Evolution of the human capacity: The symbolic evidence

YEARBOOK OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 32:l-34 (1989)

Evolution of the Human Capacity: The Symbolic Evidence

ALEXANDER MARSHACK Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138

KEY WORDS Anatomically modern humans

Hominization, Problem-solving, Symboling, Neanderthals,

ABSTRACT Rare instances of symboling and problem-solving in the archaeological record of the European Acheulian and Mousterian suggest highly evolved potentially variable hominid capacities. These are aspects of capacity not evidenced in the lithic industries and habitation site com- plexes, and they cannot be determined from studies of comparative morphology or genetic distance. This sparse artifactual evidence cannot be quantified and is, in fact, statistically insignificant. Nevertheless, the in- ternal cognitive contents and complexity evident in these unique materials reveal the presence of highly evolved skills and conceptual capacities involving the evaluation and use of diverse materials and processes. They also reveal a capacity for planning and mapping or modeling the territory and culture in time and space. Significantly, the evidence for these behaviors is richer in Europe during these early periods than in other areas of late hominid presence, including the Middle East and Africa where forms of anatomically modern humans were developing. It is possible that these early European efforts represent incipient and preparatory innovations that in some measure led to the regional “creative explosion” of the following European Upper Paleolithic. It is suggested that hominization selected for certain types and classes of problem-solving and symboling capacity and that the Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans each represent progressive advances over the evolved erectus capacity and its cultural man- ifests. It is also suggested that these late hominid capacities ultimately and evolutionarily derive from still earlier potential and variable problem- solving and conceptual capacities comparable to those found among the great apes.

I have recently been faced with a profound theoretical problem, which is in part due to the recent thermoluminescence date of c. 90,000 BP for Qafzeh and the apparent genetic evidence suggesting an African origin for anatomically modern humans, from a presumed African Homo erectus base, approximately 100,000- 200,000 BP (Valladas et al., 1988; Stringer and Andrews, 1988). This is precisely the period during which the Neanderthals were developing their own morphology and culture, derived from regional European H . erectus or archaic Homo sapiens morphology and technology (Laville, 1982; Tuffreau, 1982). One part of the problem is that the available evidence for complex problem-solving and symboling at what I would term an evolved “human” level is greater among the Neanderthals during the Mousterian period than it is during this same period in

0 1989 Alan R. Liss, Inc.

2 YEARBOOK OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY [Vol. 32, 1989

areas outside of Europe, including the Near East and sub-Saharan areas of supposed anatomically modern human origin. I will touch on this accumulating evidence below. The evidence for Neanderthal capacity does not, of course, necessarily contradict the Qafzeh date or the suggestive, if still controversial, evidence for genetic separation and distance, but it does profoundly confront these data with the necessity of an explanation. That, however, is only part of the problem. The other part concerns the so-called Upper Paleolithic “creative explosion” (Pfeiffer, 1982). For more than a century this regional, usually Franco-Cantabrian cultural phenomenon has been used as a measure of the anatomically modern human symboling capacity. It has been one of the traditional hallmarks of the so-called Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition (Jelinek, 1977, 1982; White, 1982; Binford, 1983, 1985a; Chase and Dibble, 1987). When the Upper Paleolithic “creative explosion” does occur, however, following the appearance of anatomically modern humans in Europe, c. 35,000-40,000 BP, it occurs only in this region of prior Neanderthal habitation. There is no evidence for the development of symboling or problem-solving traditions of comparable complexity among anatomically modern humans in the Near East or Africa during the 25,000 year long period of the European Upper Paleolithic, and there is no evidence that these traditions came into Europe from the Near East (Belfer-Cohen, 1988) or Africa. The descendants of Qafzeh did not, apparently, carry their symboling traditions with them into Europe. Although earlier in the century it may have seemed so, the Upper Paleolithic “creative explosion” cannot be taken to be an indication of a sudden, genetic increase in symboling capacity that occurred in Europe precisely at the Middle/Upper Paleolithc transition, nor can it be considered as the intrusion of an already highly developed symbolic culture from elsewhere. Instead, the Upper Paleolithic “creative explosion” seems to represent a regional historical development that was constrained to the area of prior Neanderthal habitation and culture and therefore was, conceivably, influenced or touched by the already extant Mousterian culture. The influence of Mousterian lithic industries on the Upper Paleolithic industries was recognized years ago by Bordes and has been generally acknowledged for decades. It is possible, therefore, that other aspects of late Mousterian culture also played an influential role. That possibility, of course, poses its own profound set of problems for an understanding of hominization and an understanding of the Neanderthals, their capacity, and their culture.

It is significant that at the moment that new information is being published concerning the proposed date and region of origin of anatomically modern humans, the complexity of the Mousterian cultures, and by implication the level of Nean- derthal capacity, has been undergoing a major reevaluation and upgrading. That reevaluation suggests the possibility of another small revolution, this time in thinking about the Neanderthal problem and, as a result, about the evolutionary process of hominization itself. These accumulating data on the cognitive and cultural complexities of the European Mousterian and the capacities of the Neander- thals are not usually noted in the recent papers on the African andlor Near Eastern origins of anatomically modern humans or in any of the current papers that have been comparing the morphologies involved. Nevertheless these cognitive and cultural data will significantly affect our understanding of evolved “human” capacity and the range of these capacities that was present among both groups of late hominids.

If we assume that the Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans were end-products of the same 3 to 5 million year trajectory of selective hominid evolution, and that each was selectively derived from a comparable, if geographically separated, level of evolved late Homo erectus capacity, we are faced with the necessity of characterizing that evolved and evolving capacity and the nature of the evolutionary process of hominization itself, and to do so in terms that go beyond morphological and genetic difference and distance. I will indicate how these questions and problems arose during my own slowly unfolding research.

Marshack] EVOLUTION OF HUMAN CAPACITY: MOUSTERIAN 3

THE SYMBOLIC DATA

I began my research at Les Eyzies in the Dordogne, the so-called “Capital of Prehistory,” more than two decades ago, standing on the shelf of the cliff that overlooks the village. The Harvard University excavation of the Abri Pataud is on this shelf, and more than a century ago the first skeletons of Cro-Magnon were found in a small cave in the cliff, only some 50 yards to the left. Paul Broca, a 19th century pioneer in brain research, examined the skulls and declared that they were robust but modern, and he suggested that the female may have been wounded by a spear because of the partially healed hole in her skull.

With the the Cro-Magnon skeletons was found a set of seashell beads, some from the Atlantic coast to the west, others from the Mediterranean coast to the south, suggesting that the Cro-Magnons were involved either in exchange to obtain symbolic materials from dispersed groups, or went on long seasonal journeys that involved the presence of cognitive maps that included not only subsistence resources but the sources of distant symbolic materials. Thousands of beads have been found since then in Upper Paleolithic burials and homesites throughout Eu- rope. No beads, however, have ever been found in Neanderthal burials. A consen- sus therefore developed, based in large part on this lack of evidence, that the Cro-Magnons or anatomically modern humans had “invented)) personal decoration and were, therefore, the first to have developed a sense of “self-awareness” and, as a corollary, that this “self-awareness7’ was a product of cultural complexity and cultural interchange and, since cultural complexity is a requisite for language, that the Neanderthals probably did not have language, at least not a t a fully “human” level. In large measure, although seldom stated, these assumptions un- derlie many recent studies touching on Neanderthal capacity or culture (Chase and Dibble, 1987; Harrold, 1980, 1987) as well as recent attempts a t recreating or modeling the Neanderthal larynx (Lieberman, 1987; Laitman, 1983) often with a supposition of lesser linguistic and syntactical capacity.

Oddly, in the light of these suppositions concerning the greater symboling capacity and culture of anatomically modern humans, the archaeological record provides no evidence for a tradition of bead manufacture among other anatomically modern humans during the period of the Upper Paleolithic, either in the Near East (Belfer-Cohen, 1988) or in Africa. It would seem, then, that we are dealing again with a regional, historical, cultural phenomenon in the European Upper Paleo- lithic, rather than with a stochastic regional leap in biological, genetic capacity involving the sudden appearance of “self-awareness” and symboling capacity. It may be informative, therefore, to take a look at the region normally used as a reference and explore the comparative problem.

The Cro-Magnon skeletons were found at Les Eyzies when the cliffside talus was being excavated to obtain landfill for a railroad bridge that was being built across the Vezere. Not far upstream on the VCz&re is the Neanderthal type site of Le Moustier, and only a few kilometers away is the important Neanderthal site of La Ferrassie. In the debitage at the foot of the cliff at Les Eyzies Mousterian tools have been found. About 112 hour by car from Les Eyzies is the Acheulian-Moust- erian site of Pech de 1’Aze. These riverine valleys, then, with their resources of flint and ochre, their seasonal movement of animals, their changes of seasons, and their cyclical changes in climate, were inhabited first by H. erectus, then by the Neanderthals, and finally by the Cro-Magnons. A question therefore hangs over the region and its data. What capacities were used by the different groups to exploit these northern latitude valleys? What selective pressures or processes were involved in increasing the hominid capacity for adaptive and non-adaptive behavior and problem-solving?

A large part of the cultural data traditionally used to theorize about the supposed differences in capacity between the Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons has come from this Franco-Cantabrian area, with Les Eyzies, historically, a t its center. It is here, in the Franco-Cantabrian area that, according to Leroi-Gourhan, Au-


rignacian art and personal decoration were supposed to have originated. Leroi- Gourhan claimed that animal art also began in the early Aurignacian among the Cro-Magnons, c. 28,000 BP, with simple animal outlines and equally simple vulvas representing the female principle. At the Abri Celier (Dordogne) on the V6zere a few kilometers from Les Eyzies, for instance, one finds the extremely crude incised outline of a horse head on a limestone block, associated with a schematic vulva. These simple images represent Leroi-Gourhan’s Style I. Style 11, as in the engraved bison bull found in the cave of La Greze in the Dordogne (26,000-20,000 BP) a few kilometers from Les Eyzies, involves more realistic, but still schematic outlines and carvings of animals, often with twisted frontal perspective in rendition of the horns. Style I11 and IV began the magnificent Franco-Cantabrian Magdalenian tradition of carved and engraved mobiliary art and of painted realistic animals, of which the “Chinese horse” in Lascaux, the Dordogne, c. 14,500 BP, is one of the best known examples.

This chronology of styles represents a linear development from the simple and crude to the sophisticated and realistic, culminating in the high animal art of the Franco-Cantabrian Magdalenian. These Franco-Cantabrian data have colored all theories about the origins of art, about the so-called “creative explosion” in the Upper Paleolithic cultures, as well as many current theories concerning the differences within and across the MousterianKJpper Paleolithic transition. These theories on the origin of art and symbol, based so largely on the Franco-Cantabrian data are, however, false or a t least profoundly inadequate. While crude animal images, essentially a t the level of Leroi-Gourhan’s Style I or 11, do exist in other parts of Upper Paleolithic Europe, no tradition of increasingly sophisticated animal art, for instance, developed in the Upper Paleolithic of Central Europe, the Russian plain, or Mediterranean Italy. Of even greater significance, no animal art to speak of developed during the period of the Upper Paleolithic in the Near East (Belfer-Cohen, 1988), and there is only sparse evidence for crude animal painting and simple marking during this period of the Upper Paleolithic in the Middle Stone Age of South Africa (Beamont, 1973; Wendt, 1974). Once again, it seems that the Franco-Cantabrian phenomenon was a historical, cultural development, occurring within a particular and unique regional context. It was not related to a biological, evolutionary, or speciation event. Despite a voluminous literature implying that it was representative of the beginnings of art, this regional development was not a universal measure of the evolved H. sapiens symboling capacity, but a measure only of a certain range of that capacity expressed and developed under certain historical, demographic, and ecological conditions (Marshack, 1988~). The problem of symbolic origins is, in fact, quite complex and is not constrained to a single hominid group, a single form of expression, or a single time or place.

In the 1930s a set of small mammoth ivory animal carvings (mammoth, horse, bison, lion, bear, reindeer) was excavated a t the cave shelter of Vogelherd in the Lonetal valley of Germany (Fig. 1). The carvings, c.32,OOO-30,000 BP, were some 2,000-3,000 years earlier than the crude animal outlines of Leroi-Gourhan’s Style I in the Franco-Cantabrian area, yet the carvings are neither primitive nor crude, but are surprisingly sophisticated. Instead of representing the crude beginnings of animal imagery, they seemed to be the end-product of a long development. Their complexity and sophistication, however, goes beyond surface aspects of carving technique, aesthetics, and style.

Microscopic analysis of the horse indicated that eye, ear, nose, mouth, and mane showed the polish and wear of long-term handling and use (Marshack, 1972a, 1975,198413). An engraved angle in the shoulder indicated that a t one point in its use the horse had had a ritual or symbolic “killing.” A fainter, almost invisible second dart high on the back, indicated that the animal had never “died” despite that first “killing” but had had a second symbolic “killing.” It was clear that the carved horse was a symbol that could be used over time in diverse ways, and among these was the symbolic “killing” of the image at a proper ritual moment. The


Fig. 1. Carved horse of mammoth ivory (4.8 cm). Vogelherd, (Lonetal), Germany. Aurignacian period, c. 32,000 BP The horse has two incised “darts” or angles on its left side indicating symbolic use of the image.

Vogelherd bison and bear were similarly “killed.” The lion (Fig. 2) was even more interesting since horse, bison, and bear were items of Paleolithic diet. Lions, however, were probably never hunted as food. Neverthless both faces of the lion were gouged with deep sets of marks indicating that it too had had a ritual, symbolic “killing.” The darts and gouges on these early Aurignacian animals are similar to those found more than 15,000 years later on the bodies of horse, bison, and bear images in the Franco-Cantabrian caves (Lascaux, Niaux, Montespan, Trois Freres, etc.) as well as in homesite art, where for almost 1 century these “killed” images were considered to be diagnostic of Magdalenian art. There was a persistent debate as to whether such marks of killing represented “hunting magic.” Leroi-Gourhan argued against this theory, asserted that there were too few such images to sustain a widespread practice of hunting magic, and claimed that the wounds and darts represented sexual symbols (Leroi-Gourhan, 1965). These images of symbolic killing go back at least to the Aurignacian and appear on both the Vogelherd horse and bison (Marshack, 1984b, 1987a), species that Leroi-Gourhan had claimed were oppositional “male” and “female” symbols.

In the 1970s, a few kilometers from Vogelherd and in the same Lonetal valley, a fragmented Aurignacian mammoth ivory human figure was found in the cave shelter of Hohlenstein-Stadel. Crude anthropomorphic figures are well known in the Upper Paleolithic. A ritually overmarked anthropomorphic, probably female, figure had even been found at Vogelherd (Marshack, 1972a, l976,1984b), and so not much attention was paid to the carving. A few years ago, however, a fragment of the face was recovered in the cave and the reconstruction revealed a powerful lion-headed figure (Fig. 3) that looked like one of the lion-headed gods of the Egyptian dynasties [Seewald, 19831. The image, however, is indigenous and more than 30,000 years old. Whether the carving represents the image of a man wearing a lion mask, perhaps in a ritual, or the “spirit” of a lion in anthropomorphic guise, we cannot tell. It is clear that in the Lonetal valley during the Aurignacian the lion was not an image of “food” but a mythologized figure, perhaps representing feline power. Since the Hohlenstein figure comes from the same valley, culture, and period as the carved animals from Vogelherd, it is probable that the ritual killing of the Vogelherd lion was symbolically related to this lion-headed anthropomorph. What the relationship was between the symbolic killing of a lion and the masked figure, we do not know. The “killing” may have represented the repetition of a myth, a sacrifice, or an aspect of shamanistic practice. It is clear, however, that we


Fig. 2. Carved lion of mammoth ivory (6.9 cm). Vogelherd (Lonetal), Germany. Aurignacian period, c. 32,000 BP Deep gouges on both sides of the lion indicate symbolic use of the image.

are far from traditional suppositions of an early and crude beginning for Upper Paleolithic art, whether as derived from supposed random scribblings (Breuil et al., 1915) or from Leroi-Gourhan’s crude Style I. The lion-headed anthropomorph may be, in fact, symbolically and in context, one of the most complex images of the European Upper Paleolithic. Like the Vogelherd carvings it seems to represent the end-product of a long development; yet it comes from the early Aurignacian, and there is nothing approaching this level of symbolic complexity and sophistication during this period either in the the Near East or Africa. Where, then, did these extraordinary Aurignacian images and traditions come from? Do they derive sim- ply from the evolved and late cognitive and symboling capacities found generally among anatomically modern humans? Are they the product of a “sudden” development in social and cultural complexity, occurring without prior preparation, as tends to be suggested by contemporary information processing theory?

de Lumley and de Lumley (1972) published a report on the Mousterian site of Hortus (Valflaunes) in the south of France. The articulated bones of the left paw and tail of a leopard (Fig. 4) were found in a late upper level, and the de Lumleys suggested that they probably represented the remnants of the full hide of a leopard worn as a costume. The ethnographic literature documents widespread traditions for wearing the hide or parts of spiritually powerful animals, either in ritual, by a shaman, or by a hunter as a sign of his prowess in killing the animal. Animal parts and skins continued to play a role even in the late Magdalenian, not only in the ritual costumes of “sorcerers” (cf. Trois Freres) but as symbols, pendants and amulets representing a horse or bison hoof, a fish tail, a cervid eye, a bison horn, the jaw or skull of a horse, etc. We are faced, therefore, with a profound theoretical problem.

The Aurignacian introduced a new technology and a greater use of bone. Could the early Aurignacian carvings therefore represent not the origins and beginnings of animal art, but the use of a developing technology and the abundantly available bone materials to carve ritual, symbolic images that had been earlier represented by animal skins and animal parts? If so, we would have a qualitative, cultural, historical shift rather than a major revolutionary change. For almost 1 century the “origins” of art had been theorized as a unique and sudden innovation instituted by anatomically modern man. The accumulating data have begun to suggest that there may have been a prior incipience and preparation for the Aurignacian use of animal imagery.

It has long been suggested, as well, that the Aurignacian beads represent the beginnings of “personal decoration” and “self-awareness” (White, 1982). If animal


Fig. 3. Asselfingen), 35-40 km from Vogelherd. Aurignacian period, c . 32,000 BP.

Lion-headed anthropomorphic figure of mammoth ivory (28.1 cm). Hohlenstein-Stadel (near

skins, however, had been used in the Mousterian to mark and differentiate individuals either in terms of status and rank or their role in a ritual moment, then clearly “personal decoration” and differentiated “self-awareness” were present before the Upper Paleolithic. There are a number of indications that this may have been so.

Early in the century Henri Martin (1907-1910) published the description and photographs of two beads (Fig. 5A,B) ostensibly from a late Mousterian level a t La Quina, a fox canine and a cervid phalange. The phalange had a hole that had been bored through on both sides, while the canine had apparently cracked while it was being bored and was discarded. For the rest of the century, the beads were largely forgotten. The early excavations were not as careful as present day excavations, and the provenience of the beads could not be certain. But of greater importance, it was difficult early in the century to believe that the Neandertals were capable of working bone or of making beads or items of personal decoration.

This belief was categorically asserted when Leroi-Gourhan and Leroi-Gourhan (1965) found a set of beads (Fig. 6A-D) in Chatelperronian levels at Arcy-sur-Cure and stated that they were the earliest examples of beads and symbolic production


Fig. 4. The paw and tail bones of a leopard from a late Mousterian level (11 C) at Hortus (Valflaunes), France. (After de Lumley and de Lumley, 1972.)

known and were products of the newly intrusive Cro-Magnons. They were not the earliest beads. Janusz Kozlowski has since found a bead of this type in a “proto- Aurignacian” level at Bacho Kiro, Bulgaria, dated at c. 40,000-42,000 BP., thousands of years before the Chatelperronian of Arcy-sur-Cure. Bacho Kiro is on a valley route that leads from the Near East to south central Europe, yet no beads of this type are known from the Near East in this period (Belfer-Cohen, 1988), or in the Near East for tens of thousands of years following. There is, however, as we shall see, comparable earlier bone work within Europe.

A decade ago a Neanderthal skull was found in a Chatelperronian level at Saint Cesaire (Leveque and Vandermeersch, 1980), and it became possible that the Arcy beads were made by the late NeanderthalstBut see Harrold, 1986). There were other suggestions that this was possible. FranCois Bordes had earlierexcavated a fragment of bone with a large carved hole (Fig. 7) from a Mousterian level at Pech de 1’Aze (Bordes, 1969). He referred to it as the fragment of a crude pendant. Exactly this type of fragmented bone pendant (Fig. 8) with a large carved hole was found by the Leroi-Gourhans in a Chatelperronian level a t Arcy-sur-Cure, and a similar pendant with a large carved hole appears in an Aurignacian level at the same site. These artifacts, then, compound the theoretical problem. I touch on the problem, not in terms of these rare artifacts, but in terms of the more general, ephemeral “hole.”

The “hole,” like the bone industry itself, became a major practical and conceptual tool of the developing Upper Paleolithic cultures. It is the basis, for instance, of the reindeer antler biiton de commandement, of beads, bracelets, rings, head- bands, buttons, and the needle. It is an aspect of the hooked spear-thrower and the spear it grips. The hole, however, was a varied and useful conceptual tool in Europe long before the Upper Paleolithic. At Combe Grenal Bordes uncovered the posthole


Fig. 5. A,B. A cervid phalange with a hole bored through from both sides (5 cm) and a fox canine (3.3 cm) that apparently cracked as it was being bored. La Quina, possibly Mousterian. (Photos after Martin 1907-1910.)

of a pole that had apparently supported a temporary seasonal Mousterian tent or lean-to. He made a cast of the hole which indicated that the pole had been driven into the ground until it met a rock, when it splayed. The inferential complexity of the finding lay not merely in the presence of the hole. A pole, of the right wood and thickness, had to be prepared in advance, had to be shaved to a point by use of a series of stone tools or edges. The pole was, therefore, a secondary tool or product of the primary lithic industry, and it was intended to support a structure, which was a tertiary product. If the covering of the shelter was made of skin, we had still another material, which had to be prepared and cut by other sets of tools, and the skins may then have been bound by thongs passing through prepared holes made by awls or borers. Within such sequences of complex planned cultural activity, the hole would have begun to play an increasingly important role. Bordes (1972) has noted the presence of awls in the Mousterian of Pech de l’Az6 I1 (Fig. 9) and Combe Grenal. The tools were apparently used for boring holes.

Bosinski (1985) reports that resin for hafting stone points into wooden handles was found in Mousterian levels at both Konigsaue in Germany (Mania and Toepfer, 1973) and at Bocksteinschmiede in the Lonetal valley, not far from Vo- gelherd. At Konigsaue the resin still retained the print of a stone point. More recently Anderson-Gerfaud (1987) reported on microwear studies of Mousterian flint tools from southwestern France that provided evidence that they had been


Marshackl EVOLUTION OF HUMAN CAPACITY: MOUSTERIAN 11

Fig. 7. Fragment of bone with large carved hole, apparently intended to make a “pendant” (13). Pech de l’Az6, late Mousterian. (After Bordes, 1969.)

Fig. 8. 33,7000 B.P., apparently part of a pendant.

Fragment of bone with large carved hole (3 cm), Grotte du Renne, Arcy-sur-Cure (Level X), c.

hafted, while Shea (1987) reports on microwear studies of Mousterian tools from the Levant that also indicate hafting. Hafting requires the preparation of a handle by use of a stone tool, in order to make a secondary tool that will grip a primary tool, a stone point; it may then require resin or thongs for binding; and this compound tool would then be used for still other purposes, perhaps to cut secondary materials such as wood or hides. Hafting, of course, is another instance of the concept of the hole in complex, practical use. There is the still tentative suggestion that carved and shaped elephant ivory bone points were hafted during the

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Fig. 6. A-D. Beads of different types and materials from a Chatelperronian level (Level X) at the Grotte du Renne, Arcy-sur-Cure, c. 33,700 BP A: Bovid incisor with incised groove at top for hanging. B: Fossil shell with incised groove at top for hanging. C: Fossil crinoid with hole bored through the center. D. A canine with a hole bored through the top. (Photo after A. Leroi-Gourhan.)


Fig. 9. Small flint borer (3.2 cm) from a late Mousterian level at Pech de 1’Aze. (After Bordes, 1972.)

Acheulian in Ambrona and Torralba in Spain, 500,000 years ago (Howell and Freeman, 1982).

In the case of beads, which are “non-utilitarian” and symbolic, one had to pre- pare, in addition to the hole, a string of hide, hair or gut, so the bead could be worn. All uses of the hole, therefore (whether in stringing beads, see Fig. 10, or hafting points, both of which occur a t Bocksteinschmiede), document the presence of mixed technologies and variable sequences of planned activity. We get our first evidence for a European use of the hole in the Acheulian. At the Mediterranean seaside site of Terra Amata, c. 300,000-400,000 BP, de Lumley (1966) excavated a temporary, seasonal spring-summer shelter that had a central posthole, apparently intended to support a structure of branches or wattle. The posthole, as a t Pech de l’Aze, suggested complex sequences of planned activity. It implied an acquisition of different types of wood from the surrounding woodland: for the post, for the walls of the structure, and for the fires that were made in the shelter. Ordinary spring and summer wood will not burn easily or without smoke, and so it is possible that the dry remnants of the prior year’s structure may have been used as kindling for the fires of the following season.

Also found in the shelter a t Terra Amata was a set of ochre crayons of different hue. They clearly came from other points in the territory and not the surrounding sandy beach or nearby woodland, and they may thus have been carried in a pouch (a container and therefore a type of “hole”) from some other location with the intention of later, proper use. It is possible the colors or hues were themselves a product of firing. The pre-Mousterian structure at Terra Amata, therefore, suggests planned activity, practical and symbolic, the presence of some sort of cognitive map and model of the functional, cultural territory that was structured in time and space, the use of diverse materials and technologies, and use of the “hole” and perhaps the container. These were all incipient and preparatory to comparable activities of the more evolved hominids, the Neanderthals, that followed.

Approximately 100,000 years later, at the late central European Acheulian site of BeCov in Czechoslovakia, c. 250,000 BP, Fridrich (1976; Marshack, 1981) found an abraded quartzite rubbing stone and a striated piece of ochre. Dispersed on the floor around these objects was a huge amount of red ochre powder. Great quantities had apparently been made, and it would probably have had to be retained in some sort of container or bowl. We do not know whether the color was used for personal decoration or for some other purpose, but the use of red ochre increases in the Mousterian, increases still further in the Chatelperronian, and becomes common in the Upper Paleolithic. Here I note only that the use of color as a form of “personal decoration” is human and almost universal and that a use of red coloring material is documented, for instance, for the Middle Stone Age in South Africa where specularite, a form of hematite, was obtained by mining (Boshier and Beau- mont, 1972). The material was still used for body painting in historic times. “Per- sonal decoration” is therefore suggested by the presence of these coloring materials, long before the presence of manufactured beads.


A B

Fig. 10. A,B. A wolf footbone (metapodium) and a wolf tail vertebra with holes bored through from both sides (1:l). Bocksteinschmiede, Germany, Micoquian period, c. 110,000 B.P. (Drawing after Wetzel in Wetzel and Bosinski, 1969; Bosinski, 1985.)

I return to the problem of the “hole” and its relation to beads. At the Micoquian site of Bocksteinschmiede in Germany, c. 110,000 BP, near the beginning of the Mousterian, the archaeologist Wetzel discovered two beads or pendants (Fig. 10A,B) made of animal bone, a wolf foot bone (metapodium), and a wolf-tail vertebra, each with a hole bored through at the top (Wetzel and Bosinski, 1969; Marshack 198713, 1988a,e). The holes were bored through from both sides, to form funnel-like concavities on each face. These are completely unlike the natural holes made by deterioration, by pressure breakage from canines, or like the holes with parallel sides made by worms or roots. The mode of boring, in fact, is similar to that found on the La Quina beads, the Chatelperronian animal tooth beads, and the proto-Aurignacian bead from Bacho Kiro, all more than 50,000 years later. A test was conducted using a Bocksteinschmiede type of hand axe to bore a hole on a small canid tail vertebra (2.5 cm), to see if a tool of the period could make such a small concave hole. Precisely similar funnel-like holes were bored into both sides a t the first try. It took less than 1 minute to bore the two holes with a generalized hand axe.

We are therefore faced with still another theoretical problem. None of the instances of production, problem-solving, or symbolic manufacture so far mentioned represent major widespread cultural traditions in the archaeological record. Each is a rare or unique instance and is, therefore, statistically “insignificant.” Yet each documents a certain level of variable, cognitive capacity and, apparently, a cultural, contextual use of that capacity.

From roughly the same period as the Bocksteinschmiede beads in Germany, but from the early Mousterian site of Tata in Hungary, c. 100,000 BP according to the U/T dating of Schwarcz (1982), there comes the beautifully shaped plaque carved from a single section or lamelle of a compound mammoth molar (Bordes, 1968; Marshack, 1976). The hard enamel or dentine surface of the main face was covered with red ochre; the softer rear had been beveled back so that it would not break in handling. The edge is highly polished from long-term handling, while the tool


marks of carving or scraping can be detected under the microscope along the beveled edge at the rear. The Tata plaque again raises questions concerning the cognitive capacities involved in the manufacture and use of an idiosyncratic artifact. Not only was a rare and exotic resource used to make this non-utilitarian object, but a complex series of evaluations, skills, and decisions were involved in acquiring the material and in the manufacture and use of the object. A primary set of stone tools had been used to carve a secondary object of “bone,” which was then covered by color, a tertiary product. There was intent in the manufacture, since it was intended to be used at the right time and for the proper purpose. The polish along the edges evidences long-term use. Planning was therefore involved at many levels in the manufacture and use of this symbolic artifact. Since it has no hole it was not worn and was therefore probably carried about in a pocket or pouch for use at the proper time; if so, then the ephemeral concept of the “hole” was present, even if indirectly, as an aspect of its use and retention. Curation was clearly involved in its retention and use.

I have for almost two decades stressed that all symbol systems are “time-fac- tored,” that is, they are always used at the proper place and time within the cultural continuum and they always mark or refer to concepts that persist and are maintained or repeated in time. This held for the Vogelherd and Hohlenstein ivory carvings that were retained and periodically used, for the early beads and pendants that marked persons for the duration of a cultural period, for animal skins that did the same, and for the Tata plaque. It holds as well for many of the signs and symbols that were accumulated in the Upper Paleolithic caves and that were themselves periodically used, renewed, or changed (Marshack, 1988d). In this sense, the Tata plaque, despite its seeming simplicity and non-representational form, was, as a symbolic artifact of long-term use, probably incipient to later Upper Paleolithic amulets, representational images, and symbol systems. We have a continuing suggestion in these early modes that art and image begin, not with accidental, random scribbles, or crude efforts at a representational or aesthetic image, but with the manufacture and use of a range of culturally relevant images, whether these were simple and crude, as they may seem to us, or not. The plaque raises still other questions.

Despite traditional interpretations, it would seem that the “explosive” use of bone for practical and symbolic purposes in the Upper Paleolithic was not necessarily an indication of higher capacity but was, once again, an example of regional, historical, cultural development. The Tata plaque and the Bocksteinschmiede beads provide evidence that the capacity for skilled bone work of high quality was present before the Upper Paleolithic, although it was not used in widely dissemi- nated and well-developed cultural traditions. The difference between capacity and diachronic cultural development has not often been addressed in comparisons of the late Paleolithic cultures, although recognition of the difference between capacity and culture, and cultural stage, is a fundamental assumption in the study of historic human societies. I touch again on the problem by reference to rare instances from the early European archaeological record.

At the German Mousterian site of Rhede (Westfalen) a piece of mammoth bone was flaked (Fig. 11) to make a typical hand axe (Tromnau, 1983; Bosinski, 1985). The style was clearly derived from the stone tool technology, but it also required a knowledge of the inherent characteristic of bone to flake under pressure. Since it is a unique and idiosyncratic example of careful bone work, it may have been made at a time and place at which adequate stone resources were absent. If so, it would represent an instance of successful ad hoc problem-solving, and would be another indication of a potentially variable human capacity operating within a cultural mode, rather than be indicative of a presumed lack of capacity in working bone. We have other such instances. From the German Mousterian we have rare instances of carved and shaped bone points (Fig. 12A-D, and E). They occur in an early Mousterian level at Salzgitter-Lebenstedt (Tode, 1982), and in late Mousterian levels at Grossen Grotte near Blaubeuren (Wagner, 1983) as well as at Vogelherd,


Fig. 11. Germany, the late Mousterian. (After Tromnau, 1983; Bosinski, 1985.)

Pressure flaked hand-axe (2:3) made of elephant bone. From the site of Rhede (Westfallen),

level VI, (Albrecht et al., 19721, the site that gave us the early Aurignacian carved animal figures made of ivory. Since these bone points do not represent a widespread Mousterian tradition they may again represent ad hoc problem-solving at certain points in cultural time and space. Since stone points were hafted to wooden handles or inset into shafts and spears during the Mousterian, the hafting or insetting of bone points into wooden shafts would not have required major innovation, merely a contextual opportunity. It should be noted that Howell and Free- man (1982) report the far earlier intentional shaping of elephant ivory points in the Acheulian and state “that it is probable that they were employed for diverse functions. Many were fashioned in a manner that can only be interpreted as fa- cilitating hafting . . .” (1982:12).

The hafting of bone points to wooden shafts is, of course, diagnostic of the later Aurignacian but usually appears in a stylistically reverse manner. The Aurigna- cian shaft is often itself inset into a split-base bone point and may then have been bound. The Mousterian broad base and long bone points would probably have been inset into the hole at the end of a thick wooden shaft, if the points were to be used as part of a spear. This is the kind of hole later used by the Magdalenian for hooking a spear-thrower. Both Mousterian and Aurignacian broad-base points occur at Vogelherd, which, in the Aurignacian, also provides the later split-base point. There is no great conceptual leap or major invention required to go from one to the other if hafting was an ancient tradition. A change in technology and culture, rather than a change in capacity, would suffice. There is, then, once again, a suggestion (as there is also in the influence of Mousterian lithic technology on the early Upper Paleolithic lithic industries) of prior historical, cultural incipience and preparation for the Upper Paleolithic uses of bone. At the site of Vindija, Yugo- slavia, a split-base point was found in a level containing hominids who could not with much certainty be assigned either to the Neanderthals or anatomically modern humans: “though seemingly closer to the Neanderthal condition they could

YEARBOOK OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY [Vol. 32, 1989 16

A B

h

Fig. 12. A-E. Bone points from the Mousterian and early Aurignacian in Germany: A,B Pointed bone shafts (50 cm and 37.5 cm) of mammoth ribs, early Middle Paleolithic, Lebenstedt-Salzgitter, Germany. C: Shaped broad-base bone point (1:l) from the late Middle Paleolithic of Grossen Grotte, Germany. D: Shaped broad-base bone point from a late Middle Paleolithic level (VI) at the site of Vogelherd, Germany. E: Split-base point from an early Aurignacian level (V) a t Vogelherd, Germany. (After Tode, 1982; Wagner, 1983; Albrecht et al., 1972.)

be accommodated easily in an early Upper Paleolithic population" (Malez et al.,

These statistically insignificant examples from the earlier Paleolithic record are crucial for an understanding of the evolution of the potentially variable human capacity for problem-solving and symboling. In the late Acheulian of Europe, for instance, in addition to the use of wood in the habitation structures of Terra Amata and Lazeret, we get other instances for a use of wood that are clearly incipient to the Mousterian use of bone. From the late Acheulian site of Clacton-on-Sea, in England, comes a beautifully shaped spear point of yew wood, and from the late Acheulian at Lehringen, in Germany (Jacob-Friesen, 1956), comes a fragmented spear of yew wood, 2.4 meters long, with a fire-hardened point that was found between the ribs of an elephant skeleton. The capacity for carving evidenced in these wooden spears is not much different than the capacity for carving and shaping exhibited in the Mousterian bone points. Yew is a particularly strong and resilient hard wood, and of all the wood available in that mild, interglacial woodland period, it was probably one of the best suited for making a spear. In fact, among the materials available at that time it was probably superior to bone because of its tensile strength and its length, obviating the need for hafting. Fire-

1980:365-366).


hardening the point would also have prevented the loss of an attached stone or bone point a t the time of impact. Gamble (1986) has suggested such Acheulian spears may have been used as snow probes for detecting frozen carcasses. A snow probe, however, would not require a fire-hardened point, i.e., a point intended to penetrate a thick hide. With these examples we seem to have a suggestion that the Aurignacian split-base bone point may have been devised at a time when hard woods such as yew were not a readily available resource, but when antler and bone were abundant and perhaps more easily obtained in certain areas than flint. The “invention” of the Aurignacian split-bone point may therefore have represented contextual problem-solving under particular conditions, one more instance of incremental technological innovation rather than a sudden leap in genetic species- specific capacity.

From the point of view of the cognitive capacities available in the Acheulian, the wooden spears provide an interesting example of the complexity involved in such problem-solving. A set of primary stone tools was used to chop, cut, carve, and scrape a secondary tool made of wood. The wood chosen was among the best available in that period and ecology. Yew, in fact, is still a favorite wood of carvers and furniture makers. This secondary product was then hardened in a fire, representing still another technology and a tertiary process that altered the character and nature of the material. Fire itself therefore represented a potentially variable technology in the Acheulian, since it was useful for warmth, cooking, and the alteration of a range of materials. As noted above, it is possible that the mineral hues found at Terra Amata were produced by firing. The archaeological record suggests that fire may have appeared in these northern latitudes long before its appearance in Africa. Once introduced, it became not merely a means of adaptation to changes in climate and temperature but an increasingly useful and potentially variable technology at different point is the culture. It became, like the hole, a potentially variable technology.

At the Gravettian site of Dolni Vestonice in Czechoslovakia, c. 28,000 BP, for instance, clay figurines were fired in an oven, tens of thousand of years before the neolithic “invention” of fired ceramics. The Dolni Vestonice fired images do not, again, represent a statistically significant widespread cultural tradition, but they do represent, once again, an idiosyncratic regional instance of problem-solving and the use of a readily available local raw material. In fact, if images of clay had been made in that region before the discovery of fire-hardening, as unfired clay images have been made in many later cultures, they would have represented a preparatory tradition to the fired images. Unfortunately, unlike the fire-hardened images that have been retained, they would be long gone. So, too, would any images carved of soft wood, such as those made in historic times by peoples in different parts of the world. I stress the Dolni Vestonice example because the use of fire to harden clay at one site in the Upper Paleolithic, in a context where regional clays were available in the riverine valley below the loess hillsides, represents one more instance of the evolved and potentially variable hominid capacity for the evaluation and use of diverse materials and processes. In the Dordogne region of France, a different local material, the easily worked limestone of the regional hills and shelters, was used for both practical and symbolic purposes. This not only represented a comparable form of problem-solving with locally available materials, but represented the earliest instance of such a diverse use of locally available stone. During the Aurignacian, in the Dordogne region around Les Eyzies, for instance, large and small holes (“anneaus”) were carved into the soft limestone walls and ceilings of the shelters, and on limestone blocks on the floor, in order to anchor tents and structures or to hang materials (Delluc and Delluc, 1981; Marshack, 1988b,e). This available and relatively soft limestone was also used as a material for image making and periodic, symbolic, ritual marking.

I come to another aspect of the theoretical problem posed by these accumulating data. If the Neanderthals represented an evolutionary and progressive advance in hominid capacity, derived from an already highly evolved H. erectus base, and if


the Mousterian culture was derived and advanced from the Acheulian culture, we are faced with the necessity of characterizing and defining the nature and range of the suite of evolving and developing “potentially variable human capacities” (Mar- shack, 1985). If, as suggested in some current theoretical models, other groups of anatomically modern humans evolved in geographical areas distant from the Eur- asian territory of the Neanderthals, but derived from a comparable stage or range of late H. erectus capacity, how do we characterize the evolutionary, biological, and neurological differences, and what selective forces or conditions instigated or screened for those differences? It is perhaps significant that in the discussion of capacity being presented in this paper, morphological and genetic differences and distances have not been stressed. There was an assumption by the author that the Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans were each end-products of the same 2 to 3 million year or more trajectory of hominid evolution, and that this evolution involved selection for a certain range and class of “potentially variable capacities.” These included essentially vision-oriented, neurologically mediated, two-handed problem-solving and conceptualizing, categorizing, and abstracting capacities.

Holloway (1983:220) stated that “no significant convolutional details, or shape patterns differ between ourselves and Neanderthals.” Yet Coppens (1981) has indicated that there are, in fact, major differences in brain vascular patterns and therefore brain blood flow between the Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans. Whether this represents a difference in function, either genetic or ontogenetic and experiential, perhaps owing to activity specialization, is not known. The same brain structures, differentially activated and matured because of a specialized way of life, may have resulted in changes in ontogeny or in selection for genetic differences in blood and hormonal distribution. In any case, the archaeological evidence indicates that the evolved capacities were comparable, if not fully “equal.”

I now touch on another aspect of Mousterian capacity and culture.

MOUSTERIAN BURIALS

Of the Mousterian symbol systems occasionally discussed in comparisons of Mousterian/Upper Paleolithic culture, none has had a longer or more intense scru- tiny than Neanderthal burial and treatment of the dead. It was for long asssumed that the practice represented the first glimmerings of an awareness of death and an afterlife. In a number of studies, the lack of personal adornment and the comparative lack of other grave goods in Mousterian burials have been cited to argue for an absence of social complexity, status, rank and, by implication, of symbolic capacity and even language (S. Binford, 1968; Harrold, 1980). Chase and Dibble (1987) avoid the problem by stating that they are more interested in evidence for cultural adaptation than capacity:

We must emphasize that we are concerned here with the nature of Middle Pa- leolithic adaptation, not with inherent but unexpressed potentialities and capacities (see Marshack, 1985, C&D) . . . It is highly probable that Middle Paleolithic hominids had some capacity for symbolism. What is not apparent is that symbolism played a significant role in their adaptation . . . For example, the ground bone point from Klasies River mouth indicates a capacity for high quality bone working at this time. But its uniqueness indicates that this potentiality was rarely fulfilled and was thus of little practical significance in Middle Paleolithic technology . . . By the same token there may have been isolated and unique occurrences of symbolic behavior during the Middle Paleolithic. While such finds are important for dem- onstrating the capacity [my italics] for this behavior, the archaeological record as a whole indicates that it was not an integral part of adaptation during this time (1987:284-285).

I note that it is, nevertheless, from this capacity and potentiality that culture


develops, that biological selection occurs, and that all incipient and preparatory innovations derive. The archaeological record itself can be misleading. Soffer (19851, for instance, notes that on the Russian plain the early Upper Paleolithic burials at Kostenki and Sungir are rich in grave goods including personal deco- rations, but that the later Upper Paleolithic burials of the region lack such items. The later cultures apparently played out their symbolic behaviors in other modes (Marshack, 1979,1987a1, not in the burial of grave goods, The argument concerning the “poverty” of the Neanderthal burials was initiated when anatomically modern skeletons were discovered in the burial at Cro-Magnon in 1868, in conjunction with large numbers of shell beads, while comparable grave goods were not found in the Neanderthal burials that began to be discovered somewhat later, early in the 20th century. Upper Paleolithic burials continued to provided examples rich in personal decoration and other types of grave goods. But as noted earlier, in these Upper Paleolithic burials we are faced with the fact that a comparable complexity in burial behavior and grave goods does not appear during this period among other groups of anatomically modern humans in other areas. Chase and Dibble are constrained in large measure by their European MousteriadUpper Paleolithic comparison, and they perform statistical and logical rather than “cognitive” analyses of these regional materials.

Archeological discussions and debates, like discussions in other disciplines, have a historical bias, with changes periodically occurring in areas that are of contemporary concern. When Neanderthal capacity and behavior began to be discussed in mid-century, much was published about the “savage” Neanderthal custom of cannibalism (Blanc, 1961). This was apparently evidenced in the tool marks on the Neanderthal bones found at the burials at Krapina, Yugoslavia, and by the enlarged foramen magnum of the skull surrounded by stones found in the cave at Monte Circeo, Italy. Even the de Lumleys (1972) suggested the presence of Mous- terian cannibalism at Hortus.

The question of Neanderthal cannibalism has been recently reinvestigated by a reexamination of the bones. Trinkaus (1985) studied the broken human bones at Krapina and determined that they had not been broken in order to extract marrow, as had been believed, but had been crushed by the fall and pressure of overlying rock. Russell (1987) reexamined the cranial and post-cranial bones from Krapina and inferred that the tool marks were incised long after the flesh had decomposed, suggesting that the tool marks were the result of an effort to clean the bones of the remnants of adhering flesh. The cleaned bones were then apparently given a secondary burial (cf. Le Mort, 1988). However, T. White (personal communication) reports that a reexamination of these Krapina materials revealed that there was no evidence of later defleshing.

The secondary burial of defleshed, cleansed bones is known ethnographically among different cultures. It is often intended to remove the adhering evidence of life in order to finally free the “spirit.” The suggestion of secondary burial, therefore, raises an entirely different set of questions concerning Neanderthal capacity and culture than was implied in the earlier suggestions of cannibalism. A tradition of secondary burial requires a complex mythology and rationale and a sequence of actions that occur over a period of time. It involves long-range planning as well as symbolic or mythic explanation. It involves a host of concepts that are primarily of relevance to the living, including concepts concerned with the meaning of death, of flesh and bones, the cleanliness of bones, and of a presumed “life” after death. Like the earlier suggestion of cannibalism, the suggestion for secondary burial is not one that can be adequately addressed at this time. Cannibalism, for instance, has recently been verified for the European neolithic (Villa et al., 1986) without suggestions of evolutionary, cognitive, or cultural deficit or fundamental “savagery.”

The complex nature of death and killing in human-and particularly in the late Paleolithic cultures-has been inadequately explored. The variability in concepts concerning these categories is richly, almost profusely documented among the Upper Paleolithic, Franco-Cantabrian materials. As I have indicated, depictions of


the killing of an animal exist among the Upper Paleolithic mobiliary materials and cave images, beginning with the Aurignacian animals a t Vogelherd. But these represent only one among the many uses to which animal images were put. The animal, as a symbol, had, in fact, a wide range of meanings and uses. There is a tradition, for instance, for the renewal of animal images, including those that had already been symbolically “killed” by darts or spears (Marshack, 1972a,b, 1984b, 1988d). As noted above, the Vogelherd animal carvings were apparently used for a long time even though they were occasionally “killed” in ritual. The Hohlenstein lion-headed anthropomorph and Vogelherd lions suggests that such killings may have been an aspect of complex mythology and ritual. Animal images could also be associated with a host of signs and symbols, each of which had a different meaning and mode of use, but none of which was obviously related to “killing.”

Symbolic killing itself had diverse forms. The ritual killing of a food animal, which was not butchered for food, has been documented at the late Paleolithic reindeer-hunting site of Ahrensburg, Germany. A female reindeer had been thrown into a lake after a large stone was placed in the body cavity, as though an offering had been made for the fact that the herd and hunters had arrived safely at the summer feeding grounds (Marshack, 1972a). This ritual sacrifice of an animal without consumption recalls the earlier Neanderthal ritual of piled up, still articulated deer bones at Bar Ibrahim, Lebanon, reported by Solecki (1982). Among the Upper Paleolithic images of killed animals there are many that depict the seasonal and dimorphic sexual characteristics and behaviors of different species, suggesting the presence of symbolic and cognitive contents in such symbolic “killing” that go far beyond the mere act of a killing for food. In the Franco-Cantabrian caves there are also images of humans or anthropomorphs that have been “killed” by darts (Gourdan, Pech Merle) and in Lascaux there is the the image of a bird-headed man apparently killed by a disemboweled bison. Clearly, these images do not represent the actual killing of living beings, but rather diverse forms of symbolized killing. The anthropomorphs struck by darts could represent evil spirits or enemies killed by “magic,” while the bird-headed man may not have been killed by the bison but depict a sorcerer in trance, a narrative moment in an ancient myth, or an actual event being newly represented or mythologized in imagery. Symbolized killings of different kinds were therefore being depicted in the Upper Paleolithic, and the potential complexity of such imagery cannot be encompassed by any one theory. The early, original concept of “magic” is not so much wrong as it is inadequate in light of the complexity and variability of the data.

But the uses of death were complex in the Mousterian as well. There is a suggestion that the enlarged foramen magnum of the skull a t Monte Circeo may not indicate cannibalism, since the base of the skull contains soft material that can deteriorate more easily than other parts. Whether this explanation applies to the Monte Circeo skull or not, the skull and the circle of stones do seem to document the specialized ritual treatment of one individual, who may have been killed in any of a number of ways, in an accident, by a neighboring group, or in a sacrifice. The ultimate significance of the skull may reside in this evidence for the specialized ritual treatment given to a single individual. The possibility of such treatment without indication of “status” or “rank” occurs often among the Neanderthal materials. The most famous of the Neanderthal burials is that of the skeleton with an accidentally crushed skull found at the back of the Shanidar cave. Arl. Leroi- Gourhan (1968, 1975) examined samples of soil taken from the burial and determined that the body had been placed on a bed of pine boughs and then covered with flowers (see also Solecki 1971, 1975). I am struck as much by the bed of pine boughs as by the covering of flowers. Yet Chase and Dibble state the “there is evidence of considerable disturbance of the grave itself by rodents and it is perhaps possible that the pollens represent later intrusions into the sediments. Nonethe- less, this is an interesting, though isolated case” (1987275). I cannot see rodents bringing in quantities of conifer pollen. Besides, as I have indicated, the isolated and rare case may be as important for the study of hominid capacity as the sta-


tistically relevant. Dibble and Chase recognize this when referring to the unique evidence of the Shanidar 1 burial of a crippled adult:

A major feature that seems to have originated during the Middle Paleolithic, and one in which these hominids also differ from nonhuman primates [sic], is the degree to which they cared for one another. . . Wattests to mutual assistance and dependence that goes beyond group defense or the sporadic sharing of food evident among other primates (1987:283-284).

The Shanidar flowers do provide a clue to the season of burial, but the reason for the unique use of flowers and pine boughs remains unknown. Were they used because of the “ r a n k or position of the individual in the group? In this case we would have a marking of status by perishable materials. Or did the flowers have symbolic healing powers, as has been suggested by Arl. Leroi-Gourhan? We do not know. I have been informed that there is evidence that the Neanderthal body in the burial at Regerdou may have been placed on a bear skin. If so, we may have additional evidence not only of a use of a perishable material but the possible use of a symbolically relevant animal in the burial of a particular individual. I have already noted that animal skins can be highly symbolic. Whether these diverse data are eventually all accepted or not, it is the range and variability of Neander- thal burials and the evidence for variation in the participatory ritual behaviors of the living that may be of ultimate significance in the ongoing search for the range and complexity of the Neanderthal capacity for symboling. It is necessary here to note that the material indications of “status” and “rank” among the grave goods of later human burials, so often referred to in comparisons between the two sapient groups, represents a developmental, historical, and cultural phenomenon, rather than a measure of significant species differences in symboling capacity (Marshack, 1988e).

At La Chapelle-aux-Saints (Corrbze) the leg of a bison was found with a Nean- derthal skeleton, recalling the antler in the arms of the anatomically modern Qafzeh child. At Monte Circeo a ring of stones surrounded the Neanderthal skull. In a number of Neanderthal burials the skeletons were tightly flexed and sometimes bound, either to save space or to restrain the wandering “spirit” of the dead, a practice known among historic cultures. In some burials the skeletons were apparently aligned east to west as though in recognition of the rising and setting directions of the sun, a practice known historically. Stones were placed in some Near Eastern burials. Among Near Eastern peoples in historic times there is a practice of placing simple stones on a grave as an act of remembrance that will last longer than flowers. A more complex behavior of this type is apparently documented in the Mousterian of France.

At the rock shelter of La Ferrassie, the Dordogne, a Neanderthal child was buried in an area containing five other burials. The child was covered with a huge limestone block that had cupules or dots gouged into the surface. These cupules were largely incised in pairs but were placed in a seemingly random, non-decora- tive manner. These cupules have often been referred to as early examples of sign or symbol. They may, in fact, represent something entirely different, yet be equally important. In a number of publications I have indicated that a widespread tradition of ritual participatory marking was present in Upper Paleolithic homesites and caves. In the Dordogne, for instance, limestone blocks found on the ground in Aurignacian shelters have sequences of dots gouged into them, suggesting a form of ritual marking. In an Aurignacian level a t the above site of La Ferrassie, cupules or dots are gouged into limestone blocks, for the living, in one instance upon a block containing carved, schematic vulvas. In the early Aurignacian at Vogelherd, Germany, the lions are overmarked with gouged dots as though in acts of ritual, while a crudely carved “female” figurine from Vogelherd is heavily overmarked with gouged dots as though it too had been used in ritual (Marshack, 1972a, 198413, 1987a). Accumulations of dots appear in the Franco-Cantabrian


caves, where again they seem to be indicative of different forms of ritual participation. Since the dots are “images,” they have often been referred to as signs or symbols. If, however, at the burial of the Neanderthal child at La Ferrassie, each of the participants had gouged a set of marks on the stone, the act may have been intended as a gesture of participation, and the marks may have been intended to last as long as the burial itself. In this case, what we would have is not the invention of referential “sign” or “symbol,” but the evidence for symbolic, ritual, participatory behavior. With the La Ferrassie example, then, we are once again faced with the variability in Neanderthal symbolic behavior, despite the seeming simplicity and “archaic” nature of the evidence. Also at La Ferrassie, but in the burial of a Neanderthal adult, a bone was found incised with evenly spaced sets of parallel strokes, each set accumulated at a different angle (Peyrony, 1934; Mar- shack, 1972a, 1976). The marking is totally different from the irregular and random work marks often found on Paleolithic bone surfaces, but is similar to marked bones found in this same Franco-Cantabrian region during the Aurignacian. We cannot assume that meanings were similar across these time spans, but the capacity for creating different types of symbolic marking on both stone and bone (and with ochre perhaps on the body) was clearly present before the Aurignacian.

These data suggest that many of the practices and concepts found in Mousterian burials were in many ways comparable to those found later in the post-Mousterian human cultures. Although each instance of Neanderthal symbolic behavior is unique, they do, as a group, document a potential variable capacity that is clearly related to the range of symbolic capacity found among the anatomically modern “Cro-Magnons” who followed them. What remains interesting, and perhaps significant, is that the burial evidence is more complex and numerous among the Neanderthals than it is among evolving anatomically modern humans in other areas during the same period. We are, therefore, once again faced with the evolutionary problem raised earlier in this paper. It is possible that in the late post- erectus stages of hominization selection occurred for a differential increase in the potential capacities I have been discussing. Clearly aspects of these capacities were present among both groups, the Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans. Did evolutionary selection, if it favored anatomically modern humans, involve an increase in the capacity for the mapping and modeling of a territory and the construction of more complex cultural tapestries, sequences, and social relations in time and space? There is uncertain evidence from endocasts that there may have been a differential increase in certain cortical structures among anatomically modern humans, including a greater increase in the frontal and pre-frontal areas, which are involved in the complex evaluation of skills and behavior and planning. As indicated earlier, Coppens (1981) has indicated that there may also have been some differences in vascular structure and blood flow in the brains of the two groups. One must be careful, however, about inferring differences in specific capacities from neurological or anatomical structures. How much can one infer concerning differences in cognitive capacity, for instance, from Neanderthal robust- icity?

Directly and indirectly supporting a belief in major neurological difference, there have been suggestions that the Neanderthals were incapable of complex problem-solving, culture, cooperation, planning, or symbolic thought (S. Binford, 1968; L.R. Binford, 1983, 1985a,b; White, 1982, 1985, 1986). The accumulating data, however, necessitates a reevaluation of these opinions.

Since I began to raise questions such as those being presented in this paper, a number of researchers have indicated that the Neanderthals did in fact have conceptual models and maps as well as problem-solving capacities comparable to, if not equal to, those found among anatomically modern humans. Rigaud (1986) reported that as early as 1982 he had indicated that interassemblage variability in lithic industries is of the same order in the Mousterian and the early Upper Pa- leolithic and that the strategies involved in the acquisition of lithic raw materials in the territory were the same from the Riss to the recent Wurm and that one

Marshackl EVOLUTION OF HUMAN CAPACITY: MOUSTERIAN 23

cannot therefore claim any intensification of social and economic relations for the early Upper Paleolithic. Geneste (19861, in a study of the dispersed sources of flint used for tools in Mousterian and Upper Paleolithic sites of the Dordogne, confirmed that both groups had comparable conceptual models or maps of the resources in their territory, although they may have used these maps somewhat differently. As indicated earlier, Anderson-Gerfaud (19871, reporting on microwear studies of Mousterian tools from France (Pech de l’Aze, Corbiac, etc.) found that

by far the majority of the tools studied from each typological category have traces showing their use for various wood-working applications. Apparently they were used to shape wooden objects . . . Approximately 10% of our sample was used for working hide . . . Hafting was clearly demonstrated . . . Numerous experiments have shown (the) patterning and type of trace (found) is reproduced by using tools in a split haft, or with tools lashed to a haft . . .

Such hafting, of course, recalls the diagnostic mode of split-bone hafting in the following Aurignacian noted earlier. On the basis of microwear studies of Moust- erian tools in the Levant, Shea (1987) reports that

the same range of actions and worked materials were present at Kebara, the Neanderthal site, as at Qafzeh, the anatomically modern site. Actions were mainly cutting, scraping, while wood was the most common worked material . . . In all collections woodworking predominates, followed by hafting traces, bone-working, butchery and use as projectile points . . . In Northern Israel, the absence of even minor variations in the behavioral context for tool use challenges the notion that the Kebara and Qafzeh hominids constituted behaviorally different populations.

Chase (1987), in arguing against Binford‘s denigration of the Neanderthals, suggests that the Neanderthals a t Combe Grenal “while exploiting a range of resources, tended to go to a specific location in order to hunt a specific species, probably at a particular time of year . . . (and that) Combe Grenal served over a long period of time as a specific huntingtprocessing site that was part of a larger subsistence system which also included sites with other functions.” Rigaud (19871, in synthesizing the Dordogne data, states that there were no significant differences between Neanderthal and early Upper Paleolithic subsistence strategies in that area.

Jelinek et al. (1988) report that there is evidence for cooperative animal drives at the Mousterian type site of La Quina (Charente): “. . . the Neanderthals that made use of the site deliberately drove game over the cliff and butchered the animals thus killed or injured at the base of the cliff. This pattern would probably require a significant level of organization and a band larger than just a few nuclear families.” If the movements of the herbivore herds (bison, horse, and reindeer) were seasonal, the drives may have occurred as a seasonal aggregation activity among normally dispersed, smaller nuclear Neanderthal groups. Conkey (19801, for instance, has suggested that this was a typical Middle Magdalenian behavior in Cantabrian Spain. Gabori-Csank (1987) reports on the presence of a Neanderthal flint mine at Budapest-Farkasret, Hungary, that had been dug with reindeer antler picks. A similar Mousterian flint mine is known from Lowenburg in Swit- zerland. Such mining, by use of antler picks, is a reversal of the practice of using flint to acquire and work bone; antler was here used to excavate flint, and the flint was then used in butchering and to work wood, bone, and hides. These are cultural productive sequences requiring planning and conceptual modeling. The mining may have been a local adaptation to the availability of a single large regional source of flint. The flint mines would thus represent a variation on the cognitive maps of widely dispersed flint sources noted by Geneste for the Mousterian and Upper Paleolithic in the Dordogne. “Digging sticks” of bone go back at least to the late Acheulian. A mammoth rib digging stick, from the Acheulian, c. 250,000 BP,


was recently excavated at Vaufrey in the Dordogne. Whether it was used to dig for roots, to dig post holes for structures, or to extract flint, the concept of the “hole” and of tool-mediated extraction clearly antedates the Mousterian. It is likely that the flint at the mine at Budapest-Farkasrbt was dug by more than one person at certain times or seasons, and that cobbles or prepared cores were then transported and cached for use at other times and in other places (cf. Marks, 1986a,b). If so, this would suggest a level of cooperative group planning and activity for the acquisition and use of resources in time and space that only a few years ago would have been deemed impossible in the Mousterian. Such mines would seem to represent a more sophisticated mode of flint acquisition than one usually ascribes to the Mouste- rian, but Marks (1986a,b) reports on the complex seasonal mapping and modeling of flint and water resources in the Mousterian of the Central Negev, Israel, with a transport of flint in different stages of preparation dependent on the distance the materials had to be carried. Whether these cognitive maps in the Mousterian of the Negev were devised by Neanderthals or anatomically modern humans related to the Qafzeh skeletons, they represent a level of human capacity for the mapping and modeling of a functional territory in time and space that was clearly available to both groups.

There have been suggestions in recent years that Neanderthal fetal development and post-natal maturation progressed at different rates than among anatomically modern humans, implying major differences in cognitive development and, therefore, enculturation. A recent metric study of immature Neanderthal fossils by Minugh-Purvis (1988), however, indicates that “they matured slowly, a t a human rate, for the teeth mature and erupt following a schedule well within the modern human range. Moreover, the bones of the growing Neanderthal skull mineralized and matured in much the same order and at the same ages as in modern humans as well . . . If we look at Neanderthal skeletal as compared to dental maturation, we see that Neanderthals clearly grew at the modern human rate-which can only mean that they had a period of childhood dependency ostensibly the same as our own.” Presumably, therefore, they went through similar stages of cognitive development and maturation. A similar argument, indicating the fundamental similar- ity in the gestation and ontogeny of the Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans, has been made by Tillier (1988).

Bit by bit, the accumulating data seem to be suggesting that despite morphological and historical, cultural differences, the range of potential capacity for problem-solving and symboling among the two hominid groups was similar and comparable, if not precisely “equal.” Because of the wealth and diversity of the data from the Eurasian territory of the Neanderthals and the poverty of comparable data from this period from areas of supposed anatomically modern human origins and dispersal outside of Europe, there is a strong suggestion that late Neanderthal culture was incipient to, and preparatory to, many of the European Upper Paleo- lithic cultural traditions that followed. This, of course, once again poses a theoretical problem if one accepts the position that the Neanderthals were an aberrant and failed side branch of hominization, with Africa as the place of origin for anatomically modern humans with a significantly different capacity. If one accepts the model of African genetic origin advocated by Stringer and Andrews (1988) and others (Valladas et al., 1988), one is at once faced with the need for an adequate characterization of the process of hominization itself, of the level of hominization reached by H . erectus, the ancestor of both groups, and of the nature of the differential selection that would have produced two highly evolved groups of cultural hominids from different late and dispersed groups of H . erectus. The central question, i t would seem, becomes, not the geographical location of anatomically modern human origins, but the nature of the different selective processes that led contem- poraneously to anatomically modern humans in some areas and to the regional Eurasian Neanderthals. Can these processes be adequately or properly character- ized by morphological differences or similarities? Or by the statistical presence or absence of cultural products? Was cultural exchange possible between the two


groups at points and times of contact? Would cultural exchange have occurred in both directions? Was genetic exchange possible as well? Could either form of exchange, genetic or cultural, have occurred without some form of communication, even if at the level of a “lingua franca?’

The Neanderthal skull found in a Chatelperronian level a t Saint Cesaire and the symbolic artifacts found in a Chatelperronian level a t Arcy-sur-Cure take on added significance in the light of these questions, whether the symbolic artifacts at Arcy were made by anatomically modern humans or by Neanderthals.

I have in the last decade attempted to construct a model of hominization that accounts for the complexity and range of capacities evident among the Upper Paleolithic symbolic materials and the complex problem-solving and symboling capacities evident among the earlier Neanderthal materials. I briefly present an outline of that model.

THE PRIMATE BASE

In a number of recent papers (1984a, 1985, 1988b) I have discussed hominid evolution as a slow (although occasionally more rapid) mosaic process that involved selection for a unique set of cognitive, problem-solving capacities related to bipedalism and a developing two-handed, vison-oriented neurology.

Field observations of chimpanzees in the wild have shown that they use a range of materials and resources found within their territory and make a variety of tools to solve different types of problems. They acquire territorially and seasonally specialized tool-mediated strategies for the utilization of different resources. They strip twigs or stalks of their leaves to make probes for termite and ant fishing; they secure hammers of stone or wood of the proper weight or heft to break nuts of different size and hardness; they form sponges by chewing leaves that are then held in the hand to sop up water caught after the rains in tree notches. These are each seasonal, contextual skills that must be learned initially by observation and then by trial and error during maturation. They are cultural skills that are not practiced by all chimpanzee groups, while individuals within a group differ in the capacity or motivation for use of these skills. Chimpanzees also learn to make nests for the night in trees, and to wipe their bottoms with leaves. The range of skills learned and utilized by chimpanzees in the wild requires that they evaluate materials, processes and contexts, but always in terms of the neurological, handed, and conceptual capacities available to the species. Chimpanzees also opportunis- tically hunt a number of small mammals and occasionally have recourse to limited ad hoc group strategies organized for stalking an evasive prey. There are also organized efforts for territorial defense and aggression against conspecifics. Within these situations there is contextual evaluation and problem-solving at a social or group level. Together, these potential capacities form a unique behavioral set that is in large measure dependent on a use of the hands and mediation by the eyes.

Selection near the beginning of hominization would probably have occurred for an increase in the range of these capacities and behaviors and would have occurred from within that pool of genetic variability already extant in a primate population, possibly under local conditions of ecological, climatic, or population change or stress. Under normal conditions, individual variation in the capacity to fish for termites, to crack nuts successfully, to sponge water, to stalk small prey collec- tively, or to build a better nest would not produce an adaptive or reproductive advantage. Individual variation in the neurology of these capacities assumes, at the same time, a general morphological species uniformity, although individual variations in morphology would have existed as well. Significant differences in individual capacity could not, however, be determined by any of these measurable morphological differences. Those differences in capacity that would, under certain conditions, have begun to be selected for as adaptive, would probably have existed at the level of functional neurology rather than at the level of observable or measurable morphology. At the point that significant morphological change begins to appear in the paleontological record, directional changes in capacity and behavior


would already have begun to be established. Unfortunately, the archaeological, paleontological record begins only at this latter point.

We must add to the above set of capacities those potential capacities that are extant among the great apes but are never used in the wild.

Laboratory experiments to determine the capacity of the great apes for problem- solving, for “proto-language,” and for inter- and intra-specific communication have enormously broadened our knowledge of what I have termed the “potential variable capacity” (Marshack, 1984a, 19851, while documenting again the presence of wide individual variation in these capacities. Within the artificial culture and human context of the laboratory the great apes invent and learn a host of manipulative and conceptual problem-solving strategies that would never be attempted in the wild. The use of these capacities within a laboratory context does not, of course, affect the survival or reproductive success of the great apes being studied. But the presence of these “potential” capacities must be considered in any theory of hominization. In the wild the appearance of unusual circumstances or of new materials or resources will almost always result in individual or group adjustment to the changing context, often by devising innovative, vision-oriented strategies of handed manipulation, and at times of cooperative action such as group hunting strategies. The documented instances of such innovative behavior provide a great part of the continuous fascination one finds in the literature on great ape behavior. None of these cognitive, problem-solving capacities can be determined either from studies of great ape morphology or, significantly, from the paleontological or archaeological record. This is not the place to fully discuss the biological and evolutionary ramifications of what I have termed the “potential variable capacity” of the great apes (Marshack, 1984a, 1985,198813). I will, however, touch on a few aspects of the problem that may have relevance for the processes of hominization and for our discussion of the NeanderthallH. sapiens sapiens problem.

Primate capacities, while incipient, are still far from those present in the hominid or the human. These primate capacities are important, however, since they were both selected for and changed during hominization. Tool-mediated, problem- solving behaviors by chimpanzees in the wild or in the laboratory tend to be essentially one-handed, visually mediated actions in which the primary, or preferred hand, either right or left, performs the specifying act, while the secondary hand, when it is used, serves a gripping or orienting function. In making a fishing tool one hand holds the twig while the other strips the leaves (though stripping can be done by the mouth as well). The act of fishing, however, is always done by one hand, the preferred hand. The more complex a manipulative problem or sequence becomes, however, the greater apparently is the tendency for one hand to perform and learn the full sequence of specifying problem-solving actions, while the secondary hand increasingly serves the changing sequence of grasping and orienting functions. Success in such manipulative problem-solving is, of course, both made possible and constrained by great ape morphology and neurology as well as by the nature and scale of the phenomenological reality being addressed. A chimpanzee, for instance, could not use both hands equally and jointly to peel a banana. One hand must peel while the other grasps and orients the fruit. These separate actions of the two hands (and sometimes of the mouth) are largely mediated visually. Handleye coordination and visual evaluation of the ongoing processes of manipulation and production are, in fact, among the central and crucial aspects of great ape capacity. During hominization, the ability to visually mediate and evaluate the increasingly complex conjoint actions of the two hands, and the developing and changing contents and contexts of handed production, would have increased.

As suggested above, under conditions of increasing ecological difficulty o r complexity there would have been a tendency to select for an increasingly lateralized, two-handed neurology and capacity, with a necessary corollary increase in the capacity for visual evaluation of the materials and processes involved in actual or potential use of the hands. The mouth, while it is used as a grasping mechanism among chimpanzees (or for manipulative chewing, as in the making of a sponge


from leaves), would probably not have become increasingly functional during hominization. A related problem apparently exists in the Mousterian where, the evidence indicates, Neanderthal teeth were used for powerful gripping or chewing functions, without apparently affecting the vision-mediated, fully hominid, two- handed skills that had evolved and that probably accompanied most gripping actions by the teeth. The teeth, for instance, are used by Eskimos in one phase of the complex two-handed sequences involved in obtaining, preparing, and softening skins. The teeth also act as a gripping device in one phase of eating, during which a knife in the primary hand is used to slice pieces of meat held firmly by the teeth and the other hand. This is the final phase in a complex sequence of two-handed actions involved in the preparation of meat for consumption. The mouth is also used as grasping mechanism to hold a skein of fibers among peasants who spin yarn, but it is used here again merely as an adjunct to the highly skilled two- handed, vision-mediated actions involved in the process. I stress this corollary, non-primary use of the teeth and mouth among the great apes and humans, because there has been a tendency to take the evidence for the Neanderthal and even the H. erectus use of the teeth as a gripping device to be an indication of lesser skill in the manipulative use of the hands. Clearly, a use of the teeth for gripping in one aspect of manipulative problem-solving does not necessarily indicate a devaluation of handed skills in the culture or in the actions being performed. The problem of what the teeth were used for in the Mousterian period must therefore be separated from the central problem of the evolving two-handed capacity.

In a tentative model of hominid evolution (Marshack, 1984a, 1985,1988b) I have suggested that the shift to full bipedalism would not only have made possible development of the two-handed manipulative capacity and a broader conceptual capacity, but that selection for an increase in these capacities would probably have begun, from within the genetic variability extant in a population, long before there was any significant measurable enlargement or restructuring of the brain, and long before there were significant changes in skeletal morphology or the production of an archaeologically observable stone tool kit. Changes in neurotransmitter and hormone levels could have affected behavior including motivation, curiosity, creativity, and social interrelations. In an earlier discussions of hominization I indicated that the foot, for instance, underwent major morphological change, los- ing much of its manipulability and sensory acuity. The hands, however, underwent comparatively minor morphological change, i.e., the length of the thumb increased in relation to the fingers, etc. However, major neurological changes probably occurred in the capacity to use the hands. There should have been an increase not only in the capacity for two-handed production, with a greater degree of handleye acuity and coordination in small and large-scale handling, but a corollary increase in a broad range of cortical capacities for conceptualization, abstraction, and modeling and the motivation for such behavior.

One of the primary behaviors that would probably have begun to be selected for early in hominization, then, was an increase in the generalized, two-handed capacity for problem-solving and the vision-oriented conceptual capacity for evaluating and categorizing the functional world or reality in terms of that two-handed capacity. The set of neurological capacities involved would probably, in large degree, have developed in tandem. What would have begun to be created, as a result, was an increasingly open-ended (if still somewhat limited) hominoid adaptive realm. This developing, open and variable adaptive realm would have begun to be profoundly different from that found in any other species.

The model suggests that under certain conditions of periodic or long-term ecological change or difficulty, or of short-term stress, those hominoids most apt in two-handed problem-solving and the conceptual skills useful for exploiting a variable or dispersed set of resources would have had an adaptive advantage. They would have had this advantage with or without a use of tools, although the capacities involved would also have increased the potential for tool use.

At another level, chimpanzees use their hands affectively, i.e., socially and re-


lationally-in grooming, comforting, hugging, offering, witholding, and in a range of agonistic and aggressive displays and behaviors. Goodall has documented their use in murder and infanticide as well as in territorial aggression and defense. Chimpanzees also hurl objects at intruders and shake branches and trees in agonistic and enactive displays of emotion. There are limits, however, to such affective use of the hands by pongids. A chimpanzee mother may carry a dead infant about for a considerable period without available behavioral or cultural knowledge concerning what to do, either with her hands or by vocalization. A filmed scene depicting a dead chimpanzee being poked by a member of the group with what seems to have been both curiosity and fear suggests again the limits to handed response at this stage. Nevertheless, the primate hands were available to the hominids at diverse, developing levels of potential function, both as generalized problem-solvers and as increasingly capable tools of expression, communication, and social relation. In affective use of the hands, whether among the great apes or the hominids, neurological input must come from functionally different cortical and subcortical areas of the brain, with ultimate evaluation and mediation of any behavior being dependent again on the visual system. At a seemingly “simple,” later stage, we have evidence for the highly evolved, affective, non-linguistic use of the hands by the Neanderthals in the communal or familial ritual burial of a conspecific. As we have noted above, the complexities in such seemingly “simple” burials can be great. During hominization, then, the range of affective, expressive, social, and relational uses of the hands probably increased as brain and social complexity evolved. A use of the hands in gesture would have represented one aspect of this development. Gesture and vocalization would probably have begun to be used concurrently at this time to mark and differentiate those categories that were becoming increasingly relevant, that is those related to the resources, materials, processes and relations occurring in the territory and within the cultural, conceptual models and maps. Gestures and vocalizations would probably have been increasingly able to mark and refer to those changing intra-group relations and behaviors being played out in the new adaptive realms.

The evolutionary changes entrained by a developing two-handed bipedalism were, therefore, neither simple nor apparent in the paleontological, archaeological record. The complexity of this speciating, hominizing process would have occurred at different levels of function and behavior and would have been greater than can be discussed in a simple outline.’ The model being proposed does, however, suggest that at one point in the hominizing process, the advantages of a larger brain capable of increasing the potential capacities that were being found adaptive would have become apparent. This may, once again, have occurred in a region or period of ecological or population change or stress. The larger brain would have increased both memory and the categorical, associational, cross-modal capacities that were being found useful. The process would probably also have led to a longer period of experiential maturation, since these capacities, in modern humans, are subject to complex ontogenetic development.

Selection for such an increase in neurological capacity may have begun during the adaptive success of the Australopithecines. The record indicates only the apparent “sudden” appearance of a larger brain with H. habilis, and that this occurred with the presence of the primitive Oldowan pebble-tools, tools made of stones that a t times originated at least a day’s walk from the site in which they were found. It is necessary, however, to note that Susman (1988), indicates that Paranthropus robustus, Swartkrans, c. 1.7 my, was a terrestrial hominid with a precision grip comparable to that of the more gracile contemporaneous H. habilis. According to Sussman the group apparently manufactured chipped stone tools and made a number of unworked bone fragments with high polish at their ends suggesting that they may have been used as “digging” sticks for tubers or roots. The

‘Compare an essentially mammalian-behavioral and morphological-mechanical model (Lovejoy, 1981, 1988) to the present cognitive-neurological model.


evidence has not yet been subject to discussion or independent verification. How- ever, the termite probes manufactured by chimpanzees document an earlier primate incipience for tool-mediated extraction, while the chimpanzee use of wood and stone hammers for cracking nuts documents an early incipience, as well, for percussive extraction. The possible differences in developing resource complexity and ecological fragility within the tool-mediated realms of the different early hominids, if Sussman is right, need to be addressed. It is there, and not in the presence or absence of tools, that the major selective pressures for hominization would have occurred at certain times and areas (Marshack, 1984a, 1985).

The larger brain of H. habilis, then, not only increased the capacity for two- handed problem-solving but also the corollary capacity for mapping a widening, functional realm in time and space. One must, of course, be careful in evaluating the archaeological behavioral evidence. The seemingly “simple” Oldawan tools may have been used in a wide range of potential behaviors. Opportunistic scavenging, for instance, may have been one of the potential behaviors made possible, but scavenging the remnant bodies and bones of mid-sized or large animals (perhaps most often in certain seasons) would not support the year-round energy needs of a hominid population, any more than the opportunistic hunting of small animals by chimpanzees can support a pongid population. The larger brain of an early true hominid probably mapped and mediated strategies and skills for exploiting different types of flora and fauna, a t different times and in different places, again with or without a use of tools.

The archaeological record documents the presence in this period of a number of other hominoid lines with morphological specialization for powerful mastication. The model suggests that these hominoids, whether they used tools or not, may have adapted to a generally more stable, largely vegetal ecological niche, perhaps riverine or mainly forested, while the hominid line leading to H . sapiens may have been adapting to a more difficult, variable, dispersed, and inherently more fragile seasonal ecology (Vrba, 1985). If so, then at some point and in some region further selection would have occurred within a H . habilis group under conditions, once again, of ecological change, population pressure, or seasonal crisis, selecting for an increase in the set of capacities already entrained on the hominid line. The process would have continued the tendency to increase both the size and the integrative, mediating capacity of the brain.

With H. erectus the hominids a t last began a major dispersal, carrying their larger brain and increased set of capacities into diverse latitudes and ecologies. These areas often contained sharper seasonal differences, and a greater and more variable dispersal of resources. Clearly, the capacity to model and map such diversity, and to exploit the more variable range, had become increasingly “human.” There is a tendency to see in the archaeological record of this period a conservative stone-tool kit, without major changes in “style” occurring over time. The model being proposed, however, suggests that the developing complexity would probably have taken place in the diversity of uses and problem-solving strategies that were now possible within the constraints of a slowly developing lithic technology. Changes in “style” would continuously have occurred at the level of skill and usage rather than primarily a t the level of lithic typology and production. Cultural change and “style” would probably, therefore, be measured at this time largely in terms of differences in ecological context and in the adaptive responses made to periodic shifts in climate, environment, and resources. Adaptation and innovation would always, of course, have occurred at the level of the extant potential capacity.

It is at this point that questions concerning the level of “humanity” attained by H. erectus, and the nature of the subsequent branching of subspecies or types of Homo, with capacities derived from erectus, become relevant. The possibility exists that selection occurred in Africa within certain H. erectus groups, under difficult or complex conditions of subsistence, selecting for a further increase in the hominid capacity to model and map a realm in time and space and to maintain and develop such models culturally. But regional difficulties and opportunities would also have


selected for a Neanderthal adaptive capacity. Would these regional processes have led to “subspecies” differences or have selected for increasing capacity among both groups, but at different rates? The adherents of punctuated equilibrium may prefer a sudden mutational leap. The possibilities highlight an evolutionary problem of central concern, the nature and contents of the mosaic processes involved in hominization and the development of a unique set of “potentially variable capacities” among the late hominids, most of which were, to an undetermined degree, also evolved among the Neanderthals. It is clear that these capacities can only mini- mally be read from morphology or from the archaeological record or cultural products of a particular time and place, or, for that matter, from the fact that the Neanderthals “disappeared.” Too many anatomically modern human groups have disappeared in historic times under the impact of superior technology or intrusive disease to accept the ethnocentric argument of superiority.

I close with a short note on the perennial question of “language,” its origins and whether the Neanderthals could speak. The suite of capacities already discussed would suggest that they could. Recent studies of pre-hominid primate communication and neurology (Steklis, 1985) have indicated that vocalization is often referential among different species, not only carrying information about the sender’s sex, group membership, and social relationships, but that such vocalization can also volitionally refer to external objects or events. Some species also exhibit hemi- spheric assymmetries in auditory perception as well as in vocalization. According to Steklis “these data suggest that the vocal-auditory machinery of the earliest hominids was far more ready to take on ‘primordial’ speech function than has been previously supposed” (1985:157). Selection may therefore have occurred quite early in hominization for an increase in these capacities in conjunction with the two-handed problem solving and conceptual, symboling capacities discussed in this paper. Deacon (1987a,b) has indicated that the neurological circuitry and structures involved in language are already incipient or present in the lower primates, without, of course, providing any semblance of the production of hominid “language.’’ Deacon reports,

the monkey homologue to Broca’s area receives information from the auditory system, particularly from the area that corresponds to Wernicke’s area: it receives tactile information from the mouth, jaw, tongue, and larynx . . . at least in their major connectional and functional attributes, the circuits underling human language have their counterparts in monkey brains-a remarkable ‘preadaptation’ (1 987a:4).

Yet monkeys do not vocalize by use of these cortical structures or connections, but largely by reference to the limbic system. In evolutionary terms, however, the possibility of mosaic selection from within a range of potentially variable incipient communicative capacities and incipient proto-linguistic neurological structures in a higher primate raises questions that need to be addressed both by advocates of the theory of punctuated equilibrium and by those supporting a more traditional Darwinian selection. What suite of morphological, neurological, behavioral, and cultural processes was involved in the incremental evolution of the extraordinarily complex human capacity for language, with the ultimate late presence of those capacities, genetically encoded but with a host of “exaptive” effects (Gould and Vrba, 19821, so that it was finally able to support human language? Or did language arrive “suddenly” as a package, re Chomsky, with the presence of anatomically modern humans? The recent excavation of a Neanderthal skeleton at Kebara in Israel (Bar-Yosef et al., 1985) raises a question from that late period in hominization when the anatomically modern Qafzeh humans and Neanderthals may have been Near Eastern contemporaries. It offers an interesting, if still highly speculative, possibility for discussion. Arensburg (personal communication) has informed me that there is an early indication that the hyoid bone of the Kebara skeleton may reside in an anatomically (‘modern” human position. If so, there may


have been “linguistic” or communicative contact between the two hominid groups; therefore, the theoretical models for lesser vocalizing capacity suggested by Lie- berman (1987) and Laitman (1983) for the Neanderthals on the basis of morphological reconstructions may need reevaluation. It is perhaps significant in this regard that Laitman (19831, also basing his argument on morphological reconstruction, concludes that “an upper respiratory system similar to that of modern man, with the vocal apparatus requisite for human speech, may have been ac- quired by archaic H. sapiens some 300,000 years ago” (1983:630).

NOTES ADDED IN PROOF

Following presentation of this paper in 1987, a report appeared in Nature (Arensburg et al., 1989) that described the position and shape of the hyoid bone of the Neanderthal skeleton found at Kebara, in Israel: “The bone is almost identical in size and shape to the hyoid of present day populations, suggesting that there has been little or no change in the visceyal skeleton (including the hyoid, middle ear ossicles, and inferentially the larynx) during the past 60,000 years of human evolution. We conclude that the morphological basis for human speech capability appears to have been fully developed during the Middle Paleolithic.” [Arensburg, B, Vandermeersch, AMB, Duday, H, Schepartz, LA, and Rak,Y (1989) A Middle Paleolithic human hyoid bone. Nature 338:758-760.1

However, Laitman [personal communicationl, while believing that the Nean- derthals could “speak,” disputes the fact that the mere presence of the Kebara hyoid indicates a capacity for speech. Without the Kebara skull, Laitman states, there is no means of reconstructing the hyoid‘s position in the vocal tract. Since the hyoid is not articulated to other bones a hypothetical reconstruction at this time is not possible. Lieberman, Laitman et al. discuss the problems in a response to appear this year in Nature.

Dibble [personal communication] has indicated that while the plateau above La Quina and the blind drop-off to the valley would have been perfect for animal drives, the faunal evidence does not yet confirm such behavior.

Following presentation of this paper a debate on the problem of Neanderthal burial was initated in Current Anthropology with a paper by Gargett (1989), including a lengthy and detailed commentary. Gargett discussed the possibility that natural causes may have been involved in creating the appearance of burial. The commentators raised as many questions concerning the validity of Gargett’s thesis as Gargett raised in arguing against Neanderthal burial. In the continuous round of questions concerning Neanderthal problem-solving capacity, symbolling capacity, linguistic capacity and burial practices arguments almost always stem from or are addressed to basic assumptions concerning the evolutionary place of the Ne- anderthals on the hominid line and their probable or assumed “genetic distance” from anatomically modern humans. These questions will have to be addressed and answered, a t least in part, in terms of the problems raised in the present paper. [Gargett, RH (1989) Grave shortcomings: the evidence for Neanderthal burial. Curr. Anthropol. 30(3): 322-330.1

Two years after presenting this paper, Newsweek t16 Oct., 1989, pp. 70-711 raised precisely the same questions, though without reference to the same class of data. The debate, clearly, has entered the arena of widespread public interest as well as of private passion.

LITERATURE CITED

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Documents

Evolution of the human capacity: The symbolic evidence