable job of satisfying basic human
needs.

**Assumption 3 -** Regarding the third assumption, there is abundant
evidence that many of the material accoutrements of industrial
civilization may well not be worth their real costs regardless of how
appealing they may seem in the short term.


# Introduction to Paleoanthropology/Darwinian Thought

## Pre-Darwinian Thoughts on Evolution

Throughout the Middle Ages, there was one predominant component of the
European world view: stasis.

-   All aspects of nature were considered as fixed and change was
    unconceivable.
-   No new species had appeared, and none had disappeared or become
    extinct.
-   Strongly thought that if any new species were to appear, it would be
    through sexual intercourse through multiple different species.

The social and political context of the Middle Ages helps explain this
world view:

-   shaped by feudal society - hierarchical arrangement supporting a
    rigid class system that had changed little for centuries
-   shaped by a powerful religious system - life on Earth had been
    created by God exactly as it existed in the present (known as fixity
    of species).

This social and political context, and its world view, provided a
formidable obstacle to the development of evolutionary theory. In order
to formulate new evolutionary principles, scientists needed to:

-   overcome the concept of fixity of species
-   establish a theory of long geological time

From the 16th to the 18th century, along with renewed interest in
scientific knowledge, scholars focused on listing and describing all
kinds of forms of organic life. As attempts in this direction were made,
they became increasingly impressed with the amount of biological
diversity that confronted them.

These scholars included:

-   John Ray (1627-1705) - put some
    order into the diversity of animal and plant life, by creating the
    concepts of species and genus.
-   Carolus Linnaeus
    (1707-1778) - added two more categories (class and order) and
    created a complex system of classification (taxonomy) still used
    today; also innovated by including humans in his classification of
    animals.
-   Georges-Louis
    Leclerc
    (1707-1788) - innovated by suggesting the changing nature of
    species, through adaptation to local climatic and environmental
    conditions.
-   Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
    (1744-1829) - offered a comprehensive system to explain species
    changes; postulated that physical alterations of organic life would
    occur in relation to changing environmental circumstances, making
    species better suited for their new habitat; also postulated that
    new traits would be passed on to offspring (the theory known as
    inheritance of acquired characteristics).

Therefore, the principle of \"fixity of species\" that ruled during the
Middle Ages was no longer considered valid.

In the mid-19th century, Charles
Darwin offered a new theory which
pushed further the debate of evolutionary processes and marks a
fundamental step in their explanation by suggesting that evolution works
through natural selection.

## Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

Charles Darwin\'s life as a scientist began when he took a position as
naturalist aboard *HMS Beagle*, a ship charting the coastal waters of
South America. As the ship circled the globe over a five-year period
(1831-1836), Darwin puzzled over the diversity and distribution of life
he observed. Observations and collections of materials made during these
travels laid the foundation for his life\'s work studying the natural
world.

As an example, the *Beagle* stopped five weeks in the Galapagos
archipelago. There Darwin observed an unusual combination of species and
wondered how they ended up on this island.

Darwin\'s observations on the diversity of plants and animals and their
particular geographical distribution around the globe led him to
question the assumption that species were immutable, established by a
single act of creation. He reasoned that species, like the Earth itself,
were constantly changing. Life forms colonized new habitats and had to
survive in new conditions. Over generations, they underwent
transmutation into new forms. Many became extinct. The idea of evolution
slowly began to take shape in his mind.

In his 1859 publication *On the Origin of Species*, Darwin presented
some of the main principles that explained the diversity of plants and
animals around the globe: adaptation and natural selection. According to
him, species were mutable, not fixed; and they evolved from other
species through the mechanism of natural selection.

### Darwin\'s theory of natural selection

In 1838, Darwin, at 28, had been back from his voyage on the *Beagle*
for two years. He read Thomas Malthus\'s *Essay on Population*, which
stated that human populations invariably grow until they are limited by
starvation, poverty, and death, and realized that Malthus\'s logic could
also apply to the natural world. This realization led Darwin to develop
the principle of evolution by natural selection, which revolutionized
our understanding of the living world.

His theory was published for the first time in 1859 in *On the Origin of
Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured
Races in the Struggle for Life*.

### Darwin\'s Postulates

The theory of adaptation and how species change through time follows
three postulates:

-   **Struggle for existence**: The ability of a population to expand is
    infinite, but the ability of any environment to support populations
    is always finite.

:   Example: Animals require food to grow and reproduce. When food is
    plentiful, animal populations grow until their numbers exceed the
    local food supply. Since resources are always finite, it follows
    that not all individuals in a population will be able to survive and
    reproduce.

-   **Variation in fitness**: Organisms in populations vary. Therefore,
    some individuals will possess traits that enable them to survive and
    reproduce more successfully (producing more offspring) than others
    in the same environment.

```{=html}
<!-- -->
```
-   **Inheritance of variation**: If the advantageous traits are
    inherited by offspring, then these traits will become more common in
    succeeding generations. Thus, traits that confer advantages in
    survival and reproduction are retained in the population, and traits
    that are disadvantageous disappear.

### Examples of adaptation by natural selection

During his voyage on the *HMS Beagle*, Darwin observed a curious pattern
of adaptations among several species of finches (now called Darwin\'s
finches) that live on the Galapagos Islands.

Several traits of finches went through drastic changes in response to
changes in their environment. One example is beak depth:

-   There was huge variation in beak depth among finches on the island;
    it affected the birds\' survival and adaptation to local
    environmental changes.

:

    :   During a drought, finches with deeper beaks were more likely to
        survive than finches with shallow beaks (which were at a
        disadvantage because it was harder for them to crack larger and
        harder seeds).

-   Parents and offsprings had similar beak depths.

Through natural selection, average morphology (an organism\'s size,
shape and composition) of the bird population changed so that birds
became better adapted to their environment.

### Benefits and disadvantages of evolution

#### Individual Selection

Adaptation results from competition among individuals, not between
entire populations or species.

Selection produces adaptations that benefit individuals. Such adaptation
may or may not benefit the population or species. In the case of
finches\' beak depth, selection probably does allow the population of
finches to compete more effectively with other populations of seed
predators. However, this need not be the case. Selection often leads to
changes in behavior or morphology that increase the reproductive success
of individuals but decrease the average reproductive success and
competitive ability of the group, population, and species.

:

    :   Example of conflict between individual and group interests: All
        organisms in the population produce many more offspring than are
        necessary to maintain the species. A female monkey may, on
        average, produce 10 offspring during her lifetime. In a stable
        population, perhaps only two of these offspring will survive and
        reproduce. From the point of view of the species, the other
        eight are a waste of resources. The species as a whole might be
        more likely to survive if all females produced fewer offspring.

The idea that natural selection operates at the level of the individual
is a key element in understanding adaptation.

#### Directional Selection

Instead of a completely random selection of individuals whose traits
will be passed on to the next generation, there is selection by forces
of nature. In this process, the frequency of genetic variants for
harmful or maladaptive traits within the population is reduced while the
frequency of genetic variants for adaptive traits is increased.

Natural selection, as it acts to promote change in gene frequencies, is
referred to as directional selection.

#### Stabilizing Selection

**Finches\' beaks** (Example)

Large beaks have benefits as well as disadvantages. Birds with large
beaks are less likely to survive their juvenile period than birds with
small beaks, probably because they require more food to grow.

Evolutionary theory prediction:

-   Over time, selection will increase the average beak depth in a
    population until the costs of larger-than-average beak size exceed
    the benefits.
-   At this point, finches with average beak size in the population will
    be the most likely to survive and reproduce, and finches with deeper
    or shallower beaks than the new average will be at a disadvantage.

At this point, the population reaches equilibrium with regard to beak
size. The process that produces this equilibrium state is called
stabilizing selection.

Even though average characteristics of the beak in the population will
not change in this situation, selection is still going on. The point to
remember here is that populations do not remain static over the long
run; if so, it is because a population is consistently favored by
stabilizing selection.

### Rate of Evolutionary Change

In Darwin\'s day, the idea that natural selection could change a
chimpanzee into a human, much less that it might do so in just a few
million years (which is a brief moment in evolutionary time), was
unthinkable.

Today, most scientists believe that humans evolved from an apelike
creature in only 5 to 10 million years. In fact, some of the rates of
selective change observed in contemporary populations are far faster
than necessary for natural selection to produce the adaptations that we
observe.

:

    :   The human brain has roughly doubled in the last 2 million years
        (rate of change of 0.00005% per year); that is 10,000 times
        slower than the rate of change observed among finches in the
        Galapagos Islands.

Therefore the real puzzle is why the change in the fossil record seem to
have been quite slow.

The fossil record is still very incomplete.

It is quite likely that some evolutionary changes in the past were
rapid, but the sparseness of the fossil record prevents us from
detecting them.

### Darwin\'s Difficulties

In *On the Origin of Species*, Darwin proposed that new species and
other major evolutionary changes arise by the accumulation of small
variations through natural selection.

This idea was not widely embraced by his contemporaries.

-   Many accepted the idea that new species arise through the
    transformation of existing species.
-   Many accepted the idea that natural selection is the most important
    cause of organic change.
-   But only a few endorsed Darwin\'s view that major changes occur
    through the accumulation of small variations.

Darwin\'s critics raised a major objection to his theory: The actions of
selection would inevitably deplete variation in populations and make it
impossible for natural selection to continue.

Yet Darwin couldn\'t convince his contemporaries that evolution occurred
through the accumulation of small variations because he could not
explain how variation is maintained, because he and his contemporaries
did not yet understand the mechanics of inheritance.

For most people at the time, including Darwin, many of the
characteristics of offspring were thought to be an average of the
characteristics of their parents. This phenomena was believed to be
caused by the action of blending inheritance, a model of inheritance
that assumes the mother and father each contribute a hereditary
substance that mixes, or \"blends\", to determine the characteristics of
the offspring.

The solution to these problems required an understanding of genetics,
which was not available for another half century. It was not until well
into the 20th century that geneticists came to understand how variation
is maintained, and Darwin\'s theory of evolution was generally accepted.


# Introduction to Paleoanthropology/Origin of Language

record (following Philip Chase\'s criteria):

-   Regularity of use indicating purposeful and repeated activity;
-   Yet repetitive behavior alone is not enough, because by itself not
    indicative of symbol use: Ex. Actions of individuals working without
    a system of shared meaning
-   Therefore patterns need to be complex and learned linguistically
    rather than by observation or mimicry;
-   Finally such behavior becomes symbolic, if it intentionally
    communicates thoughts, emotions, belief systems, group identity,
    etc. Material expressions of culturally mediated symbols:
    -   intentional burial of the dead, with grave goods;
    -   figurative and abstract imagery;
    -   pigment use;
    -   body ornamentation.

Important effort to clarify definition and category of data we are
dealing with. Yet if we follow these criteria, most artefacts from Lower
(Acheulean) and Middle Paleolithic (60,000-50,000 years ago) are ruled
out, because of lack of evidence for repeated patterning and
intentionality.

## Contribution of evolutionary psychology to origins of art

Is intelligence a single, general-purpose domain or a set of domains?
Evolutionary psychologists answer: set of domains, which they call
\"mental modules\", \"multiple intelligences\", \"cognitive domains\";
these \"mental modules\" interact, are connected;

Anatomically modern humans have better interaction between modules than
other animals; therefore, able to perform more complex behaviors;

Four cognitive and physical processes exist:

-   making visual images
-   classification of images into classes
-   intentional communication
-   attribution of meaning to images

The first three are found in non-human primates and most hominids. Yet,
only modern humans seem to have developed the fourth one.

For Neanderthals, intentional communication and classification were
probably sealed in social intelligence module, while mark-making and
attribution of meaning (both implicating material objects) were hidden.
Only with arrival of modern humans, connection between modules made art
possible by allowing intentional communication to escape into the domain
of mark-making.

### Problems with data and chronology

We could easily look at this transition in a smooth way: The passage
from one industry to the next, one hominid to the next, etc.
Evolutionary paths well structured and detailed, as in textbooks, but a
bit too clear-cut, that is simplistic and reductionist.

After 1.8 million years ago, when *H. ergaster/erectus* moved
out-of-Africa, the picture of human evolution becomes much more complex.

Situation due to several reasons:

-   many more hominid species appear connected to global colonization
    and relative isolation;
-   many cultural variations observed, illustrated by various stone tool
    industries, subsistence patterns, etc.

Overall, presence of differentiated cultural provinces in Africa and
Eurasia which have their own evolutionary pace.

Dates don\'t seem to reveal a clear-cut divide between the Lower and
Middle Paleolithic and don\'t fit anymore in a specific and rigorous
time frame:

-   H. erectus disappeared in most places around 300,000-200,000 yrs
    ago, although still found in Java up to 50,000 yrs ago;
-   Archaic modern humans (Neanderthals) appeared around 130,000 yrs ago
    in Europe;
-   Archaic modern humans (H. sapiens sapiens) appeared some time
    between 200,000 and 100,000 yrs ago in Africa;
-   Acheulean stone tools were still in use beyond 200,000 yrs ago in
    many areas;
-   The lithic industry (Mousterian) characteristic of the Middle
    Paleolithic appeared around 250,000 yrs ago in some areas (SW Asia);
-   Subsistence patterns (hunting/scavenging), use of fire, habitats
    were still the basis of cultural adaptations in the Middle
    Paleolithic.

By focusing on a transition happening only at 50,000 yrs ago would be
overlooking some major human innovations and evolutionary trends that
took place earlier and on a much longer period.

We need to focus more on *H. heidelbergensis* and its material culture
and other behavioral patterns to realize that the transition was not at
50,000 years ago, but between 600,000 and 60,000 yrs ago.

### The revolution that wasn\'t

\"Revolution\" is in this context the Upper Paleolithic Revolution, with
the development from 50,000 yrs ago of *Homo sapiens sapiens*,
considered the only species anatomically AND behaviorally modern.

By \"modern human behavior,\" we mean:

-   Increased artifact diversity;
-   Standardization of artefact types;
-   Blade Technology;
-   Worked bone and other organic materials;
-   Personal ornaments and \"art\" or images;
-   Structured living spaces;
-   Ritual;
-   Economic intensification, reflected in the exploitation of aquatic
    or other resources that require specialized technology;
-   Expanded exchange networks.

By overlooking and even not considering recent discoveries from the
1990s regarding the periods before 50,000 years ago, we are misled to
consider the evidence after that date as the result of biological and
cultural revolution.

Recent observations in Africa, Europe and Asia from sites between
600,000 and 250,000 years ago (Acheulean period) seem to document very
different patterns: \"The Revolution That Wasn\'t\".

### Evidence in the Lower Paleolithic

#### Stone tools: blade technology

-   Blade technology appeared and disappeared at different points in
    time. Earliest evidence to date: Kapthurin Formation (Kenya)
    550,000-300,000 BP

#### Bone tools

-   Swartkrans (South Africa)
-   Makapansgat (South Africa)
-   Drimolen (South Africa)

#### Wooden tools

-   Schöningen (Germany) 400,000 years ago: Spears

#### Use of pigments (ochre)

-   Kapthurin Formation (Kenya) 550,000-300,000 yrs ago
-   Twin Rivers Cave (Zambia) 400,000-200,000 yrs ago
-   Pomongwe (Zimbabwe) 250,000-220,000 yrs ago
-   Terra Amata (France) 300,000 yrs ago
-   Becov (Czech Republic) 250,000 yrs ago

#### Artistic expression

-   Pech de l\'Azé (France) 400,000 yrs ago: Engraved bone
-   Sainte-Anne I Cave (France): Engraved bone
-   Bilzingsleben (Germany) 300,000 yrs ago: Large engraved rib
-   Singi Talav (India) 300,000-150,000 yrs ago: Occurrence of
    non-utilitarian objects (Quartz crystals)
-   Zhoukoudian (China): Occurrence of non-utilitarian objects
-   Birket Ram (Israel): Human figurine
-   Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania): Figurine
-   Makapansgat (South Africa): Human figurine
-   Tan-Tan (Morocco) 500,000-300,000 yrs ago: Human figurine

#### Mortuary practices

-   Atapuerca (Spain) 350,000 yrs ago: H. heidelbergensis

#### Seafaring

-   Flores Island (Indonesia) 780,000 yrs ago

## Origins of language

Sometime during the last several million years, hominids evolved the
ability to communicate much more complex and detailed information (about
nature, technology, and social relationships) than any other creatures.

Yet we, cannot reconstruct the evolutionary history of language as we
reconstruct the history of bipedalism because the ability to use
language leaves no clear traces in the fossil record. Therefore, there
is no consensus among paleoanthropologists about when language evolved.

But from new information learned from DNA testing by at the Institute
for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, the very stable gene FOXP2
(this is the gene that makes speech possible) suddenly changed
approximately 250,000 years ago, 2 of the molecular units in the
715-unit DNA sequence abruptly changed. Neanderthals did not have this
modification in their gene sequence, whereas Homo Sapien Sapiens did
have this modification and were much more articulate .

We are going to try to clarify the current situation by reviewing the
recent evidence on the topic, focusing on specific criteria that could
reveal essential information on early forms of language:

-   brain capacity
-   brain asymmetry
-   vocal apparatus

### The intellectual and linguistic skills of early hominids

#### Australopithecines

Reconstruction work on australopithecines indicates that their vocal
tract was basically like that of apes, with the larynx and pharynx high
up in the throat. This would not have allowed for the precise
manipulation of air that is required for modern human languages. The
early hominids could make sounds, but they would have been more like
those of chimpanzees.

#### H. ergaster/erectus

##### Brain capacity

Their average cranial capacity was just a little short of the modern
human minimum, and some individual erectus remains fall within the human
modern range. It is difficult to be certain what this fact means in
terms of intelligence.

##### Brain asymmetry

Paleoanthropologist Ralph Holloway has looked at the structure of *H.
erectus* brains. He made endocasts of the inside surfaces of fossil
crania, because the inside of the skull reflects some of the features of
the brain it once held.

One intriguing find is that the brains of *H. erectus* were
asymmetrical: the right and left halves of the brain did not have the
same shape. This is found to a greater extent in modern humans, because
the two halves of the human brain perform different functions. Language
and the ability to use symbols, for example, are functions of the left
hemisphere, while spatial reasoning (like the hand-eye coordination
needed to make complex tools) is performed by the right hemisphere. This
hints that *H. erectus* also had hemisphere specialization, perhaps even
including the ability to communicate through a symbolic language.

##### Vocal apparatus

Further evidence of language use by *H. erectus* is suggested by the
reconstruction of the vocal apparatus based on the anatomy of the
cranial base. Even though the vocal apparatus is made up of soft parts,
those parts are connected to bone; so the shape of the bone is
correlated with the shape of the larynx, pharynx and other features. *H.
erectus* had vocal tracts more like those of modern humans, positioned
lower in the throat and allowing for a greater range and speed of sound
production. Thus, erectus could have produced vocal communication that
involved many sounds with precise differences.

Whether or not they did so is another question. But given their ability
to manufacture fairly complex tools and to survive in different and
changing environmental circumstances, *H. ergaster/erectus* certainly
could have had complex things to \"talk about\". Therefore it is not out
of question that erectus had a communication system that was itself
complex, even though some scholars are against this idea.

## Summary

Scientists struggle with the definition of human behavior, while dealing
with evidence dating to the early part of the Lower Paleolithic (7-2
million years ago).

Definition of modern human behavior is not easier to draw. The answer to
this topic should not be found only in the period starting at around
50,000 yrs ago. Evidence now shows that the period between 500,000 and
250,000 years ago was rich in attempts at elaborating new behavioral
patterns, either material or more symbolic.

On another level, beginning about 1.6 million years ago, brain size
began to increase over and beyond that which can be explained by an
increase in body size. Some researchers point to evidence that suggests
that from 1.6 million years to about 300,000 years ago, the brain not
only dramatically increased in size but also was being neurally
reorganized in a way that increased its ability to process information
in abstract (symbolic) way. This symbolism allowed complex information
to be stored, relationships to be derived, and information to be
efficiently retrieved and communicated to others in various ways.

Before 200,000 yrs ago, what is the relationship between *H. erectus* and *H. heidelbergensis*?

*H. heidelbergensis* seems to be the author of these new behavioral
patterns, not *H. erectus*. *H. heidelbergensis*, especially in Africa,
shows therefore evidence of new stone tool technology (blades), grinding
stone and pigment (ochre) processing before 200,000 years ago. These new
patterns connected with *H. heidelbergensis* could therefore be seen as
critical advantages over *H. erectus* in the human evolutionary lineage.

## References

-   *How Humans Evolved*, Robert Boyd and Joan B. Silk, (1997)
-   *Biological Anthropology*, Michael Park, (2002)
-   *Physical Anthropology*, Philip L. Stein and Bruce M Rowe, (2003)


# Wikijunior:Solar System/Introduction

{{  }}

## Introduction

!These planets are little bigger than dots in the night sky, but if you
call them dots, then Earth (in the marble-sized group, topleft) is
smaller than a grain of
sand. is smaller than a grain of sand."){width="250"
height="250"}

Wikijunior books welcomes you to the children\'s book *Solar System*.
Outer space is perhaps the final frontier for humanity. Even though the
rest of the solar system objects may seem like tiny dots from Earth, our
celestial neighbors are still important to learn about. If, when you
grow up, you are going to be an astronaut and travel in space, you will
need to know quite a bit about the solar system. And even if you don\'t
travel to space, the things other people do there will affect you, so
you need to know about it. Also, if you meet an astronomer or an
astronaut, you do not want to sound ignorant! The importance of learning
about the solar system has led many experts here at Wikijunior to donate
their time and talents to bring this volume together.

Wikibooks is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation, aimed at providing
free, easily available, quality reading for adults and children to
promote the global spread of knowledge. Traditional publishing houses
make the bulk of their income from re-issues of classic books, new books
by authors with long track records, or celebrities who are famous in
their own right. The chances of a truly good new work being published
solely on the basis of merit skyrocket when the traditional business
model is overturned and the wellspring of new talent out there is tapped
using the Internet.

With this project we have reached a crossroads between the books of
yesterday and the encyclopedia of everything for tomorrow. Simply by
reading this book and telling others about it, you have advanced the
cause of free access to information and of democratizing the field of
publishing. Thank you, and once again, welcome.

## Studying the Solar System

!A stamp issued by the Soviet Union, showing Sputnik\'s planned orbit
path around the Earth.
{width="250"
height="300"} Scientists are still exploring the universe. Whether
things are very tiny, like the cells of plants and animals, or very big,
like a solar system or a galaxy, there is still a lot that scientists
don't know.

Scientists who study space are called
Astronomers or
Astrophysicists. They explore the solar
system in two different ways. Astronomers do it by observing celestial
bodies through telescopes, while astrophysicists (a specialized class of
astronomers) try to explain the observed phenomena using physics, as
suggested by the name, and theorize about what is still unseen or
unknown.

Telescopes were invented in the early 1600s in Europe and allowed
curious scientists like Galileo Galilei to look at very distant things
in close-up and see details of the solar system and the universe that
nobody had ever seen before. Using his telescope, Galileo was the first
person to see the rings around Saturn and draw a very detailed picture
of the moon. He also saw the four largest moons of Jupiter, sometimes
called the Galilean moons, and saw spots on the Sun. Telescopes on Earth
and in space are still used to explore the Solar System. There are
several types of telescopes. The most common ones are optical
telescopes, such as Galileo\'s (*optical* means relating to light, which
is what these telescopes see), and radio telescopes, that pick up radio
waves from outer space (radio waves occur naturally; they don\'t have to
be made by humans).

Until the 1950s, humans were limited to exploring the Solar System from
the ground. However, in 1957, the Soviet Union (now Russia and several
other countries) launched the very first satellite, *Sputnik 1*
(pronounced like *spoo-tneek*). Since then, humans have been launching
vehicles into space to explore the Solar System---some manned (with
people) and some unmanned (without people).

Now, the Solar System is full of human-made probes exploring the planets
and moons of the solar system. The probes send back information to Earth
that scientists study to figure out what it means. Every year,
scientists learn more about the Solar System. Sometimes they learn
things about other worlds that remind us of Earth. Other times, the
things they learn are very strange. Everything they learn helps us
understand more about Earth, Earth\'s history, and Earth\'s
neighborhood.

## How is the Solar System measured?

It's important that scientists use measurement to tell how big, how hot
or cold, or how far away something is. In science, people use the
**metric system**, which is named after its basic unit the metre. Below
is a description of all the types of measurement used in this book.

### Distance or length/width

For indications of measurements, such as how distant something is or how
long or wide it is, scientists use **kilometres** or **metres**. Units
of the metric system (a kilometre is 1000 metres, a metre is little more
than 3 feet in the old imperial unit system still in use in some
regions). Kilometres is often shortened to **km**, and metres is often
shortened to **m**. Kilometres and metres can also be spelled as
*Kilometers* and *Meters*, but the International Bureau of Weights and
Measurements uses the -re versions as the official spelling.

Since distances outside of the Earth get so vast, scientists have also
invented new units of measurement to make it easier to measure large
distances in space. They invented the **Astronomical unit** (㍳) which
is equivalent to 149 597 871 kilometres. One Astronomical Unit is the
approximate distance between the Earth and the Sun. The mean distance
between the sun and Neptune (the farthest planet from the sun) is 30.1
㍳, or 4.503 billion kilometres. This is why it\'s good to use ㍳ for a
big distance like that: 30 distances from the Earth to the sun is easier
to understand than four and a half billion kilometres. You might not
realize there was something wrong if someone told you the distance from
the sun to Neptune was 45.03 million kilometres, but if you thought of
it as 0.301 ㍳, you would know it couldn\'t be right.

In astronomy, they have leveling-up scales similar to the metric (10 mm
in 1 cm, 100 cm in 1 m) and customary (12 in. in 1 ft., 3 ft. in 1 yd.)
scales. Usually, these distances are not used within the solar system,
but they are important to know if you want to be an astronomer or
astrophysicist.

:   1 Light-year (ly) = 63241.077 ㍳
:   1 Parsec (pc) = 3.26 ly
:   1 Kiloparsec (kpc) = 1000 pc
:   1 Megaparsec (mpc) = 1000 kpc
:   1 Gigaparsec (gpc) = 1000 mpc

To help you visualise just how big some of these are,

:   4.22 ly = The distance from Earth to the nearest star (Proxima
    Centauri) other than the sun
:   1.3 pc = The distance from Earth to Proxima Centauri
:   34 kpc = The length of the Milky Way
:   0.76 mpc = The distance from Earth to the nearest Galaxy, the
    Andromeda Galaxy
:   14 gpc = The radius of the observable universe

### Mass

In order to measure how big something is, scientists measure the
**mass** of an object in kilograms or grams. There are 1000 grams in a
kilogram. Scientists do not use weight, because weight is a measurement
that means how hard gravity is pulling on an object. An object's
**mass** is the same wherever you are in the solar system because it
measures how much stuff, or matter, a thing is made up of. Your weight
will change because the amount of gravity there is varies from place to
place.

On Earth, mass and weight are the same. If you weigh 30kg (short for
kilograms) on Earth, your mass is 30kg. If you are floating around in
space, your weight if you try to stand on a set of scales will be 0kg,
but your mass is still 30kg. You are still made up of the same amount of
matter.

### Temperature

Temperature is a numeric reference, on a scale of degrees, on how hot or
cold something is in relation to a \"constant\" reference. There are
several scales. In our
everyday lives, we measure temperature in degrees Celsius, written °C
for short (the little circle ° means \"degrees\"), or degrees
Fahrenheit, written °F for short. But scientists, especially
astronomers, use **degrees Kelvin** to measure temperature, written K
for short (with no °). Don\'t use Celsius or Fahrenheit for temperatures
in astronomy!

Some important temperatures to know in Kelvin:

-   0K (−273.15°C) is maximum coldness, also called absolute zero. This
    is a great thing about measuring temperature in Kelvin: that the
    number is always positive and tells you how much warmer things are
    than the coldest they could possibly be.
-   The freezing point of water is 273.15K (0°C), and the boiling point
    of water is 373.15K (100°C).
-   A sunny day of 30°C (86°F) would be 303.15K. This is 273.15 + 30,
    because degrees change equally in Kelvin and Celsius.

## Introduction for Parents, Guardians, and Educators

`<i>`{=html}The Solar System`</i>`{=html} is a Wikijunior book written
by a group of volunteers and made freely available to Internet users,
printers, and distributors under the terms of its license. It is the
result of cooperation between The Beck Foundation, The Wikimedia
Foundation, and volunteer writers and editors.

The volunteer writers and contributors thank you for obtaining this
book. By making it available to a young person, you complete the goal of
the Wikijunior project, which is to encourage reading and literacy among
young people.

The original text and graphics are available at
<http://www.wikibooks.org> and printed versions may be available from
many different entities under license.

Again, thank you, and enjoy.

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