2003/01/01 by John J. Shea · 3 citations
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · Earth and Planetary Sciences · #Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology #Forensic Anthropology and Bioarchaeology Studies #Archaeology and ancient environmental studies
paper · doi:10.1002/evan.10101
openalex publication_date 2003/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/03
Abstract The East Mediterranean Levant is a small region, but its paleoanthropological record looms large in debates about the origin of modern humans and the fate of the Neandertals. For most of the twentieth century, the Levantine paleoanthropological record supported models of continuity and evolutionary transition between Neandertals and early modern humans. Recent advances in radiometric dating have challenged these models by reversing the chronological relationship between Levantine Neandertals and early modern humans. This revised chronostratigraphy for Levantine Middle Paleolithic human fossils raises interesting questions about the evolutionary relationship between Neandertals and early modern humans. A reconsideration of this relationship moves us closer to understanding the long delay between the origin of morphologically modern‐looking humans during the Middle Paleolithic (>130 Kyr) and the adaptive radiation of modern humans into Eurasia around the time of the transition from the Middle to Upper Paleolithic (50 to 30 Kyr).