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Crossroads of the Old World
Book chapter

Crossroads of the Old World

Robert G Franciscus and Trenton W Holliday
The Origins of Modern Humans, pp.45-88
John Wiley & Sons, Inc
08/30/2013
DOI: 10.1002/9781118659991.ch2

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Abstract

The expansion of modern humans beyond Africa in the Middle and Late Pleistocene occurred first through Southwestern Asia, geographically and ecologically located at the “crossroads” of the Old World between Europe, Africa, and Asia. Modern genomic analyses coupled with paleontological data indicate that this region is likely where most of the gene flow between expanding modern human populations and Neandertals occurred during currently unresolved levels of sympatry. While our species arose in Africa ca. 200 ka, it is Western Asia that has produced the most complete and best preserved samples of the earliest modern humans currently dated to 120–90 ka, at least partly due to the practice of purposeful burial, although unresolved geochronological determination for the Tabun C1 interment precludes definitive assessment as to whether the practice occurred first among modern humans or Neandertals. The abundant human paleontological evidence from Western Asia also provides insight, and frequent debate, into other key biobehavioral issues in the Late Pleistocene, including early evidence for interpersonal violence, the antiquity of extant human birthing patterns, biobehavioral response to climatic/ecological variation, techno‐culture/somatic interaction, and the tempo and mode of the emergence of “symbolic” capacity within the larger framework of “modernity.”
 modern human origins West‐Central Asia Southwest Asia Late Pleistocene hominin paleobiology Levant H. sapiens H. neanderthalensis

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