It is helpful to summarize the narrative that relates to the early colonization of Greece by human populations still in the hunter-gather mode of life (Gowlett 1999, 2004). Human beings arose in sub-Saharan Africa 5—8 million years ago (mya), as several species within the hominin genus of Australopithecus, and by 2.7 mya had developed a stone tool tradition of Oldowan (chopper-flake) type. Around then a more advanced human genus, Homo (with various species, notably habilis), arose also in Africa, but soon afterwards groups of this hominid spread to Eurasia (“Out of Africa 1”). The next significant development was the appearance of a new Homo species, erectus, but this may have developed outside ofAfrica and recolonized that continent as well as the rest of the Old World (“Out ofAsia”?) (Dennell and Roebroeks 2005, Kohn 2006). It is present in Georgia by 1.8 mya, and by 1 mya occupied a vast area from Spain to China. A major technological advance occurred ca. 1.6 mya with the development and variable diffusion of the Acheulean stone tool industry (typified by handaxes).
By 300—250 thousand years ago (kya) a yet more advanced group of hominid species had emerged within the genus Homo, Homo neanderthalensis, associated with a stone-tool industry known as the Levallois-Mousterian (typified by broad flakes derived from prepared “tortoise-shell” cores). Probably, though, these earliest Neanderthals were diverging from Homo erectus from 600—500 kya, possibly independently at various points of the Old World. Around 200 kya our own species, Homo sapiens, appears as a distinct descendant out of neanderthalensis, arguably an African evolutionary development which then retraces the original human spread (thus “Out of Africa 2”) through the entire Old World, before colonizing the New World. But sapiens expands into Europe and the Middle East at the expense of neander-thalensis. Both species possessed advanced adaptive skills and intelligence, and an elaborate cultural repertoire (formal burials for example), and coped with extreme environments (especially the cold northern latitudes of Eurasia).
In Europe the interaction between human colonization and the diffusion of new technologies is complex (Roebroeks 2001, 2003). Homo erectus is found at Europe’s periphery, in Georgia (1.8 mya) and Spain (800 kya), but the associated lithic traditions are contested by researchers. Possibly erectus used a wide range of tool types, deposited in different combinations at different parts of sites and at diverse sites, probably including the Acheulean tradition from an early date. However, major colonization of Italy, and north of the mountain barriers of the Pyrenees, Alps, and Balkan massifs into continental and temperate Europe, only really takes off into a permanent and widespread presence ca. 600—500 kya, associated probably with
The Complete Archaeology of Greece: From Hunter-Gatherers to the 20th Century AD, First Edition. John Bintliff. © 2012 John Bintliff. Published 2012 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Earliest neanderthalensis. Maybe the preceding habilis incursions from “Out of Africa 1” into the Middle East, and those subsequent and more significant incursions for Europe by erectus (“Out of Asia?”), were not lasting occupations.
This takeoff of significant human diffusion through Europe around 500 kya still displays a diverse culture, with varying proportions of handaxes and chopper-flake industries at individual sites. Nonetheless, the emergence of Neanderthal Man, and the changed scale of human spread over Europe, seem to be fundamentally related: the association emphasizes greater brain-size, increased socialization, and a more pronounced division of gender tasks between cooperating male large-game hunters, and female gatherers and small-game hunters. A focus on hunting larger game may have brought evolutionary selection for bands practicing cooperation in food - and informationsharing, indicating the likelihood that although social groups (bands) might be small for parts of the year, we would also expect to find sites where larger human groups socialized. As part of this new form of human society, language may have arisen.
Although the origin of our own species (sapiens) is controversial, most scholars believe that Homo sapiens arose in Africa, and broke out into Eurasia around 100 kya, to compete with and finally displace all other human species (“Out of Africa 2”). Probably from within sapiens populations a new stone tool technology arose by 50 kya to replace the Levallois-Mousterian of the later Neanderthals (Upper Palaeolithic types: a blade industry from prismatic cores, elaborate bone and antler work, also varied forms of art and personal decoration). In Europe, Neanderthals were alone till the arrival of sapiens bearing the new Upper Palaeolithic tools and wider cultural package from around 45 kya. Between then and 25 kya Modern Humans expanded through Europe and the Neanderthals became extinct. However recent reconstructions of the Neanderthal genome from skeletal material show that during this process, significant interbreeding with sapiens must have occurred, since modern human populations retain a distinctive if minor genetic inheritance from neanderthalensis (Green et al. 2010).
Almost all of the period when Modern Humans were a distinct new species globally coincided with the last Glacial era, which witnessed cycles of variable climate between 100 kya to 12 kya, but reached a climax of cold and arid conditions ca. 20 kya. Homo sapiens, with its unique new adaptive intelligence and associated technology and cultural behaviors, seems to have reacted to the Glacial climax and the subsequent dramatic global rewarming and vegetation recovery, that marked the onset of our current Interglacial warm era (the Holocene, 12 kya to present), by elaborating new forms of resource exploitation: a wider use of wild foods (including marine fish and shellfish) (Broad-Spectrum hunter-gathering) and in places an intensive manipulation of wild plant and animal resources (wild cereals and sheep/goat in the Levant, wild cattle in North Africa). In most places there developed at this same final Glacial to early Interglacial (Holocene) time, new stone industries, called Epipalaeolithic or Mesolithic, associated with these complex economic practices (and in Europe and the Levant including small blades mounted in sets as elaborate hunting or harvesting tools). From these adaptive innovations there arose by the early Holocene in widely dispersed regions of the Old and New World, independently, the vital advance of the domestication of plants and animals, which we associate with the Neolithic farming “revolution” (Louwe Kooijmans 1998).
World History
