Human predator<prey relationships changed dramatically in the Mediterranean Basin between 250,000 and 9,000 years ago. Many of these changes can be linked to increases in Paleolithic human population densities. Small game species are particularly diagnostic of increases in human hunting pressure and are a major source of evidence for demographic change after 40–45,000 years ago. Biomass-correct...

The emergence of modern humans in the Late Pleistocene, whatever its phylogenetic history, was characterized by a series of behaviorally important shifts reflected in aspects of human hard tissue biology and the archeological record. To elucidate these shifts further, diaphyseal cross-sectional morphology was analyzed by using cross-sectional areas and second moments of area of the mid-distal h...

This review uses a calibrated time scale. Suggestions that spikes in C production rendered calibration impossible in the period of the Middleto-Upper Paleolithic transition in Europe1,2 are now superseded, and the different calibration tools available for this time range produce comparable results.3 Here, calibration uses the CalPal software with the SFCP age model for the GISP2 ice core;4–6 un...

The late Lower Paleolithic archaeofaunas of Qesem Cave in the southern Levant span 400-200 ka and associate with Acheulo-Yabrudian (mainly Amudian) industries. The large mammals are exclusively Eurasian in origin and formed under relatively cool, moist conditions. The zooarchaeological findings testify to large game hunting, hearth-centered carcass processing and meat sharing during the late Lo...

Despite intensive study and a number of remarkable discoveries in the last two decades of the 20th century, our understanding of the cultural and biological processes that resulted in the emergence of the Upper Paleolithic and the establishment of modern humans in Interpleniglacial Europe remains far from complete. There is active debate concerning the timing and location of the origins of the ...

The term "mental template" has been used frequently by lithic analysts in recent years, especially in discussions of Lower Paleolithic bifaces and large cutting tools, of Middle Paleolithic stone tool typology, and of differences between Middle and Upper Paleolithic industries in Europe (e.g., Ambrose 1998; Ashton and White 2003; Barton 1990; Bisson 2001; Gowlett 1984, 1996, 2006; Marks, et al....

Using living humans as an extant referent, this paper examines the probability that the frequency differences in Neanderthal “unique” non-metric traits observed between Neanderthals and Upper Paleolithic modern humans could be sampled from two major populations of the same species. Neanderthal-like features occur in very low frequencies in living humans, if present at all. Rather, other feature...