Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-m8qmq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T12:50:58.383Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

16 - Migration and innovation in Palaeolithic Europe

from Part II - The Paleolithic and the beginnings of human history

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2015

David Christian
Affiliation:
Macquarie University, Sydney
Get access

Summary

By the end of the nineteenth century, European scholars had uncovered the principal archaeological remains of the Ice Age and at least a few human fossils of the most recent phases of human evolution in Europe. All Ice-Age archaeological remains were classified as 'Old Stone Age' or Palaeolithic. The late or Upper Palaeolithic, which was subsequently divided into several successive industries, was eventually linked to modern humans or the Cro-Magnons. The preceding Middle Palaeolithic was associated with the extinct Neanderthals, and the early or Lower Palaeolithic with the pre-Neanderthal inhabitants of Europe. Modern humans seem to have invaded Europe in a series of migratory waves beginning possibly as early as 50,000 years ago. Technological innovation almost certainly played a critical role in the rapid expansion of modern humans out of Africa and into a wide range of habitats and climate zones, and it is strikingly evident in the next Upper Palaeolithic industry that appears in Europe.
Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Primary Sources

Bordes, François, Typologie du Paleolithique Ancien et Moyen, Bordeaux: Delmas, 1961.Google Scholar
Collingwood, Robin George, The Idea of History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946.Google Scholar
Gamble, Clive, The Palaeolithic Settlement of Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Gamble, Clive, The Palaeolithic Societies of Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Hoffecker, John F., Desolate Landscapes: Ice-Age Settlement of Eastern Europe, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Hoffecker, John F., Landscape of the Mind: Human Evolution and the Archaeology of Thought, New York: Columbia University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Klein, Richard G., The Human Career: Human Biological and Cultural Origins, 3rd edn., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mithen, Steven, The Prehistory of the Mind: The Cognitive Origins of Art, Religion and Science, London: Thames & Hudson, Ltd., 1996.Google Scholar
Svoboda, Jiri, Ložek, Vojen, and Vlček, Emanuel, Hunters between East and West: The Paleolithic of Moravia, New York: Plenum Press, 1996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trigger, Bruce G., A History of Archaeological Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Wells, Spencer, Deep Ancestry: Inside the Genographic Project, Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2007.Google Scholar
Wood, Bernard, Human Evolution: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.Google Scholar

Secondary Sources

Bar-Yosef, Ofer, and Belfer-Cohen, A., ‘From Africa to Eurasia – Early dispersals’, Quaternary International 75 (2001), 1928.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carbonell, Eudald, et al., ‘The first hominin of Europe’, Nature 452 (2008), 465–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Haidle, Miram N., ‘How to think a simple spear’, in Sophie A. de Beaune, Frederick L. Coolidge, and Wynn, Thomas (eds.), Cognitive Archaeology and Human Evolution, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. 5773.Google Scholar
Pope, Matt I., and Roberts, Mark B., ‘Observations on the relationship between Palaeolithic individuals and artifact scatters at the Middle Pleistocene site of Boxgrove, UK’, in Gamble, Clive and Porr, Martin (eds.), The Hominid Individual in Context, London: Routledge, 2005, pp. 8197.Google Scholar
Santonja, Manuel, and Villa, Paola, ‘The Acheulean of Western Europe’, in Goren-Inbar, Naama and Sharon, Gonen (eds.), Axe Age: Acheulian Tool-making from Quarry to Discard, London: Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2006, pp. 429–78.Google Scholar
Scott, Gary R., and Gibert, Luis, ‘The oldest hand-axes in Europe’, Nature 461 (2009), 82–5.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stringer, Chris, ‘The status of Homo heidelbergensis’, Evolutionary Anthropology 21 (2012), 101–7.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Binford, Lewis R., and Binford, Sally R., ‘A preliminary analysis of functional variability in the Mousterian of Levallois facies’, American Anthropologist 68 (1966), 238–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bocherens, Hervé, Drucker, Dorothée G., Billiou, Daniel, Patou-Mathis, Marylène, and Vandermeersch, Bernard, ‘Isotopic evidence for diet and subsistence pattern of the Saint-Cesaire I Neanderthal: Review and use of a multi-source mixing model’, Journal of Human Evolution 49 (2005), 7187.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Boëda, Eric, Connan, Jacques, Dessort, Daniel, Muhesen, Sultan, Mercier, Norbert, Valladas, Hélène, and Tisnérat, Nadine, ‘Bitumen as a hafting material on Middle Paleolithic artefacts’, Nature 380 (1996), 336–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carbonell, Eudald, and Castro-Curel, Z., ‘Palaeolithic wooden artifacts from the Abric Romani (Capellades, Barcelona, Spain)’, Journal of Archaeological Science 19 (1992), 707–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, Richard E., et al., ‘A draft sequence of the Neandertal genome’, Science 328 (2010), 710–22.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lalueza-Fox, Carles, et al., ‘Genetic evidence for patrilocal mating behavior among Neandertal groups’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108 (2011), 250–3.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mellars, Paul, The Neanderthal Legacy: An Archaeological Perspective from Western Europe, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sandgathe, Dennis M., et al., ‘On the role of fire in Neandertal adaptations in Western Europe: Evidence from Pech de l'Aze and Roche Marsal, France’, PaleoAnthropology (2011), 216–42.Google Scholar
Scott, Kate, ‘Mammoth bones modified by humans: Evidence from La Cotte de la St. Brelade, Jersey, Channel islands’, in Bonnichisen, Robson and Sorg, Marcella H. (eds.), Bone Modification, Orono, ME: Center for the Study of the First Americans, 1989, pp. 335–46.Google Scholar
Weaver, Timothy D., ‘The meaning of Neandertal skeletal morphology’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106 (2009), 16,028–33.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zamyatnin, S. N., ‘Stalingradskaya paleoliticheskaya stoyanka’, Kratkie Soobshcheniya Instituta Arkheologii 82 (1961), 536.Google Scholar
Anikovich, M. V., et al., ‘Early Upper Paleolithic in eastern Europe and implications for the dispersal of modern humans’, Science 315 (2007), 223–6.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Golovanova, Liubov V., Doronichev, Vladimir B., Cleghorn, Naomi E., Kulkova, Marianna A., Sapelko, Tatiana V., and Steven Shackley, M., ‘Significance of ecological factors in the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition’, Current Anthropology 51 (2010), 655–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoffecker, John F., ‘Innovation and technological knowledge in the Upper Paleolithic of northern Eurasia’, Evolutionary Anthropology 14 (2005), 186–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoffecker, John F., ‘The spread of modern humans in Europe’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106 (2009), 16,040–5.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Straus, Lawrence G., ‘The Upper Paleolithic of Europe: an overview’, Evolutionary Anthropology 4 (1995), 416.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vanhaeren, Marian, and d'Errico, Francesco, ‘Aurignacian ethno-linguistic geography of Europe revealed by personal ornaments’, Journal of Archaeological Science 33 (2006), 1,105–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×