The revolution that didn't arrive: A review of Pleistocene Sahul

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Abstract

There is a “package” of cultural innovations that are claimed to reflect modern human behaviour. The introduction of the “package” has been associated with the Middle-to-Upper Palaeolithic transition and the appearance in Europe of modern humans. It has been proposed that modern humans spread from Africa with the “package” and colonised not only Europe but also southern Asia and Australia (McBrearty and Brooks, 2000; Mellars, 2006a). In order to evaluate this proposal, we explore the late Pleistocene archaeological record of Sahul, the combined landmass of Australia and Papua New Guinea, for indications of these cultural innovations at the earliest sites. It was found that following initial occupation of the continent by anatomically and behaviourally modern humans, the components were gradually assembled over a 30,000-year period. We discount the idea that the “package” was lost en route to Sahul and assess the possibility that the “package” was not integrated within the material culture of the initial colonising groups because they may not have been part of a rapid colonisation process from Africa. As the cultural innovations appear at different times and locations within Sahul, the proposed “package” of archaeologically visible traits cannot be used to establish modern human behaviour. Whilst the potential causal role of increasing population densities/pressure in the appearance of the “package” of modern human behaviour in the archaeological record is acknowledged, it is not seen as the sole explanation because the individual components of the “package” appear at sites that are widely separated in space and time.

Introduction

The origin and definition of modern human behaviour is, like modern human origins and the definition of modern human morphology, a much-debated subject (see Henshilwood and Marean, 2003, Shea, 2006). The focus of the archaeological evidence for the appearance of modern human behaviour has been the transition from the Middle to the Upper Palaeolithic in Europe from 50–40,000 years BP. The introduction of the “package” has been directly associated with the appearance in Europe and western Asia of new populations of anatomically modern humans derived from Africa (i.e., the Out of Africa Replacement Model). The assumption has been that behavioural differences between Neanderthals and anatomically modern populations provided an adaptive advantage that facilitated the replacement of the Neanderthals by modern populations throughout Europe. The transition, referred to as a “human or symbolic revolution”, has furnished archaeologically visible innovations or traits that are claimed to reflect modern human behaviour (e.g., Chase and Dibble, 1987, Mellars, 1989, Mellars, 1991, Mellars, 2005, Mellars, 2006a, Mellars, 2006b, Mellars and Stringer, 1989, Harrold, 1992, Klein, 1992, Klein, 1995, Klein, 1999, Klein, 2000, Bar-Yosef, 1998). The group of cultural innovations, which includes art, personal ornaments, blade technology, worked bone, and changes to exchange networks and resource exploitation patterns, is portrayed as a “package” that arrived almost simultaneously in Europe (Mellars, 1991: 63–4, 2005: his Fig. 1; Harrold, 1992: his Table 1; Klein, 1995: his Table 1). Harrold (1992: his Table 1) even compiled the morphological changes evident at the archaic-modern transition, the broad behavioural implications of these changes, and the proposed cultural developments and archaeological correlates. As Bar-Yosef observed, the transition in Eurasia was a “true technological and cultural revolution” (1998: 152). Foley and Lahr (2003) observed that it was difficult to identify a cognitive change associated with the introduction of the Upper Palaeolithic in Europe, especially as it occurred well after the appearance of anatomically modern humans in Africa and western Asia. Alternately, Klein, 1992, Klein, 1995, Klein, 1999, Klein, 2000 argued for a strong association between human biological and behavioural evolution and proposed that modern human behaviour, as reflected in the appearance of the “package” of traits at around 50–40,000 years BP, and geographic population expansion were “coproducts of a selectively advantageous genetic mutation” (Klein, 2000: 18). That is, a neurological change that allowed fully modern humans to innovate and ultimately expand and replace “nonmodern or near modern” populations elsewhere.

The trait list for archaeologically visible modern human behaviour continues to be evaluated and refined. Deacon, 1995, Deacon and Deacon, 1999 argued that Middle Stone Age (MSA) African populations were both morphologically and behaviourally modern by at least 100,000 years ago. Deacon, 1995, Deacon and Deacon, 1999 based this conclusion not on those traits that separate Neanderthals and anatomically modern groups in Europe, which he felt were inappropriate in an African context, but rather on behaviours that link Middle and Late Stone Age (LSA) and contemporary hunter-gatherers, including family foraging groups, strong kinship ties, active hunting, use of fire for the management of food plants, reciprocal gift exchange of artefacts (backed artefacts made of exotic material), and communication via colour symbols (use of ochre). Whilst Wadley (2001) agreed with Deacon's focus on the behavioural aspects of modernity as opposed to the appearance of items of material culture in the archaeological record, she was not convinced by his recognition of early modern human behaviour during the MSA. Wadley (2001) attempted to refine the list of traits and argued that modern behaviour was only evident in the archaeological record from 40,000 years BP when items of external symbolic storage (art, ornaments, lithics) are used in the definition of individual or group identity (see also Henshilwood and Marean, 2003). Henshilwood and d'Errico (d'Errico et al., 2001, d'Errico et al., 2005, Henshilwood et al., 2001) demonstrated the MSA appearance of worked and engraved bone, engraved ochre, and shell beads, and concurred with Deacon that behavioural modernity appeared early in Africa, by at least 70,000 years BP and well before the MSA-LSA transition.

In a detailed review of the African MSA, McBrearty and Brooks (2000) found that the “package” of cultural innovations did not suddenly appear in the archaeological record; rather, the traits occurred at sites that are widely separated in space and time (McBrearty and Brooks, 2000: their Fig. 13). This finding that the “package” was gradually assembled over a 200,000-year period challenged the concept of a “human revolution”. In doing so, McBrearty and Brooks (2000) dismissed the concept of a time lag between the appearance of anatomical modernity and perceived behavioural modernity in Africa (cf. Klein, 2000).

The “package” of archaeologically visible traces of modern human behaviour investigated by McBrearty and Brooks (2000) included: enlarged geographic range, expanded exchange networks, personal adornments, art and imagery, ritual behaviour, economic intensification reflected in the exploitation of resources that require specialised technology, worked bone and other organic materials, and new lithic technologies.

There is a clear indication that the archaeologically visible “package” of cultural innovations was gradually assembled in the Africa MSA, and by 50–40,000 years BP it had appeared in western Asia and Europe (McBrearty and Brooks, 2000: their Fig. 13; d'Errico, 2003: his Fig. 8). It has also been proposed that the “package” was exported from Africa to other regions of the Old World (Bar-Yosef, 1998: his Fig. 6; McBrearty and Brooks, 2000, Mellars, 2006a: his Fig. 1). As Klein observed, an assessment of Pleistocene Sahul is “crucial for testing the hypothesis that modern humans expanded from Africa following a radical behavioural change 50 to 40 ky ago” (2000: 33). However, Sahul, the combined landmass of Australia and Papua New Guinea, has been a notable omission from most discussions of the “human revolution” or the origins of modern human behaviour. This situation is changing with the growing recognition that anatomically and behaviourally modern humans colonised Sahul at an equivalent time to Europe.

White, 1977, White, 1999, White and O'Connell, 1982 discussed aspects of the late Pleistocene prehistory of Australia, especially lithic material, to question the “creative explosion of the European Upper Palaeolithic”. Davidson and Noble placed Pleistocene Australia at the centre of a discussion of archaeologically visible modern human behaviour by arguing the colonisation of Greater Australia was the oldest direct evidence for “the expression of behaviour that is distinctly human” (1992: 135), namely language, because to plan for, construct, and use boats required the use of language. However, this proposal is weakened somewhat by 800,000-year old stone tools recovered on the Indonesian island of Flores that suggest the tool makers were capable of constructing and using water craft (Morwood et al., 1998, Morwood et al., 1999). Davidson and Noble (1992) also contend that the earliest inhabitants of Sahul practiced “symbolic behaviour” and list archaeological materials older than 15,000 years BP from Greater Australian sites that they perceived to be “indicative of fully modern human behaviour” (Davidson and Noble, 1992: their Table 1). These materials, including ground axes, bone artefacts, ochre, and ornaments, are encapsulated within the “package” of archaeologically visible modern human behaviour discussed by McBrearty and Brooks (2000). Direct comparisons between aspects of the Australian and European archaeological records have also been undertaken to assess aspects of the “human revolution” model. Holdaway and Cosgrove (1997) compared late Pleistocene southwest Tasmania with Middle Palaeolithic Eurasia to question the unilinear model of an archaeologically visible transition from archaic to modern behaviour. Hiscock and O'Connor, 2005, Hiscock and O'Connor, 2006, focusing on lithic material, examined the appearance(s) of backed artefacts in Australia and Africa to assess the validity of these artefacts as an archaeologically visible trait of modern human behaviour proposed by previous researchers (e.g., Deacon and Deacon, 1999, Wadley, 2001, Mellars, 2005). Hiscock and O'Connor, 2005, Hiscock and O'Connor, 2006 found that use of backed artefacts to support the appearance of modern human behaviour was limited due to the chronologically and regionally variable nature of their occurrences in both continents. Brumm and Moore (2005), following Wadley (2001), focused on the archaeologically visible manifestations within the Australian archaeological record of “symbolic storage” as evidence for modern human behaviour, namely art, personal ornaments, and style in lithics. Brumm and Moore (2005) found that, whilst there were isolated examples of late Pleistocene “symbolic storage” in Australia, many of the supposed hallmarks of the “creative explosion or symbolic revolution” did not appear until the mid-to-late Holocene. In a broad ranging discussion, O'Connell and Allen (2007) reached a similar conclusion in that they found the appearance of the proposed “markers of modernity” increased within the archaeological record of Sahul from 20,000 years BP onwards, especially during the early Holocene.

As noted by Klein (2000), Australasia needs to be considered in explanations of modern human origins. The starting point for any such assessment is the colonisation of Sahul by anatomically and behaviourally modern peoples. Throughout hominin-human history Sahul has been separated from Sunda by the islands of Wallacea and significant water barriers. Migration to Sahul, therefore, required a number of open sea voyages, some of which may have covered distances of 100 km or more (Birdsell, 1977). Twenty years ago the prevailing view was that the earliest evidence for human occupation of Sahul dated to around 40,000 years BP (Mulvaney, 1975, White and O'Connell, 1982, White and Habgood, 1985, Jones, 1989). This situation has not changed significantly over the intervening years, with most archaeologists agreeing that initial occupation occurred by at least 45,000 years BP, although there have been arguments for earlier occupation in Greater Australia extending beyond 60,000 years BP based on five main sites: Huon Peninsula (44–61,000 years BP), Nauwalabila (53–60,000 years BP), Malakunanja II (45–61,000 years BP), Devil's Lair (48–64,000 years BP), and Lake Mungo (46–62,000 years BP). Roberts et al. provocatively contend that the 50–60,000 years BP thermoluminescence dates from Malakunanja II “…mark the time of initial human arrival on the Australian continent” (1990: 153; see also Chappell et al., 1996). Allen and O'Connell (Allen and O'Connell, 2003, O'Connell and Allen, 2004) have reviewed the evidence at the five earliest sites listed above and concluded that doubts remained with the very early dates due to artefact context and site taphonomy, and that secure dating evidence indicates the earliest human occupation of Greater Australia is around 45,000 years BP. Gillespie (2002) also suggested that there was good dating evidence of early human occupation at 45,000 ± 3,000 years BP in four dispersed regions of Australia (southwest, northwest, north, and southeast) through a combination of radiocarbon, luminescence, and uranium-thorium dating methods. A reasonable estimate for the colonisation of Sahul would be between 45–50,000 years BP (Bowdler, 1993, Bowler and Price, 1998, Gillespie, 1998, Gillespie, 2002, Allen and O'Connell, 2003, Bowler et al., 2003, Fullagar, 2004, O'Connell and Allen, 2004).

To assess if Sahul was one of the other “regions of the Old World” to which the “package” was exported by the earliest colonising groups from Africa as proposed (McBrearty and Brooks, 2000; see also Bar-Yosef, 1998, Klein, 2000, Mellars, 2006a), we examine the late Pleistocene archaeological record of Greater Australia for these cultural innovations.

At the time of the initial colonisation of Sahul the earliest Australians should theoretically have possessed the entire “package” of archaeologically visible modern human behaviour. One exception could be images because even though McBrearty and Brooks (2000, their Fig. 13) postulated a date of at least 40,000 years BP for examples of images in Africa, the earliest well dated example may only be some 27,000 years old: painted slabs with images of quadrupeds from Apollo 11 Rockshelter in Namibia (Bahn and Vertut, 1997). This paper concentrates on assessing whether those traits identified by McBrearty and Brooks (2000) appear at an early period in the archaeological record of Sahul, as would be expected if they were brought from Africa by the initial colonising groups.

As the “human or symbolic revolution” incorporates population movements and colonisation, our paper will also consider inferences that may be drawn about the origin of anatomically modern humans in the region from the assessment of the archaeologically visible “package” of modern human behaviour in Greater Australia.

Section snippets

Enlarged geographic range

As noted earlier, anatomically and behaviourally modern humans colonised an uninhabited continent when they migrated from Sunda and across Wallacea to Sahul. These early colonists adapted to a range of environments within Greater Australia, especially lacustrine and riverine zones, although more arid savannah environments as well as highland regions and the large islands off the northeastern coast of Papua New Guinea also document late Pleistocene occupation (Fig. 1, Fig. 2; White and

Expanded exchange networks–40,000 years BP (Table 1)

It is difficult to project the existence of the formal long-distance exchange networks evident in the historic period (see Mulvaney, 1976) into the remote past. However, it is clear that evidence from late Pleistocene deposits at sites throughout Sahul indicates long-distance contact and/or wide-ranging mobile groups, and movement and/or exchange of exotic materials for personal adornment, utilitarian, and/or symbolic purposes. The offshore islands of the Bismarck Archipelago at the northeast

Mining and quarrying–24,000 years BP (Table 2)

Major stone mining and quarrying sites do not appear to be common in Greater Australia during the late Pleistocene (Table 2), as raw materials for stone working were generally obtained from the immediate vicinity of sites or from the local area, with procurement often limited to utilisation of naturally fractured rubble from the ground surface or river pebbles (Hiscock, 1996, Hiscock and Allen, 2000). As mentioned earlier, during the late Pleistocene obsidian from west New Britain was being

Personal adornments (Table 3)

Whilst not common, personal adornments are found in archaeological deposits during the late Pleistocene in Greater Australia, generally in the form of shell or macropod bone beads, but also bone and stone pendants and notational pieces (Table 3, Table 4). By the mid-Holocene, necklaces and headbands are present in burials in southeastern Australia, indicating the well-established use of ornaments for ceremonial and decorative purposes (Table 3).

Art and imagery

Greater Australia has provided evidence for a range of artistic activities during the late Pleistocene. This includes the presence of pieces of ochre, often with use-wear, as well as implements associated with pigment processing, such as grindstones, through to finger markings, paintings, and engravings on rock surfaces.

Burials—40,000 years BP (Table 7)

Elaborate burials that suggest ceremonial and ritual activities are evident in Greater Australia during the late Pleistocene, with cemeteries appearing along the river systems of southeastern Australia from the early-to-mid Holocene (Table 7). Pardoe, 1988, Pardoe, 1995 defined cemeteries on the basis of size, density of burials, boundedness, and exclusivity of use, as opposed to isolated individual burials.

The Willandra Lakes area of western New South Wales provides the earliest burials in

Economic intensification

In the “human revolution” scenario, specialised technology such as grindstones, harpoons, and/or fish hooks reflect economic intensification (see McBrearty and Brooks, 2000). Additionally, Fullagar (2006) proposed that an important indicator of modern human behaviour was elaborate plant processing (for example, seed grinding and cooking or leaching of unpalatable or toxic plants). However, in an Australian context the discussion is concerned more with resource exploitation, even though it may

Worked bone and other organic materials—22,000 years BP (Table 10)

Artefacts made from organic materials in Greater Australia include a few instances of wooden tools—which, as expected, are rarely preserved—and tools made of bone. Wyrie Swamp, South Australia, has produced 25 wooden artefacts made from sheoak (Casuarina stricta) dated to 10,200 years BP (Luebbers, 1975), but is the only prehistoric site known to contain such implements. They include digging sticks, boomerangs, and one-piece spears. Within this context it is interesting to note that the LM3

New lithic technologies

The introduction of new lithic technologies, such as ground stone artefacts and blade technology, is a key component of the “package” of archaeologically visible evidence for modern human behaviour and the proposed “human revolution”.

Discussion

As detailed earlier, McBrearty and Brooks (2000) challenged the concept of a “human revolution” at approximately 50,000 years BP by documenting in MSA Africa the gradual assembling of the “package” of archaeologically visible traits for modern human behaviour over a 200,000-year period and proposed that the “package” was then exported to other regions of the Old World by colonising groups of anatomically modern humans. By examining the late Pleistocene archaeological record of Sahul, it has

Inferences

Mellars (2006a) reaffirmed the position that modern humans left Africa with the “package” and colonised Europe, southern Asia and, ultimately, Australia. Whilst there is evidence from chronological data, skeletal morphology, and the archaeological record for a movement of anatomically modern humans into and across Europe from 40,000 years BP and the replacement (with or without direct interaction and/or hybridisation) of the indigenous Neanderthals, a movement of modern humans into eastern and

Conclusions

The late Pleistocene archaeological record of Greater Australia does not support the proposal by McBrearty and Brooks' (2000) that the complete “package” of modern human behaviour was exported from Africa to other regions of the Old World, as all of the components of the “package” are not evident at the earliest sites in Sahul. Following the initial occupation of the continent, the “package” is gradually assembled over a 30,000-year period (Fig. 9). In addition, the individual components of the

Acknowledgements

This paper benefited from helpful discussions with Drs. Annie Ross, Sean Ulm, and Chris Clarkson on the Australian archaeological record. Feedback from Mike Rowland, Dr. Richard Fullagar, three anonymous reviewers, and Editor Susan Antón assisted in further focusing the paper. We would also like to thank Professors Hilary Deacon, Fred Smith, Chris Henshilwood, and Alison Brooks for useful presentations and discussions on archaeologically visible manifestations of modern human behaviour during

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