Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Profile of Professor Tobias
- List of participants
- Foreword
- Address
- Keynote address
- Searching for common ground in palaeoanthropology, archaeology and genetics
- The history of a special relationship: prehistoric terminology and lithic technology between the French and South African research traditions
- Essential attributes of any technologically competent animal
- Significant tools and signifying monkeys: the question of body techniques and elementary actions on matter among apes and early hominids
- Tools and brains: which came first?
- Environmental changes and hominid evolution: what the vegetation tells us
- Implications of the presence of African ape-like teeth in the Miocene of Kenya
- Dawn of hominids: understanding the ape-hominid dichotomy
- The impact of new excavations from the Cradle of Humankind on our understanding of the evolution of hominins and their cultures
- Stone Age signatures in northernmost South Africa: early archaeology in the Mapungubwe National Park and vicinity
- Vertebral column, bipedalism and freedom of the hands
- Characterising early Homo: cladistic, morphological and metrical analyses of the original Plio-Pleistocene specimens
- Early Homo, ‘robust’ australopithecines and stone tools at Kromdraai, South Africa
- The origin of bone tool technology and the identification of early hominid cultural traditions
- Contribution of genetics to the study of human origins 276
- An overview of the patterns of behavioural change in Africa and Eurasia during the Middle and Late Pleistocene
- From the tropics to the colder climates: contrasting faunal exploitation adaptations of modern humans and Neanderthals
- New neighbours: interaction and image-making during the West European Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition
- Late Mousterian lithic technology: its implications for the pace of the emergence of behavioural modernity and the relationship between behavioural modernity and biological modernity
- Exploring and quantifying technological differences between the MSA I, MSA II and Howieson's Poort at Klasies River
- Stratigraphic integrity of the Middle Stone Age levels at Blombos Cave
- Testing and demonstrating the stratigraphic integrity of artefacts from MSA deposits at Blombos Cave, South Africa
- From tool to symbol: the behavioural context of intentionally marked ostrich eggshell from Diepkloof, Western Cape
- Chronology of the Howieson's Poort and Still Bay techno-complexes: assessment and new data from luminescence
- Subsistence strategies in the Middle Stone Age at Sibudu Cave: the microscopic evidence from stone tool residues
- Speaking with beads: the evolutionary significance of personal ornaments
- Personal names index
- Subject index
New neighbours: interaction and image-making during the West European Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 June 2019
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Profile of Professor Tobias
- List of participants
- Foreword
- Address
- Keynote address
- Searching for common ground in palaeoanthropology, archaeology and genetics
- The history of a special relationship: prehistoric terminology and lithic technology between the French and South African research traditions
- Essential attributes of any technologically competent animal
- Significant tools and signifying monkeys: the question of body techniques and elementary actions on matter among apes and early hominids
- Tools and brains: which came first?
- Environmental changes and hominid evolution: what the vegetation tells us
- Implications of the presence of African ape-like teeth in the Miocene of Kenya
- Dawn of hominids: understanding the ape-hominid dichotomy
- The impact of new excavations from the Cradle of Humankind on our understanding of the evolution of hominins and their cultures
- Stone Age signatures in northernmost South Africa: early archaeology in the Mapungubwe National Park and vicinity
- Vertebral column, bipedalism and freedom of the hands
- Characterising early Homo: cladistic, morphological and metrical analyses of the original Plio-Pleistocene specimens
- Early Homo, ‘robust’ australopithecines and stone tools at Kromdraai, South Africa
- The origin of bone tool technology and the identification of early hominid cultural traditions
- Contribution of genetics to the study of human origins 276
- An overview of the patterns of behavioural change in Africa and Eurasia during the Middle and Late Pleistocene
- From the tropics to the colder climates: contrasting faunal exploitation adaptations of modern humans and Neanderthals
- New neighbours: interaction and image-making during the West European Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition
- Late Mousterian lithic technology: its implications for the pace of the emergence of behavioural modernity and the relationship between behavioural modernity and biological modernity
- Exploring and quantifying technological differences between the MSA I, MSA II and Howieson's Poort at Klasies River
- Stratigraphic integrity of the Middle Stone Age levels at Blombos Cave
- Testing and demonstrating the stratigraphic integrity of artefacts from MSA deposits at Blombos Cave, South Africa
- From tool to symbol: the behavioural context of intentionally marked ostrich eggshell from Diepkloof, Western Cape
- Chronology of the Howieson's Poort and Still Bay techno-complexes: assessment and new data from luminescence
- Subsistence strategies in the Middle Stone Age at Sibudu Cave: the microscopic evidence from stone tool residues
- Speaking with beads: the evolutionary significance of personal ornaments
- Personal names index
- Subject index
Summary
Abstract
The Middle to Upper Palaeolithic Transition in Western Europe presents evidence for two species of Homo living side by side. The anatomically archaic species, the Neanderthals, borrowed certain practices from their Homo sapiens neighbours, but did not borrow others. It is hypothesised that the reason for their selectivity was their type of consciousness. While Homo sapiens people had higher-order consciousness, Neanderthals had a form of primary consciousness that did not permit them long-term symbolic memory or the ability to conceive of a spirit world. Coping with the shifting nature of higher-order consciousness, anatomically modern people necessarily divided the spectrum of mental states into evaluated segments. In this way, social discrimination and religion originated in tandem. Image-making in subterranean caverns was both a religious ritual and an instrument for social discrimination.
Résumé
La transition Paléolithique moyen – Paléolithique supérieur en Europe occidentale se caractérise par la présence de deux espèces d’Homo vivant l'une à côté de l'autre. L'espèce anatomiquement archaïque, l'homme de Néandertal, a emprunté certaines pratiques de son voisin l’Homo sapiens, mais n'en a pas emprunté d'autres. Nous proposons comme hypothèse que la raison de cet emprunt sélectif réside dans le type de conscience dont étaient pourvus les néanderthaliens. Alors que l’Homo sapiens avait une conscience d'ordre supérieure, l'homme de Néandertal avait une forme de conscience primaire qui ne lui offrait pas une mémoire symbolique à long terme ni la capacité de concevoir un monde spirituel. Faisant face à la nature changeante d'une conscience d'ordre supérieur, les hommes anatomiquement modernes divisaient inévitablement l’éventail des états mentaux en segments évalués. En suivant ce model, la stratification sociale et la religion sont apparues ensemble. La production d'images dans la les grottes profondes était à la fois l'expression d'un rituel religieux et un moyen de différenciation sociale.
Introduction
The West European Middle to Upper Palaeolithic Transition (c. 35 000–40 000 BP) is richly evidenced. During that time, Homo neanderthalensis groups, makers of the longenduring Mousterian technocomplex, lived in proximity to in-coming Aurignacian Homo sapiens communities. The Neanderthals took over some practices from the new arrivals to create the Châtelperronian technocomplex. Nevertheless, by the end of the period, the Neanderthals were extinct. During contact times H. sapiens produced an efflorescence of cave and portable imagery and sometimes elaborately furnished graves.
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- Information
- From Tools to SymbolsFrom Early Hominids to Modern Humans, pp. 372 - 388Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 2005