Researchers Discover 300,000-Year-Old Human Footprints Offering Insight Into Early Human History

Wow, how incredible that these footprints have survived hundreds of thousands of years.

My Modern Met
Le nouveau @Prehistorytravel est dispo !
En 1907, la découverte de la mandibule de Mauer, datée à environ 609 000 ans, marque une étape majeure dans la compréhension de l’évolution du genre Homo en Europe... La suite ? C'est ici :
https://prehistorhic.lepodcast.fr/homo-heidelbergensis-une-espece-peu-connue
#HomoHeidelbergensis #Heidelbergensis #Préhistorique #Préhistoire
Homo heidelbergensis une espèce peu connue - Prehistor'hic

Résumé : En 1907, la découverte de la mandibule de Mauer, datée à environ 609 000 ans, marque une étape majeure dans la compréhension de l’évolution du genre Homo en Europe. Attribuée par Otto Schoetensack à une nouvelle espèce, Homo heidelbergensis, cette pièce fossile exceptionnelle a longtem...

Prehistor'hic
Anthropologists Reconstruct Face of Homo heidelbergensis
Anthropologists in Greece have used facial reconstruction techniques to show how Homo heidelbergensis, a poorly understood relative of Neanderthals that lived between 700,000 to 200,000 years ago, might have once looked.
https://www.sci.news/othersciences/anthropology/homo-heidelbergensis-facial-reconstruction-12354.html #facial #reconstruction #Homo #heidelbergensis #paleoanthropology #Petralona #skull #MiddlePleistocene
In #Zambia in #Afrika hebben #archeologen twee #houten #dwarsbalken opgegraven, die overdwars precies op elkaar pasten. Op zich niet bijzonder, maar ze zijn waarschijnlijk 470 duizend jaar geleden gemaakt door #oermensen. Welke is niet bekend, hoewel de homo #heidelbergensis in die tijd in het gebied leefde. De archeologen hebben de precieze functie van de constructie niet kunnen achterhalen.
https://www.volkskrant.nl/wetenschap/oermens-werkte-half-miljoen-jaar-geleden-al-met-hout-maar-wat-hij-maakte-is-onduidelijk~b57bf8f4/
Oermens werkte half miljoen jaar geleden al met hout, maar wat hij maakte, is onduidelijk

Al een half miljoen jaar geleden maakten prehistorische mensen houten bouwwerken. Bij een opgraving in Zambia vonden archeologen twee houten dwarsb...

de Volkskrant
Een 300.000 jaar oude stok die in 1994 is gevonden in het Duitse #Schöningen werd mogelijk door de #neanderthaler of homo #heidelbergensis gebruikt als een soort #boemerang tijdens de jacht.
https://www.newscientist.nl/nieuws/prehistorische-mensachtigen-jaagden-op-dieren-met-een-soort-boemerang/
Prehistorische mensachtigen jaagden op dieren met een soort boemerang 

Analyse van een houten stok van ongeveer 300.000 jaar oud suggereert dat die was ontworpen draaiend te werpen als een boemerang, niet als als een speer.

New Scientist

Conflicting ideologies in hominin taxonomy, nomenclature, and species concept

Conceptual issues in hominin taxonomy:
Homo #heidelbergensis and an ethnobiological reframing of species
Dr Sheela Athreya
@sathreya3
Dr Allison Hopkins
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ajpa.24330

300 Kya #heidelbergensis adults and children foraged by lake with elephants and rhinos

Fossil footprints at the late Lower Paleolithic site of Schöningen (Germany): A new line of research to reconstruct animal and hominin paleoecology
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277379123001427

@HWiesenmueller
I misunderstood something in your quote from the pub-sci article so I searched and read the paper https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-022-01970-1

I had thought, the quote implied, anatomically modern humans were somehow involved in the cache of 500+ manufactured obsidian tools 1.2ma.
Which ofc they weren't. The earliest bones from anatomically modern humans known today come from a cave in Jebel Irhoud in Morocco and 300ky old, published 2017.

The earliest remains (known in 2016) from H.heidelbergensis / H. rhodesiensis (or H.bodoensis to cancel the connection to corrupt sociopath C. Rhodes ) were from a site in South #Africa #Elandsfontain and are 700ky old.

Incredible what I used to have in mind when thinking of #Neanderthals / #heidelbergensis: brutal groups, barely human, unable to communicate beyond grunts.
But not even language acquisition was reserved for "anatomically modern humans" – a term I find increasingly useless the more I learn of what is known of #pleistocene humans.

A surge in obsidian exploitation more than 1.2 million years ago at Simbiro III (Melka Kunture, Upper Awash, Ethiopia) - Nature Ecology & Evolution

The authors report a specialized obsidian handaxe workshop at the site of Simbiro III in Ethiopia, suggesting that hominins more than 1.2 million years ago took advantage of opportunities provided by changing environmental conditions.

Nature

#Tegtmeier #Pleistocene #Africa
Wrt origins of modern humans.
Oi! What a rabbit hole!

I wrote, modern humans had been around for 300ky and came from Southern Africa. But it turns out, this history is 1) wrong (sorry!😁 ) and 2) not written in stone yet, at all. #Archeology is still developing an agreement of what distinguishes modern humans culturally from their archaic ancestors for one thing, and the other thing is, 50+ years-old excavation sites still reveal unthought-of new twists.

Eg. in 2016, Mirazone-Lahr and Foley on "Human Eevolution in Eastern Africa" https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Marta-Mirazon-Lahr/publication/301232255_Human_Evolution_in_Late_Quaternary_Eastern_Africa/links/59e33487aca2724cbfe36a63/Human-Evolution-in-Late-Quaternary-Eastern-Africa.pdf ( https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-017-7520-5_12 )

published this handy chart below. X-axis is in kiloyears since 800ky. Above the x-axis are the ice ages and interglacials in form of the well-known temperature curve. Left y-axis splits the continent into North, East and South Africa; the right y-axis lists names of archeological sites of the finds.
The coloured dashes within the chart area highlight where remains have been found, and when they lived, and to which homo kind they belonged, Anatomically Modern Humans (red), H. #heidelbergensis (blue), and an advanced form of H. heidelbergensis with larger brain sizes sometimes known as H. #helmei (green).

Very handy chart. From 2016.
But...!

Conflicting ideologies in hominin taxonomy, nomenclature, and species concept

Conceptual issues in hominin taxonomy:
Homo #heidelbergensis and an ethnobiological reframing of species
Dr Sheela Athreya @sathreya3 Dr Allison Hopkins
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ajpa.24330