Paleolithic Archaeology

The paper is a response to recent claims that the materials of Susiluola (Wolf cave)
in Finland and Byzovaya in the northern Urals in Russia should be regarded as Middle
Paleolithic and are thus indicative of the Neanderthal presence near the polar circle.
The first-hand examination of the material from Susiluola leads to the conclusion that
it does not contain any indisputable artifacts. As to Byzovaya, the old and widely held
view that it is an Early Upper Paleolithic assemblage seems to fit the available
archaeological and chronometric evidence much better than a recently proposed
hypothesis of the Middle Paleolithic status of the site. The authors suggest that the
archaic appearance of the Byzovaya typology and technology may rather be due to a
specific function of this site, situated in direct proximity to a “mammoth cemetery”.
Like the other sites of the kind (Shestakovo, Yana), it could have been devoted (at least
partly) to the exploitation of mammoth remains (corpse dismembering, tusk extraction
and initial processing, etc.).

Armed Violence in the Palaeolithic
The paper deals with the question of the existence and intensity of armed violence at diff erent stages of the Palaeolithic.
The fi rst two sections provide a review and analysis of the osteological and representational evidence relevant to the
question. The third section considers the problem of changes in the frequency of violence and how, or whether, it can be
assessed. With this purpose in mind, the author compiles data on the age and character of all the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic
human and animal bones with embedded projectiles, which are available in the literature (tabl. 1 and 2). It turns out that while
for the time prior to ~ 15 ka only animal bones with imbedded projectiles are known in the Old World (10 bones of 10 animals
from 9 sites in Western and Eastern Europe, Western Asia and Siberia), the subsequent period shows a sharp increase in
the number of human bones of the kind, which became nearly as numerous (29 bones of 27 persons from 17 sites) as the
animal ones. Given that the quantity of excavated faunal remains is several orders of magnitude greater than the quantity of
paleoanthropological fi nds, the parity in the numbers of projectile-pierced remains may signify some important changes in
the dynamics of violence (and social life in general) at the end of the Palaeolithic.

Our perception of visual images depends among other things on what
we want and/or expect to see. The students of ancient art seem to be
particularly prone to the danger of taking the illusion for the desired
reality. The paper shows how and why some very clear and simple images
or even non-figurative objects dating from the Stone Age were mistakenly
and repeatedly interpreted (by highly esteemed scholars) as extremely
complex subjects with rich ideological content. It is concluded that
without proper control our 'mind’s eye' can easily put our imagination on
the wrong track leading from simple and plain to complicated and false.

Про уродов и людей (Falk D. The fossil chronicles: how two controversial discoveries changed our view of human evolution. Berkeley-Los Angeles-London: University of California Press, 2011. 259 р.)* Дин Фальк -профессор антропологии в университете штата Флорида, палеоневролог, специалист по слепкам мозга ископаемых людей и их предшественников. Пишет она много и интересно, в том числе и в научно-популярном жанре. Книга «Ископаемые хроники: как два спорных открытия изменили наши взгляды на эволюцию человека», может рассматриваться как научно-популярная, но ориентирована она на хорошо подготовленного, или, как сейчас говорят, продвинутого читателя, и, безусловно, заслуживает также внимания тех, кто профессионально занимается изучением доисторического прошлого человечества. Написать на нее рецензию я решил не столько потому, что книга показалась мне познавательной и увлекательной (хотя это, безусловно, так), сколько потому, что некоторые мысли автора меня, что называется, «зацепили». Особенно это касается соображений Фальк относительно того, почему столь многие (едва ли не все важнейшие!) открытия ископаемых предков человека имели «трудную судьбу», т. е. долгое время подвергались сомнению, оспаривались и не признавались научным сообществом, по крайней мере, в лице его наиболее видных и авторитетных представителей. Неандерталь, Триниль, Таунг -ни одна из перечисленных эпохальных находок не была встречена всеобщими аплодисментами, все они в течение десятилетий оставались «гадкими утятами» палеоантропологии. Список «спорных открытий» продолжает пополняться и в наши дни (Лианг Буа, Денисова пещера, Лунлинь/Малудун), хотя современные гадкие утята вырастают (если вырастают) в «лебедей» несколько быстрее, чем их предшественники в позапрошлом и прошлом веках (акселерация!).

The Lower Paleolithic of Central Asia is represented by several sealed and more or less firmly dated Lower–Middle Pleistocene cave and open-air sites in the southeastern part and by more numerous surface occurrences throughout the region. The assemblages assigned to the Lower Paleolithic form two rather distinct groups, one remarkable for well-made handaxes and the other characterized by cores and flakes with no handaxes. The distribution map of pebble industries and industries with handaxes shows that while the latter originate from the western regions of Central Asia, the former are concentrated in the eastern part of the area. The Middle Paleolithic assemblages of Central Asia do not form a single technocomplex. Their variability in time is difficult to assess, but variation in space is obvious. Very few Upper Paleolithic sites in this region are known. At the same time, their stone industries are very diverse and most of them differ sharply from each other and from sites in adjacent regions.

Up until the present the Bordes method has been widely accepted among researchers of the palaeolithic throughout the world. However, its relevance to the tasks for which it is usually applied has not been proved and, moreover, is very doubtful. Both typologically and statistically the method is pernicious. It is necessary to elaborate a new approach to the analysing of stone industries on the grounds of realization that there can be and must be more than one classification for the same material.

The Stone Age materials described in this paper come from a number of surface occurrences in the southeastern part of Turkmenistan, which is usually referred to as Bathyz. They were collected by G. V. Ivanov (1944–2002) in 1977, 1978, and 1988, but up until now have remained unpublished. The inventory of the Pinkhan site includes Levallois blades and points and can be attributed to the Mousterian, while most other assemblages (Dash-Guyu, Islim, etc.) consisting mainly of bladelets, microblades, various end-scrapers and geometric microliths (lunates), appear to date from the Final Paleolithic/Mesolithic and Early Neolithic. These finds fill, to some extent, a big blank spot on the archaeological map of Central Asia.

The origin of Homo sapiens: new facts and some traditional views (1990). In recent years science has provided many new thought-provoking facts. The author believes that we should reconsider some traditional notions on the origin of anatomically modern humans. The current archaeological, anthropological and biomolecular investigations
of the chronological, geographical and cultural aspects of the emergence of anatomically modern man are discussed. The author puts forward some new propositions on the biocultural evolution of man. He also reconsiders the question of a possible underestimation of the cultural and social  potentialities of the Neanderthals.