0000000000663119
AUTHOR
Jean-jacques Hublin
Reconstructing the deep population history of Central and South America
We report genome-wide ancient DNA from 49 individuals forming four parallel time transects in Belize, Brazil, the Central Andes, and the Southern Cone, each dating to at least ∼9,000 years ago. The common ancestral population radiated rapidly from just one of the two early branches that contributed to Native Americans today. We document two previously unappreciated streams of gene flow between North and South America. One affected the Central Andes by ∼4,200 years ago, while the other explains an affinity between the oldest North American genome associated with the Clovis culture and the oldest Central and South Americans from Chile, Brazil, and Belize. However, this was not the primary sou…
New chronology for Ksâr ‘Akil (Lebanon) supports Levantine route of modern human dispersal into Europe
Modern human dispersal into Europe is thought to have occurred with the start of the Upper Paleolithic around 50,000-40,000 y ago. The Levantine corridor hypothesis suggests that modern humans from Africa spread into Europe via the Levant. Ksâr 'Akil (Lebanon), with its deeply stratified Initial (IUP) and Early (EUP) Upper Paleolithic sequence containing modern human remains, has played an important part in the debate. The latest chronology for the site, based on AMS radiocarbon dates of shell ornaments, suggests that the appearance of the Levantine IUP is later than the start of the first Upper Paleolithic in Europe, thus questioning the Levantine corridor hypothesis. Here we report a seri…
Zinc isotopes in Late Pleistocene fossil teeth from a Southeast Asian cave setting preserve paleodietary information
Significance Dietary habits, especially meat consumption, represent a key aspect in the behavior and evolution of fossil hominin species. Here, we explore zinc (Zn) isotope ratios in tooth enamel of fossil mammals. We show discrimination between different trophic levels and demonstrate that Zn isotopes could prove useful in paleodietary studies of fossil hominin, or other mammalian species, to assess their consumption of animal versus plant resources. We also demonstrate the high preservation potential of pristine diet-related Zn isotope ratios, even under tropical conditions with poor collagen preservation, such as the studied depositional context in Southeast Asia. However, assessing the …
Boucher de Perthes
Le seul livre qui retrace la vie et l'œuvre du "père de la préhistoire"Jacques Boucher de Perthes (1788-1868) est le« père de la préhistoire », discipline née, autour de 1860, des révolutions scientifiques du XIXe siècle. Directeur des douanes d'Abbeville, écrivain prolixe, poète et dramaturge sans succès, il fut le témoin et l'acteur des bouleversements politiques de son temps. Il se passionna pour l'existence de « l'l'Homme fossile » (il parlait plus volontiers de « l'Homme antédiluvien ») qu'il fit reconnaître, au terme d'un long combat, par ses contemporains. S’efforçant de ne négliger aucun des aspects d’un personnage complexe, Claudine Cohen et Jean-Jacques Hublin brossent à travers l…
Trophic ecology of a Late Pleistocene early modern human from tropical Southeast Asia inferred from zinc isotopes
Tam Pà Ling, a cave site in northeastern Laos, has yielded the earliest skeletal evidence of Homo sapiens in mainland Southeast Asia. The reliance of Pleistocene humans in rainforest settings on plant or animal resources is still largely unstudied, mainly due to poor collagen preservation in fossils from tropical environments precluding stable nitrogen isotope analysis, the classical trophic level proxy. However, isotopic ratios of zinc (Zn) in bioapatite constitute a promising proxy to infer trophic and dietary information from fossil vertebrates, even under adverse tropical taphonomic conditions. Here, we analyzed the zinc isotope composition (66Zn/64Zn expressed as δ66Zn value) in the en…
Reply to Douka et al: Critical evaluation of the Ksâr 'Akil chronologies
Our paper (1) proposes a new chronology for Ksâr 'Akil based on 16 accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) determinations on shells. To minimize the possibility of dating diagenetically compromised samples, we conducted amino acid racemization analyses on the intracrystalline proteins, oxygen isotope analysis, and geochemical characterization of all dated shells. Our calibrated radiocarbon ages fit well with existing Levantine chronologies, but are up to 4,000 y older than Douka et al.’s (2). Our paper explores several possibilities for this difference, whereas Douka et al. (3) provide alternative explanations. They accept our radiocarbon ages as correct but question our sample selection and Ba…
A Neandertal dietary conundrum: Insights provided by tooth enamel Zn isotopes from Gabasa, Spain
The characterization of Neandertals’ diets has mostly relied on nitrogen isotope analyses of bone and tooth collagen. However, few nitrogen isotope data have been recovered from bones or teeth from Iberia due to poor collagen preservation at Paleolithic sites in the region. Zinc isotopes have been shown to be a reliable method for reconstructing trophic levels in the absence of organic matter preservation. Here, we present the results of zinc (Zn), strontium (Sr), carbon (C), and oxygen (O) isotope and trace element ratio analysis measured in dental enamel on a Pleistocene food web in Gabasa, Spain, to characterize the diet and ecology of a Middle Paleolithic Neandertal individual. Based on…
Reply to Ben-Dor and Barkai: A low Zn isotope ratio is not equal to a low Zn content
However, we are afraid that there was a misunderstanding in the interpretation of our data. Ben-Dor and Barkai (2) wrote that "One explanation presented in the [our] paper was that Neandertals may have consumed body parts and animals that were relatively poor in zinc, like the liver or deer." This sentence is not reflecting our conclusions: We discussed Zn isotope ratios (i.e., 66Zn/64Zn ratio expressed as a δ66Zn value) and not Zn concentrations. To explain low δ66Zn values of the Neandertal tooth, we propose that Neandertals ate food items depleted in heavy Zn isotopes (and therefore enriched in light Zn isotopes), but those foods can have variable Zn contents, independent of the Zn isoto…
Clima subártico para os primeiros Homo sapiens na Europa
Description
Trophic position of Otodus megalodon and great white sharks through time revealed by zinc isotopes
AbstractDiet is a crucial trait of an animal’s lifestyle and ecology. The trophic level of an organism indicates its functional position within an ecosystem and holds significance for its ecology and evolution. Here, we demonstrate the use of zinc isotopes (δ66Zn) to geochemically assess the trophic level in diverse extant and extinct sharks, including the Neogene megatooth shark (Otodus megalodon) and the great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias). We reveal that dietary δ66Zn signatures are preserved in fossil shark tooth enameloid over deep geologic time and are robust recorders of each species’ trophic level. We observe significant δ66Zn differences among the Otodus and Carcharodon popu…
Dental calculus indicates widespread plant use within the stable Neanderthal dietary niche.
The ecology of Neanderthals is a pressing question in the study of hominin evolution. Diet appears to have played a prominent role in their adaptation to Eurasia. Based on isotope and zooarchaeological studies, Neanderthal diet has been reconstructed as heavily meat-based and generally similar across different environments. This image persists, despite recent studies suggesting more plant use and more variation. However, we have only a fragmentary picture of their dietary ecology, and how it may have varied among habitats, because we lack broad and environmentally representative information about their use of plants and other foods. To address the problem, we examined the plant microremains…
Ancient proteins resolve the evolutionary history of Darwin's South American ungulates.
No large group of recently extinct placental mammals remains as evolutionarily cryptic as the approximately 280 genera grouped as 'South American native ungulates'. To Charles Darwin, who first collected their remains, they included perhaps the 'strangest animal[s] ever discovered'. Today, much like 180 years ago, it is no clearer whether they had one origin or several, arose before or after the Cretaceous/Palaeogene transition 66.2 million years ago, or are more likely to belong with the elephants and sirenians of superorder Afrotheria than with the euungulates (cattle, horses, and allies) of superorder Laurasiatheria. Morphology-based analyses have proved unconvincing because convergences…