Template:Short description Template:Infobox archaeological culture Template:Paleolithic
<mapframe text="Selected Middle Paleolithic sites from the ROAD database (CC BY-SA 4.0 ROCEEH)" width="400", height="300"> {
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The Middle Paleolithic (or Middle Palaeolithic) is the second subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age as it is understood in Europe, Africa and Asia. The term Middle Stone Age is used as an equivalent or a synonym for the Middle Paleolithic in African archeology.<ref name=Miller2006>Template:Cite book</ref> The Middle Paleolithic broadly spanned from 300,000 to 50,000 years ago. There are considerable dating differences between regions. The Middle Paleolithic was succeeded by the Upper Paleolithic subdivision which first began between 50,000 and 40,000 years ago.<ref name="Miller2006"/> Pettit and White date the Early Middle Paleolithic in Great Britain to about 325,000 to 180,000 years ago (late Marine Isotope Stage 9 to late Marine Isotope Stage 7), and the Late Middle Paleolithic as about 60,000 to 35,000 years ago.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The Middle Paleolithic was in the geological Chibanian (Middle Pleistocene) and Late Pleistocene ages.
According to the theory of the recent African origin of modern humans, anatomically modern humans began migrating out of Africa during the Middle Stone Age/Middle Paleolithic around 125,000 years ago and began to replace other Homo species such as the Neanderthals and Homo erectus.
Origin of behavioral modernityEdit
Template:Human timeline The earliest evidence of behavioral modernity first appears during the Middle Paleolithic; undisputed evidence of behavioral modernity, however, only becomes common during the following Upper Paleolithic period.<ref name="Miller2006"/>
Middle Paleolithic burials at sites such as Krapina in Croatia (dated to Template:Circa 130,000 BP) and the Qafzeh and Es Skhul caves in Israel (Template:Circa 100,000 BP) have led some anthropologists and archeologists (such as Philip Lieberman) to believe that Middle Paleolithic cultures may have possessed a developing religious ideology which included concepts such as an afterlife; other scholars suggest the bodies were buried for secular reasons.<ref name="evolving_graves">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
According to recentTemplate:When archeological findings from Homo heidelbergensis sites in the Atapuerca Mountains, the practice of intentional burial may have begun much earlier during the late Lower Paleolithic, but this theory is widely questioned in the scientific community. Cut-marks on Neandertal bones from various sites – such as Combe Grenal and the Moula rock shelter in France – may imply that Neanderthals, like some contemporary human cultures, may have practiced excarnation for presumably religious reasons (see Neanderthal behavior § Cannibalism or ritual defleshing?).
The earliest undisputed evidence of artistic expression during the Paleolithic period comes from Middle Paleolithic/Middle Stone Age sites such as Blombos Cave in the form of bracelets,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> beads,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> art rock,<ref name=Henahan>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> ochre used as body paint and perhaps in ritual,<ref name="Miller2006"/><ref name="Henahan"/> though earlier examples of artistic expression such as the Venus of Tan-Tan and the patterns found on elephant bones from Bilzingsleben in Thuringia may have been produced by Acheulean tool-users such as Homo erectus prior to the start of the Middle Paleolithic period.<ref>"Human Evolution", Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2007. Microsoft Corporation. Contributed by Richard B. Potts. 2009-11-01.</ref> Activities such as catching large fish and hunting large game animals with specialized tools indicate increased group-wide cooperation and more elaborate social organization.<ref name="Miller2006"/>
In addition to developing advanced cultural traits, humans also first began to take part in long-distance trade between groups for rare commodities (such as ochre (which was often used for religious purposes such as ritual<ref name="Henahan"/><ref>Template:Cite book; [1]</ref>)) and raw materials during the Middle Paleolithic as early as 120,000 years ago.<ref name="Miller2006"/><ref name="Hillary Mayell"> {{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }} </ref> Inter-group trade may have appeared during the Middle Paleolithic because trade between bands would have helped ensure their survival by allowing them to exchange resources and commodities such as raw materials during times of relative scarcity (i.e., famine or drought).<ref name="Hillary Mayell"/>
Social stratificationEdit
Evidence from archeology and comparative ethnography indicates that Middle Paleolithic people lived in small, egalitarian band societies similar to those of Upper Paleolithic societies and some modern hunter-gatherers such as the ǃKung and Mbuti peoples.<ref name="Miller2006"/><ref>Template:Cite book, p. 198</ref> Both Neanderthal and modern human societies took care of the elderly members of their societies during the Middle Paleolithic.<ref name="Hillary Mayell"/> Christopher Boehm (1999) has hypothesized that egalitarianism may have arisen in Middle Paleolithic societies because of a need to distribute resources such as food and meat equally to avoid famine and ensure a stable food supply.<ref name=Bohem>Template:Cite book, p. 192</ref>
It has usually been assumed that women gathered plants and firewood and men hunted and scavenged dead animals through the Paleolithic.<ref name="Stefan Lovgren">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> However, Steven L. Kuhn and Mary Stiner from the University of Arizona suggest that this sex-based division of labor did not exist prior to the Upper Paleolithic. The sexual division of labor may have evolved after 45,000 years ago to allow humans to acquire food and other resources more efficiently.<ref name="Stefan Lovgren"/>
NutritionEdit
Although gathering and hunting comprised most of the food supply during the Middle Paleolithic, people began to supplement their diet with seafood and began smoking and drying meat to preserve and store it. For instance the Middle Stone Age inhabitants of the region now occupied by the Democratic Republic of the Congo hunted large Template:Convert long catfish with specialized barbed fishing points as early as 90,000 years ago,<ref name="Miller2006" /><ref>"Human Evolution," Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2007 Template:Webarchive Contributed by Richard B. Potts.</ref> and Neandertals and Middle Paleolithic Homo sapiens in Africa began to catch shellfish for food as revealed by shellfish cooking in Neanderthal sites in Italy about 110,000 years ago and Middle Paleolithic Homo sapiens sites at Pinnacle Point, in Africa.<ref name="Miller2006" /><ref name="NYTIMES/10/08/07">Template:Cite news</ref>
Anthropologists such as Tim D. White suggest that cannibalism was common in human societies prior to the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic, based on the large amount of "butchered human" bones found in Neandertal and other Middle Paleolithic sites.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Cannibalism in the Middle Paleolithic may have occurred because of food shortages.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
However it is also possible that Middle Paleolithic cannibalism occurred for religious reasons which would coincide with the development of religious practices thought to have occurred during the Upper Paleolithic.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name=Narr>Template:Cite encyclopedia</ref> Nonetheless it remains possible that Middle Paleolithic societies never practiced cannibalism and that the damage to recovered human bones was either the result of excarnation or predation by carnivores such as saber-toothed cats, lions and hyenas.<ref name="Narr"/>
TechnologyEdit
Around 200,000 BP Middle Paleolithic Stone tool manufacturing spawned a tool-making technique known as the Levallois technique or prepared-core technique, that was more elaborate than previous Acheulean techniques.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="Archived">"Human Evolution," Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2007. Microsoft Corporation. Contributed by Richard B. Potts. Archived 2009-11-01.</ref> Wallace and Shea split the core artifacts into two different types: formal cores and expedient cores. Formal cores are designed to extract the maximum amount from the raw material while expedient cores are based more upon functional need.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> This method increased efficiency by permitting the creation of more controlled and consistent flakes.<ref name="Archived"/> This method allowed Middle Paleolithic humans correspondingly to create stone-tipped spears, which were the earliest composite tools, by hafting sharp, pointy stone flakes onto wooden shafts. Paleolithic groups such as the Neanderthals who possessed a Middle Paleolithic level of technology appear to have hunted large game just as well as Upper Paleolithic modern humans<ref name=Parson2006>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and the Neanderthals in particular may have likewise hunted with projectile weapons.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
Nonetheless Neanderthal usage of projectile weapons in hunting occurred very rarely (or perhaps never) and the Neanderthals hunted large game animals mostly by ambushing them and attacking them with mêlée weapons such as thrusting spears rather than attacking them from a distance with projectile weapons.<ref name="Hillary Mayell"/><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> An ongoing controversy about the nature of Middle Paleolithic tools is whether there were a series of functionally specific and preconceived tool forms or whether there was a simple continuum of tool morphology that reflect the extent of edge maintenance, as Harold L. Dibble has suggested.<ref name=Dibble>Template:Cite journal</ref>
The use of fire became widespread for the first time in human prehistory during the Middle Paleolithic, and humans began to cook their food c. 250,000 years ago.<ref name=Thoth&Schick>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name=Wrangham>Template:Cite journal</ref> Some scientists have hypothesized that hominids began cooking food to defrost frozen meat which would help ensure their survival in cold regions.<ref name="Wrangham"/> Robert K. Wayne, a molecular biologist, has controversially claimed, based on a comparison of canine DNA, that dogs may have been first domesticated during the Middle Paleolithic around or even before 100,000 BCE.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
SitesEdit
Cave sitesEdit
Western EuropeEdit
- Axlor, Spain<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
- Grotte de Spy, Spy, Belgium
- La Cotte de St Brelade, Jersey
- Le Moustier, France—see also Mousterian
- Neandertal (valley), Germany
- Petralona, Greece<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation
|CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
Middle East and AfricaEdit
- Aterian, North Africa<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
- Bisitun Cave, Iran<ref>Trinkaus, E; Biglari, F (2006). "Middle Paleolithic Human Remains from Bisitun Cave, Iran". Paléorient. 32 (2): 105–11. doi:10.3406/paleo.2006.5192</ref>
- Daş Salahlı, Azerbaijan<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
- Wezmeh, Iran<ref>Zanolli, Clément, Fereidoun Biglari, Marjan Mashkour, Kamyar Abdi, Herve Monchot, Karyne Debue, Arnaud Mazurier, Priscilla Bayle, Mona Le Luyer, Hélène Rougier, Erik Trinkaus, Roberto Macchiarelli. (2019). A Neanderthal from the Central Western Zagros, Iran. Structural reassessment of the Wezmeh 1 maxillary premolar. Journal of Human Evolution, Vol: 135.</ref>
Open-air sitesEdit
- Biache-Saint-Vaast, France
- Maastricht-Belvédère, The Netherlands
- Veldwezelt-Hezerwater, Belgium
See alsoEdit
ReferencesEdit
External linksEdit
- Veldwezelt-Hezerwater
- Picture Gallery of the Paleolithic (reconstructional palaeoethnology), Libor Balák at the Czech Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Archaeology in Brno, The Center for Paleolithic and Paleoethnological Research
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