Pleistocene

В работе описаны фрагменты скелетов двух особей, а также отдельные материалы по ископаемому сурку с террито-рии Минусинской котловины. Изучение остатков позволило уверенно отнести их к одному виду Marmota baibacina. Представители рода Marmota непрерывно населяли регион как минимум со второй половины позднего неоплейстоцена до позднего голоцена, но к современности полностью исчезли. Точное время и причины вымирания сурков в регионе пока неизвестны и требуют дальнейшего изучения.

There is considerable variation in mid-late Pleisto-cene hominin paranasal sinuses, and in some taxa distinctive craniofacial shape has been linked to sinus size. Extreme frontal sinus size has been reported in mid-Pleistocene specimens often classified as Homo heidelbergensis, and Nean-derthal sinuses are said to be distinctively large, explaining diagnostic Neanderthal facial shape. Here, the sinuses of fossil hominins attributed to several mid-late Pleistocene taxa were compared to those of recent H. sapiens. The sinuses were investigated to clarify differences in the extent of pneu-matisation within this group and the relationship between sinus size and craniofacial variation in hominins from this time period. Frontal and maxillary sinus volumes were measured from CT data, and geometric morphometric methods were used to identify and analyse shape variables associated with sinus volume. Some mid-Pleistocene specimens were found to have extremely large frontal sinuses, supporting previous suggestions that this may be a diagnostic characteristic of this group. Contrary to traditional assertions, however , rather than mid-Pleistocene Homo or Neanderthals having large maxillary sinuses, this study shows that H. sapiens has distinctively small maxillary sinuses. While the causes of large sinuses in mid-Pleistocene Homo remain uncertain, small maxillary sinuses in H. sapiens most likely result from the derived craniofacial morphology that is diagnostic of our species. These conclusions build on previous studies to overturn long-standing but unfounded theories about the pneumatic influences on Neanderthal craniofacial form, whilst opening up questions about the ecological correlates of pneumatisation in hominins. Résumé Les sinus paranasaux des hominines du Pléisto-cène moyen final présentent une variation morphologique considérable. Chez certains taxons, la taille des sinus semble-t-être liée à une morphologie craniofaciale particu-lière. Les fossiles du Pléistocène moyen, souvent rattachés au taxon H. heidelbergensis, présentent des sinus frontaux de taille extrêmement importante. Cette caractéristique est partagée avec les Néandertaliens, chez qui une taille impor-tante des sinus frontaux semble expliquer la forme spécifi-que de leur morphologie faciale. Dans cette étude, nous comparons les sinus d'hominines attribués à plusieurs tax-ons du Pléistocène moyen final à ceux d'H. sapiens récents. Les sinus ont été étudiés pour clarifier les différences dans l'étendue de la pneumatisation au sein de ce groupe et la relation entre la taille des sinus et la variation craniofaciale chez les hominines de cette période. Les volumes des sinus frontaux et maxillaires ont été mesurés à partir de données tomodensitométriques, et des méthodes de morphométrie géométrique ont été utilisées pour identifier et analyser les variables de conformation associées au volume sinusal. Cer-tains spécimens du Pléistocène moyen ont des sinus fron-taux extrêmement grands, ce qui renforce l'hypothèse pré-cédemment suggérée selon laquelle des sinus de grandes

The emergence of agriculture in Mainland Southeast Asia appears to have resulted in a subsistence shift from hunting terrestrial and arboreal game to a combined hunting/animal management subsistence regime focused
on the maintenance of pigs and dogs. These conclusions are currently based on nominal differences in vertebrate taxonomic composition observed at different archaeological sites. In this paper, we take a statistical approach to test whether hunter-gather and early agricultural subsistence economies really can be confidently distinguished based on the relative taxonomic composition of the recovered animal bone assemblages. A regional database of terrestrial and arboreal vertebrate faunas was created for 32 archaeological sites across Southeast Asia from the Terminal Pleistocene to the Late Holocene, and principal component analysis was performed. The resultant data indicates that terrestrial vertebrate taxonomic composition is a relatively strong indicator of the general subsistence base for the various archaeological sites studied and can be used to determine whether the inhabitants subsisted purely from hunting, or from a mixture hunting and animal management.

Bison antiquus Leidy, 1852 was one of the largest and most widely distributed megafaunal species during the Late Pleistocene in North America, giving rise to the modern plains bison in the middle Holocene. Despite the importance of the ancient bison, little is known about its feeding ecology. We employed a combination of extended mesowear, and mesowear III to infer the dietary preference and habitat use of three Mexican samples of B. antiquus. These included two northern samples—La Piedad-Santa Ana and La Cinta-Portalitos—from the Transmexican Volcanic Belt morphotectonic Province, as well as one southern sample—Viko Vijin—from the Sierra Madre del Sur morphotectonic province. We found that the northern Mexican samples were primarily nonstrict grazers, whereas the southern sample displays a pattern consistent with mixed feeding habits. This suggests variability among the diets of the bison from these samples, caused by different paleoenvironments. This evidence complements the paleoenvironmental reconstructions in the studied localities; for the northern samples, open prairies composed of patches of woodland or shrubland and, for the southern locality, a fluvial floodplain with short-lived vegetation. In both scenarios, grasses (Poaceae) were nondominant. The dietary habits of our samples of ancient bison in Mexico are the southernmost dietary inference for the species in North America and expand our knowledge of the dietary habits of B. antiquus during the Late Pleistocene.

Greek myths mention the existence of a monster (ketos) arount the city of Troy. This monster was killed by Heracles at cape Agammia (now Kucuk Besire Burun). There is a scene on a Greek vase dated to the sixth century, which depicts the heroic deed of Heracles at Agammia. The head of the monster is unmistakably a large animal fossil skull. In our survey project around Troy, we found fossil beds in in Beşige Burun, which most likey is the source of Greek myths concerning the Monster of Troy.

In a paleoepidemiological context, samples of enamel from hypoplasic teeth associated to the genus Toxodon Owen, 1840 are analyzed. The material, housed at the Museu Nacional/UFRJ, was collected in paleontological sites at Pernambuco, São Paulo e Rio Grande do Sul states. The applied methodology is adapted from that used by anthropologist to human dentition studies. Stress, associated with several individual health factor, is revealed by these bioindicators. A higher degree of stress is observed in Rio Grande do Sul material. It is inferred an ecological pressure caused by the glacial maximum, which probably affected most directly the brazilian south dweller animals.

Foram feitas análises da ocorrências hipoplasias de esmalte dentro de uma perspectiva paleoepidemiológica em restos dentários atribuídos a Toxodon Owen, 1840 na coleção do Museu Nacional/UFRJ, provenientes de diversos sítios paleontológicos (São Paulo, Pernambuco e Rio Grande do Sul). Estes bioindicadores revelam a existências de estresse, associados a diversos fatores relacionados a saúde do indivíduo. A metodologia aplicada neste trabalho, consiste em uma adaptação da metodologia aplicada em dentição humana que possibilitou inferir um maior grau de estresse no material do Rio Grande do Sul, o que nos faz acreditar em uma pressão ecológica causada pelo máximo glacial, que provavelmente afetou mais diretamente os animais localizados no sul do país.

This book is the first attempt to bring together evidence for the nature
of human interactions with tropical forests on a global scale, from the
emergence of hominins in the tropical forests of Africa to modern
conservation issues. In popular discourse, tropical forests are
synonymous with 'nature' and 'wilderness'; battlegrounds between
apparently pristine floral, faunal, and human communities, and the
unrelenting industrial and urban powers of the modern world. It is
rarely publicly understood that the extent of human adaptation to, and
alteration of, tropical forest environments extends across
archaeological, historical, and anthropological timescales. Following a
review of the natural history and variability of tropical forest
ecosystems, this book takes a tour of human, and human ancestor,
occupation and use of tropical forest environments through time.

Far from being pristine, primordial ecosystems, this book illustrates
how our species has inhabited and modified tropical forests from the
earliest stages of its evolution. While agricultural strategies and vast
urban networks emerged in tropical forests long prior to the arrival of
European colonial powers and later industrialization, this should not be
taken as justification for the massive deforestation and biodiversity
threats imposed on tropical forest ecosystems in the 21st century.
Rather, such a long-term perspective highlights the ongoing challenges
of sustainability faced by forager, agricultural, and urban societies in
these environments, setting the stage for more integrated approaches to
conservation and policy-making, and the protection of millennia of
ecological and cultural heritage bound up in these habitats.

Contents
List of Figures xi
1. Introducing Tropical Forests in Prehistory, History, and Modernity 1
Forests of Plenty or ‘Green Deserts’? 5
Ancestral Forests 8
Tropical Forest Diversity, Past and Present 10
New Methods of ‘Discovery’ 14
A Path through the Jungle 17
Approaching Tropical Forests in Prehistory, History, and
Modernity: Structure and Organization 20
A Note on Nomenclature 23
2. Tropical Forests: Natural History, Diversity, and Potentiality
as Theatres of Human Adaptation and Negotiation 25
What Are Tropical Forests? 26
Geographical Diversity 31
Ethnographic Perspectives on Human Opportunities in Tropical Forests 41
Perceptions of Preservation 46
Temporal Diversity 47
A Broad Picture of Change 51
3. Cradle Under the Canopy: The Forest Origins of our Ape and Hominin Ancestors and the Tropical Forest Forays of the Genus Homo 59
The Persistence of the ‘Savanna Hypothesis’ 60
Ecology of the Apes: Tropical Forests as Dynamic Theatres of Great
Ape Cultural, Demographic, and Morphological Variability from the Miocene to the Present Day 67
A Shaded Cradle for Late Miocene Hominins in Africa? 72
Forest versus ‘Savanna’ in Pliocene Hominin Evolution: An Open Driver or a Shadier Picture? 77
Tropical Forests and Early-Middle Pleistocene Hominin Expansions Out of Africa 81
Tropical Forests as Part of an Evolutionary Mosaic 86
4. Into the Woods: Early Homo sapiens and Tropical Forest Colonization 89
The Genetic, Morphological, and Physical Environment of Human Origins 90
An Origin ‘Under the Canopy’? 96
Passing through Forests: A Very Human Out of Africa 100
Tropical Forest Prehistories and the Defining of a Plastic Pioneer 116
5. Tropical Bounties: The Emergence of Tropical Forest Agricultures 119
A Break from the Past? 120
Emerging from the Swamp: Incipient Cultivation, a Tropical Perspective 125
Indigenous Tropical Forest Agricultures 130
Invasive Agricultures 142
Tropical Agricultures: A Counterpoint to Tradition 147
6. ‘Ruins’ of the Forest: Social Complexity and Tropical Cities 150
Defining Urbanism and the Challenge of ‘Low-Density Agrarian-Based
Urbanism’ 152
Indigenous Tropical Urbanism: Unique Challenges and Examples 156
Agrarian-Based, Low-Density Settlement: A Uniform Tropical Forest Adaptation? 178
Agrarian-Based, Low-Density Urbanism: A Uniform Record of Collapse and Lessons for the Future? 181
7. The Last in a Long Line: Historical and Ethnographic Tropical Forest Encounters 186
Disappearance from History 187
The Isolated ‘Noble Savage’ and ‘Pristine’ Hunter-Gatherers 192
Documenting Connections 195
Driving the Trade: Tropical Forest Groups as Economic Agents 200
Giving Back a Voice 206
Not Pristine but Threatened Knowledge 209
8. The Tropical ‘Anthropocene’: A Modern Battleground or a Long-Term Framework? 213
Tropical Forests and Earth Systems 214
Tropical Forests in the ‘Anthropocene’ 218
Expanding the ‘Anthropocene’ in Tropical Forests 224
Conflicting Interests and Possible Solutions 227
A Long-Term Perspective: Uniting the Past and the Future 235
9. Forests of Plenty? Comparisons and Conclusions 239
Tropical Forest Prehistories, Histories, and Modernities 240
Unique Adaptations or Part of the Bigger Human Picture? 243
Destined for Failure? 246
Tropical Legacies: Cultural, Political, Social, and Biological Outcomes 250
Defining Thresholds and Crossing a Line? 254
References 259
Index 343

ABSTRACT The PALEOFAUNA database developed by the authors contains information on more than 5500 Eurasian localities that yielded Late Pleistocene and Holocene mammalian fossils. The database is used to analyze the changes in the geographical distribution during the second half of the Late Pleistocene and the Holocene of two significant species – the mammoth Mammuthus primigenius and the wooly rhinoceros Coelodonta antiquitatis. Based on the geographical information, combined with (new) radiocarbon data, a correlation has been established between the observed shifts in the ranges of the two species and the climatic changes that occurred during the past 50.000 years. The results indicate that both species changed their distribution repeatedly; the expansion of the ranges increased during stadial intervals and decreased during most interstadials. And both species reached their maximum expansion during the Denekamp (=Bryansk) Interstadial a relatively long interval that includes also a number of cold phases. Later the ranges in Europe of both mammoth and rhinoceros reduced; a process that started before the end of the LGM. Progressive warming from the end of the Pleistocene onwards resulted in dramatic changes in the environment that appeared to be critical for the distribution of those animals. Mammoth and wooly rhinoceros ranges disintegrated into isolated spots, and later they disappeared completely from Eurasia. Relict populations of small-sized mammoths persisted longer on isolated islands such as Wrangel Island. However, not only climate change had an impact on the distribution of the two species. Late Paleolithic and Mesolithic hunters might also have affected the size of the mammoth and wooly rhinoceros populations. Their impact was probably particularly high when the species were close to extinction.

Le loup, effrayant protagoniste de nombreux contes, partage notre monde depuis l'âge glaciaire. Le chien, meilleur ami de l'homme, est également  originaire de cette époque. Il descend d'un des plus redoutables prédateurs du Dernier Glaciaire : le loup pléistocène.