posted Arabian Artifacts May Rewrite 'Out of Africa' Theory
By Charles Choi | LiveScience.com – Thu, Dec 1, 2011
Newfound stone artifacts suggest humankind left Africa traveling through the Arabian Peninsula instead of hugging its coasts, as long thought, researchers say. Modern humans first arose about 200,000 years ago in Africa. When and how our lineage then dispersed has long proven controversial, but geneticists have suggested this exodus started between 40,000 and 70,000 years ago. The currently accepted theory is that the exodus from Africa traced Arabia's shores, rather than passing through its now-arid interior. However, stone artifacts at least 100,000 years old from the Arabian Desert, revealed in January 2011, hinted that modern humans might have begun our march across the globe earlier than once suspected. Now, more-than-100 newly discovered sites in the Sultanate of Oman apparently confirm that modern humans left Africa through Arabia long before genetic evidence suggests. Oddly, these sites are located far inland, away from the coasts. "After a decade of searching in southern Arabia for some clue that might help us understand early human expansion, at long last we've found the smoking gun of their exit from Africa," said lead researcher Jeffrey Rose, a paleolithic archaeologist at the University of Birmingham in England. "What makes this so exciting is that the answer is a scenario almost never considered." Arabian artifacts The international team of archaeologists and geologists made their discovery in the Dhofar Mountains of southern Oman, nestled in the southeastern corner of the Arabian Peninsula. "The coastal expansion hypothesis looks reasonable on paper, but there is simply no archaeological evidence to back it up," said researcher Anthony Marks of Southern Methodist University, referring to the fact that an exodus by the coast, where one has access to resources such as seafood, might make more sense than tramping across the desert.. On the last day of the research team's 2010 field season, the scientists went to the final place on their list, a site on a hot, windy, dry plateau near a river channel that was strewn with stone artifacts. Such artifacts are common in Arabia, but until now the ones seen were usually relatively young in age. Upon closer examination, Rose recalled asking, "Oh my God, these are Nubians — what the heck are these doing here?" The 100-to-200 artifacts they found there were of a style dubbed Nubian Middle Stone Age, well-known throughout the Nile Valley, where they date back about 74,000-to-128,000 years. Scientists think ancient craftsmen would have shaped the artifacts by striking flakes off flint, leading to distinctive triangular pieces. This is the first time such artifacts have been found outside of Africa. Subsequent field work turned up dozens of sites with similar artifacts. Using a technique known as optically stimulated luminescence dating, which measures the minute amount of light long-buried objects can emit, to see how long they have been interred, the researchers estimate the artifacts are about 106,000 years old, exactly what one might expect from Nubian Middle Stone Age artifacts and far earlier than conventional dates for the exodus from Africa. "It's all just incredibly exciting," Rose said. Arabian spring? Finding so much evidence of life in what is now a relatively barren desert supports the importance of field work, according to the researchers. "Here we have an example of the disconnect between theoretical models versus real evidence on the ground," Marks said. However, when these artifacts were made, instead of being desolate, Arabia was very wet, with copious rain falling across the peninsula, transforming its barren deserts to fertile, sprawling grasslands with lots of animals to hunt, the researchers explained. "For a while, South Arabia became a verdant paradise rich in resources — large game, plentiful fresh water, and high-quality flint with which to make stone tools," Rose said. Instead of hugging the coast, early modern humans might therefore have spread from Africa into Arabia along river networks that would've acted like today's highways, researchers suggested. There would have been plenty of large game present, such as gazelles, antelopes and ibexes, which would have been appealing to early modern humans used to hunting on the savannas of Africa. "The genetic signature that we've seen so far of an exodus 70,000 years ago might not be out of Africa, but out of Arabia," Rose told LiveScience. So far the researchers have not discovered the remains of humans or any other animals at the site. Could these tools have been made by now-extinct human lineages such as Neanderthals that left Africa before modern humans did? Not likely, Rose said, as all the Nubian Middle Stone Age tools seen in Africa are associated with our ancestors. [Photos: Our Closest Human Ancestor] It remains a mystery as to how early modern humans from Africa crossed the Red Sea, since they did not appear to enter the Arabian Peninsula from the north, through the Sinai Peninsula, Rose explained. "Back then, there was no land bridge in the south of Arabia, but the sea level might not have been that low," he said. Archaeologists will have to continue combing the deserts of southern Arabia for more of what the researchers called a "trail of stone breadcrumbs." The scientists detailed their findings online Nov. 30 in the journal PLoS ONE. http://news.yahoo.com/arabian-artifacts-may-rewrite-africa-theory-124207013.html
AGÜEYBANÁ(Mind718) Member # 15400
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quote: However, stone artifacts at least 100,000 years old from the Arabian Desert, revealed in January 2011, hinted that modern humans might have begun our march across the globe earlier than once suspected.
I'm wondering if these researchers know anything about or took into account the Skhul and Qafzeh early modern humans, I mean damn why make such statements...get a clue!
quote:Upon closer examination, Rose recalled asking, "Oh my God, these are Nubians — what the heck are these doing here?" The 100-to-200 artifacts they found there were of a style dubbed Nubian Middle Stone Age, well-known throughout the Nile Valley, where they date back about 74,000-to-128,000 years.
Hmm, what are "these" doing here? Are you serious Rose? lol, you know humans came from Africa but yet you're surprised when you find artifacts that match those found in Africa? Gimme a break.
quote:"The genetic signature that we've seen so far of an exodus 70,000 years ago might not be out of Africa, but out of Arabia," Rose told LiveScience. So far the researchers have not discovered the remains of humans or any other animals at the site. [/qb]
Well, surely the pristine genetic lineages like haplogroup L3 should be found in Arabia then, but it's not, the derived haplogroups all non African modern humans descend from only arose 60-80kya, get with the times.
Mike111 Member # 9361
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^I don't call you mindless for nothing.
AGÜEYBANÁ(Mind718) Member # 15400
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^The dunce says what?
zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova Member # 15718
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quote:Originally posted by AGÜEYBANÁ(Mind718):
quote: However, stone artifacts at least 100,000 years old from the Arabian Desert, revealed in January 2011, hinted that modern humans might have begun our march across the globe earlier than once suspected.
I'm wondering if these researchers know anything about or took into account the Skhul and Qafzeh early modern humans, I mean damn why make such statements...get a clue!
quote:Upon closer examination, Rose recalled asking, "Oh my God, these are Nubians — what the heck are these doing here?" The 100-to-200 artifacts they found there were of a style dubbed Nubian Middle Stone Age, well-known throughout the Nile Valley, where they date back about 74,000-to-128,000 years.
Hmm, what are "these" doing here? Are you serious Rose? lol, you know humans came from Africa but yet you're surprised when you find artifacts that match those found in Africa? Gimme a break.
quote:"The genetic signature that we've seen so far of an exodus 70,000 years ago might not be out of Africa, but out of Arabia," Rose told LiveScience. So far the researchers have not discovered the remains of humans or any other animals at the site.
Well, surely the pristine genetic lineages like haplogroup L3 should be found in Arabia then, but it's not, the derived haplogroups all non African modern humans descend from only arose 60-80kya, get with the times. [/QB]
lol, I am glad you point out the above, having run into some "biodiversity" types that keep speaking of some sort of "Arabian" find that "refutes" OOA. WHen asked to produce it they could not. But here I see something finally comes to light. Said "biodiversity" types are spamming the "new" "Arabian study" around the web, talking 'bout how it supports the "multi-regional" racial model. My reply was that the artifacts may not have been from AMHs at all, but archaic populations, but from what you write I see the other possibility is that these are African specimens, not mysterious "proto" "Eurasians". Given the 100kya specimen claim, what's your take?
AGÜEYBANÁ(Mind718) Member # 15400
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My take is that around the times noted by the authors above, there is evidence of early anatomically modern human remains in southwest Asia as seen with Skhull and Qafzeh of which they seem to overlook. These early humans are evidence that humans were already moving out of Africa, possibly many times, so it shouldn't be that surprising to find evidence of their occupation. Humans appeared 200kya in Africa, of course there's sufficient possibility that they left the continent well before 60-80kya. But what matters is what the genetic record then shows and does it coincide. The genetic record notes a later time for AMH successfully colonizing the world.
zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova Member # 15718
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^^Hmmm.. And the data both as to Qafzeh and the above "new Arabia" (with its Nubian tool kit affinities) show these affinities to be with tropical Africans. The so-called "re-write" needs a "re-work".
On Dinks blog some are hailing this as "refutation" of OOA, not knowing that their own claims are undermined by the study itself. Here's the precise abstract:
Despite the numerous studies proposing early human population expansions from Africa into Arabia during the Late Pleistocene, no archaeological sites have yet been discovered in Arabia that resemble a specific African industry, which would indicate demographic exchange across the Red Sea. Here we report the discovery of a buried site and more than 100 new surface scatters in the Dhofar region of Oman belonging to a regionally-specific African lithic industry - the late Nubian Complex - known previously only from the northeast and Horn of Africa during Marine Isotope Stage 5, ~1128,000 to 74,000 years ago. Two optically stimulated luminescence age estimates from the open-air site of Aybut Al Auwal in Oman place the Arabian Nubian Complex at ~106,000 years ago, providing archaeological evidence for the presence of a distinct northeast African Middle Stone Age technocomplex in southern Arabia sometime in the first half of Marine Isotope Stage 5.
Citation: Rose JI, Usik VI, Marks AE, Hilbert YH, Galletti CS, et al. (2011) The Nubian Complex of Dhofar, Oman: An African Middle Stone Age Industry in Southern Arabia. PLoS ONE 6(11):
^^So here we have a distinct NE African cultural complex in place in Arabia. How could it have arrived in Arabia if not from "Out oF Africa"?
Question: Could this Nubian complex have laid the foundations for what we later see developing in Ethiopia? There was much interchange between Arabian penisula and the Horn or Africa in ancient time. But the Ethiopian region also shows the same Sudanic type tool kits and elements in place early on.
Thus could there not have been a convergence in ancient time between the two Sudanic complexes, one on the Arabian side of the Red Sea, and the other on the Horn/Ethiopian side of the Red Sea?, laying the foundations of early indigenous civ in Ethiopia? Such a convergence would of course be open to trade with other areas (such as Egypt and its "Punt" trade expedition or other more routine contacts)? Just wondering ..
QUOTE:
"Fattovich observed features on pre-Aksumite pottery resembling those on pottery of the Sudanese peoples labelled by archaeologists Kerma and C— group, and suggested that even such cultural features as the stelae, so characteristic of later Ethiopian funerary customs, might perhaps have derived from early Sudanese prototypes. Some of these features date back to the late 3rd and early 2nd millenia BC, and the discovery of evidence of fairly complex societies in the region at this early date may suggest, to quote Fattovich, "a more complex reconstruction of state formation in Northern Ethiopia"" --Stuart Munro-Hay. 1991. Aksum An African Civilisation of Late Antiquity. Edinburgh University Press. p 34
AGÜEYBANÁ(Mind718) Member # 15400
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quote:Originally posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova: Question: Could this Nubian complex have laid the foundations for what we later see developing in Ethiopia? There was much interchange between Arabian penisula and the Horn or Africa in ancient time. But the Ethiopian region also shows the same Sudanic type tool kits and elements in place early on.
Thus could there not have been a convergence in ancient time between the two Sudanic complexes, one on the Arabian side of the Red Sea, and the other on the Horn/Ethiopian side of the Red Sea?, laying the foundations of early indigenous civ in Ethiopia? Such a convergence would of course be open to trade with other areas (such as Egypt and its "Punt" trade expedition or other more routine contacts)? Just wondering ..
QUOTE:
"Fattovich observed features on pre-Aksumite pottery resembling those on pottery of the Sudanese peoples labelled by archaeologists Kerma and C— group, and suggested that even such cultural features as the stelae, so characteristic of later Ethiopian funerary customs, might perhaps have derived from early Sudanese prototypes. Some of these features date back to the late 3rd and early 2nd millenia BC, and the discovery of evidence of fairly complex societies in the region at this early date may suggest, to quote Fattovich, "a more complex reconstruction of state formation in Northern Ethiopia"" --Stuart Munro-Hay. 1991. Aksum An African Civilisation of Late Antiquity. Edinburgh University Press. p 34
Talking about two totally different time periods here. 100kya vs 4kya.
Doug M Member # 7650
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I am surprised they are still pulling this "Nubian" crap out of their behinds to label something from 100,000 years ago. Nubian is supposedly an ethnic group in Sudan but that Ethnic group did not exist by that name 3,000 years ago let alone 100,000 years ago. Yet they keep using the term as if all there was a population that shared a common identity and culture over 100,000 years. If that is so then Nubians are the oldest ethnic group in the world no?
zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova Member # 15718
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Sudanic or "NE Africn" might be a better term. Nevertheless the notion of a "Nubian complex" establishes links with the Nile Valley at a very early time it seems.
"..Middle Paleolithic and the transition to the Upper Paleolithic in the Lower Nile Valley are described... the Middle Paleolithic or, more appropriately, Middle Stone Age of this region starts with the arrival of new populations from sub-Saharan Africa, as evidenced by the nature of the Early to Middle Stone Age transition in stratified sites. Throughout the late Middle Pleistocene technological change occurs leading to the establishment of the Nubian Complex by the onset of the Upper Pleistocene." (Van Peer, Philip. Did middle stone age moderns of sub-Saharan African descent trigger an upper paleolithic revolution in the lower nile valley? Anthropologie. vol. 42, no3, pp. 215-225)
The same type of cultural kits have been found in the United Arab Emirates:
"The timing of the dispersal of anatomically modern humans (AMH) out of Africa is a fundamental question in human evolutionary studies. Existing data suggest a rapid coastal exodus via the Indian Ocean rim around 60,000 years ago. We present evidence from Jebel Faya, United Arab Emirates, demonstrating human presence in eastern Arabia during the last interglacial. The tool kit found at Jebel Faya has affinities to the late Middle Stone Age in northeast Africa.. --- Armitage, et al, 2011. The SOuthern ROute, Science 38, vol 331
You are right to be a little suspicious for Rose attempts to create stereotyical categories- ie.e a "sub Saharan" lithic industry ("Nubian"complex") versus a "Middle Paleolithic" (European and Middle Eastern). The impression one gets is of EUrocentrics attempting to run the same stereotypical "true negro" characterization on the lithic industries. So let us get this straight one may ask: People with tropical African affinities producing the' Nubian complex industry, suddenly become "European" or "Middle Eastern: when in time they produce modified industries in the Middle Paleolithc?
^^How does Middle Paleolithic lithic data suddenly become "European" or "Middle Eastern"? Conveniently skipping any continuity with what was before?
I see what you are saying Doug.
The following 2 studies did find so-called "Nubian-like" technology in the Levant:
zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova Member # 15718
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------------------------------ Vermeersch PM (2001) ‘Out of Africa’ from an Egyptian point of view. Quatern Int 75: 103–112. ------------------------------------
and
QUOTE: There is a growing convergence of paleontological, archaeological and genetic evidence for the African origin of modern humans and their successive dispersals. However, there is disagreement about the route or routes taken by early humans during their migration out of Africa. This article examines the Middle Paleolithic/Middle Stone Age archaeological evidence from the Horn of Africa, the Nile Valley/eastern Sahara, the Arabian Peninsula and the Levant, and assesses their relevance to this question. Specific reduction techniques and typological variables are used to compare industries across these regions. This study shows that there are more evident technological and typological similarities among assemblages from the Horn, the Nile Valley and Arabia than between any of these regions and the Levant." --Beyin A (2006) The Bab al Mandab vs the Nile-Levant: an appraisal of the two dispersal routes for early modern humans out of Africa. Afr Archaeol Rev 23: 5–30.
On the seemingly ancient L(xM,N) lineages of Arabia
One of those never ending discussions I have with some readers who dislike the coastal migration model is about my apparent finding, based on Behar 2008, that some L(xM,N) lineages in the Arabian Peninsula are maybe extremely old there. Admittedly I have all kind of doubts but these are of different nature than those of my usual opponent, Terry T.
While my reserves are about the size of samples, specially in Africa and the depth of lineage description, Terry argues that these lineages appear to be younger in Arabia than those arrived from South Asia, notably R0a (R0a1 actually in this area).
The lineages I feel most confident, after due revision, to represent an ancient flow out of Africa across the Red Sea at nearly the same time as the flow that seeded Eurasia with modern humankind (lineages M and N) are L0a1b2, L0f2a, L6, L4b1 and L3e2b2 (in red below).
In the following scheme the ">" signs represent one coding region mutation each (using PhyloTree, build 12). Count begins at the MRCA of all humans, "mtDNA Eve". Purple color used to mark x10 CR mutations from MRCA for easier count.
The blue clades are not necessarily only found in Arabia but they are common enough to help us discern the matter and, in any case, did not coalesce before the backflow from Southern Asia took place, maybe c. 48,000 years ago.
What can we discern? That at least two of the suspect lineages appear to be older than any backflow from Asia, which could not have happened before the 30th C.R. mutational step. These two lineages (L0a1b2 and L3e2b2) coalesced, it seems, at the 28th mutational step and are therefore of the same estimated age as N, the ancestor of R0a, which probably lived in SE Asia.
L0f2a also coalesced before R0a1 (1 mutational step earlier). L6 however appears younger but it is the best researched case of all these lineages, with the haplotype structure pointing to a coalescence in Yemen (and later migration to Semitic Ethiopia). So what it lacks in age, it has in certainty.
My only claim is that these lineages may be remnants of a once maybe steady flow across the Red Sea into Arabia Peninsula (evidence for the Fertile Crescent seems weaker), survivors of bottlenecks produced by periods of aridity and the backflow from South Asia and further North in the West Asian region.
There may be more, looking at Amero 2007 there is a clear diversity of L(xM,N) lineages in the area but no academic effort has been made to discern which of these L(xM,N) lineages might be specific of Arabia (or North Africa also) with deep local roots. In general the assumption has been that they are recent historical arrivals but that assumption probably does not hold. L(xM,N) lineages in Yemen (the most fertile part of Arabia) are as much as 37%.
Another complaint by Terry is that there is not much L3 in the region, what makes these lineages less likely (??) to be part of an Out-of-Africa migration led precisely by L3 subclades (M and N). I have admittedly not found too many specific L3 sublineages that can be claimed to be part of such old OoA flow into Arabia but the possibility remains as L3 makes up 11% of Yemeni mtDNA pool and L3d is surprisingly common (4%, more than in Ethiopia), hinting at the possibility of finding other Arabian-specific lineages within this clade.
The full development of this line of research obviously beats my means, as I only work with data mined by academic researchers. I can just hope that someone finds this preliminary exploration interesting and develops it further in the future.
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