In the first edition of human Antiquity, we listed the child's skeleton recovered at the site of Starosele in the Ukraine as one of few specimens found in eastern Europe that have been described as exhibiting anatomical features intermediate between those of classic Neandertals and anatomically modern human beings. Because so little information was available about the fossil we did not discuss the fossil in the third edition of our book (though it can still be found on the site map FIgure 12.5).

Recent work by Anthony Marks and reported in the February 8 issue of Science News (Bower 1997a) appears to justify the elimination of the Starosele specimen from our consideration. Though an 80,000 year old hominid site is located at Starosele, the fossil in question probably dates to no more than 200-300 years ago and is a modern child, one of three burials at the site. All three were buried on their right sides and facing the south. Mark's infers from this that the Starosele child is certainly not an advanced Neandertal but, in actuality, a late medieval Muslim burial.

The site of Diring Yuriakh, located in central Siberia has generated considerable controversy since its initial excavation in 1982. Claims of an age for stone tools in excess of 1.8 million and as much as 3.2 million years have been roundly criticized; all other evidence indicates hominids had not penetrated Siberia until after 30,000 years ago. Recent analysis and new excavations at Diring, however, lend some suport for an age for the site in excess of 260,000 years (Waters, Forman, Pierson 1997). Approximately 4,000 stone tools have been found in a number of apparent clusters between 10 and 30 meters in diameter. Investigators identify anvils, hammerstones, cores and flakes at the site. These artifacts were found in a reasonably well-dated stratigraphic context. Sediments above, within, and below the artifact bearing horizon were dated by thermoluminescence. Because of the enormous disparity in dates between Diring and earliest previously accepted dates for the human occupation of Siberia, the Diring dates must be carefully considered. The site may indicate that hominids (presumably, Homo erectus) possessed a sufficiently sophisticated material culture to enable its adaptation to the enormously challenging climate of Siberia.

Recent dating of two fossils discovered in 1992 (the cranium KNM-ER 3884 and KNM-ER 999, a femur) pushes back the appearance of near modern human beings in Africa to between 270,000 and 300,000 years ago (Bräuer et al. 1997). The KNM-ER 3884 cranium has an estimated cranial capacity of 1400 cc and is more modern in its morphology than the African archaics (for example, Bodo, Kabwe, or Lake Ndutu). KNM-ER 3883 is more closely related to other African specimens included in the "African Transitional Group" (Florisbad, Omo 2, Ngaloba). The femur is robust, but otherwise modern in its morphology. The recent dating of Florisbad (259,000 BP; see Updates for Chapter 11, above) and the date for KNM-ER 3884 suggest a transition to anatomically modern Homo sapiens in Africa long before their appearance in Asia or Europe. This lends further support for the replacement hypothesis and the assertion that Africa is the hearth for anatomically modern human beings. 

A detailed analysis by Richard G. Milo of animal bones recovered at the important South African site of Klasies River Mouth shows that the early anatomically modern human beings who lived there were active hunters of large game animals (as reported in Bower 1997b). About 20% of the 5400 animal bones examined showed signs of butchery, often in areas that indicate the humans at Klasies were extracting prime cuts of meat, not just scavenging what carnivores had left behind (ther are few signs of carnivores gnawing on the bones). Beyond this, a stone spear point was found embedded in the cervical vertebrae of a giant buffalo. Milo's analysis indicates that anatomically modern human beings were hunting an a behaviorally modern way by 100,000 years ago in South Africa. 

In a piece of research that left one breathless scientist comparing its significance to that of the Mars Rover, an actual fragment of mitochondrial DNA has been extracted from a small Neandertal bone fragment, allowing scientists for the first time to compare the genetic instructions for an extinct form of humanity with the DNA of our own species. The bone was one of those recovered in 1856 at the original Neandertal site in Germany. The research project was led by Svante Pääbo, one of the world's leading investigators of ancient DNA (Krings et al. 1997).

This "molecular archaeology" of the Neandertals shows that they were genetically quite distinct from modern humans. In the DNA segment recovered (379 base-pairs of a total mitochondrial DNA length of about 16,500 base-pairs in humans), there are more than three times the number of differences (27+2) between Neandertals and modern humans than are found when comparing any two groups of living human beings (with a mean of 8+3 differences). This degree of difference supports the hypothesis that the Neandertals were not our immediate ancestors, but instead, evolutionary cousins, plying their own, separate course through ancient history. Using the comparison of chimp and human mitochondrial DNA, and with a known divergence of greater than 5 million years ago, Pääbo estimates that Neandertals and the ancestors of anatomically modern humans split some 600,000 years ago. This clearly supports the Replacement Model of modern human evolution, at least at it relates to Neandertals.

There is more here that supports the Replacement Model. If the Neandertals were closely related to modern European populations&emdash;if, for example, the Neandertals were ancestral to anatomically modern humans in Europe&emdash;then the extracted Neandertal mtDNA should be more similar to that of modern Europeans than to any of the other groups of humans used in the comparison samples totaling close to 1,000 people. However, the researchers found that the Neandertal mtDNA was as different from that of modern Europeans as it was from the rest of the modern sample derived from Asia and Africa. This implies rather forcefully, that thoough the classic Neandertals and anatomically modern humans shared a common geography, they shared no genes. A full description of the results appears in the July issue of the journal Cell. A brief summary of this research is provided by Ward and Stringer (1997). A somewhat more detailed description can be found in an article written by Kahn and Gibbons (1997). Check Human Antiquity Update again for more of the details on this truly spectacular piece of research.

Another series of attempts to extract mitochondrial DNA from fossil bone was reported in a letter to Science (Cooper et al. 1997). These researchers were unsuccessful at obtaining any amplifiable DNA from animal specimens from the Neandertal sites at Zafarraya and Krapina. At attempt to extract DNA directly from Neandertal bones at La Chaise were also unsuccessful. The authors were more successful at extracting DNA from Holocene age sites and bone recovered from permafrost. They suggest that the successful extraction of Neandertal DNA reported on by Krings et al. (1997) may be due to the fact that their specimen (from the original Neandertal site) was buried in soil that, because of its location in the northern limit of the Neandertal world, experiened glacial and periglacial conditions almost for the entire duration of its burial. These results suggest that intact DNA retreival from most fossil hominid bone may be impossible. 

A set of entirely modern-looking human footprints has been found preserved in rock along Langebaan Lagoon, about 100 kilometers north of Capetown in South Africa (Bower 1997c). The rock in which the footprints were found has been radiometrically dated to 117,000 years ago, making these prints the oldest made by anatomically modern Homo sapiens discovered to date (Gore 1997). The prints appear to be entirely modern and relatively small, suggesting the the person was diminutive, perhaps a female less than 5 1/2 feet tall.

The Out-of-Africa model for the origin of modern Homo sapiens&emdash;in modified form&emdash;got a boost by some recent research reported at October's symposium on human evolution at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York (Gibbons 1997b). The well-known "Eve" hypothesis used mitochrondrial DNA, passed on only through women, to point to an African origin for our species between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago. The new research uses variation on the Y chromosome, passed down only through men. One study looked at a genetic marker on the Y chromosome among 900 males and found the most ancient form on that gene, shared by other primates. Only a few modern men possess that form, and they are all African&emdash;specifically some Ethiopians and Sudanese and mostly Khoisan (including the groups formerly called Bushmen and Hottentots). All men outside Africa, and most Africans, carry a different version of the gene. A second study surveyed 1544 men and found a particular Y chromosome DNA sequence variant that appears to be ancestral since it is also found in chimpanzees. That variant occurs only in some Africans, especially Khoisan; other Africans and all non-African men have another variant. Using average mutation rates for nuclear DNA, the new variants of both these markers were calculated to have arisen between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago.

While these data appear to lend support to the strict Out-of-Africa model, the team involved in the second study found evidence that some of the descendants of the Africans who migrated to Asia later returned to Africa with a further mutation on the Y chromosome that arose in Asia. In other words, while replacing most of the DNA of more ancient humans, those modern types may have interbred with non-Africans and added some ancient non-African genes to the modern genome. This supports the intermediate model we call "Genetic Replacement."

Two sharpened bone spear points have been found at Blombos Cave in South Africa (Bower 1997d). The site exceeds the limit of radiocarbon dating, making these artifacts more than about 40,000 years old. The age and sophistication of the tools supports the assertion that anatomically modern humans living in Africa had a more sophisticated material culture than populations of contemporary, anatomically archaic Homo sapiens.

Information provided by: http://www.anthropology.ccsu.edu