British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
Social Brain, Distributed Mind
Abstract
Herto brains and minds: Behaviour of Early Homo sapiens from the Middle Awash, Ethiopia.
Yonas Beyene (Addis Ababa)
The discovery of three Upper Middle Pleistocene hominid crania, Homo sapiens idaltu, at Herto in the Middle Awash research area in Ethiopia in 1997 had shed more light on this little known period in Africa. These fossils consist of two adult and a child crania. All are morphologically intermediate between the archaic African fossils and late anatomically modern late Pleistocene humans. The hominid bearing upper Herto sediments were dated, using Ar40/Ar39 techniques, to be between 160K and 154K years old. Archaeological excavations and controlled surface collections in the upper Herto localities were done to temporally correlate the findings and to understand their geological, geographical, environmental and technological interrelations. The archaeological evidence from the multiple localities has demonstrated the presence of both Acheulean and MSA techno-complexes. Acheulean hand-axes represented by cleavers and ovate type bifaces with regular and straight cutting edges demonstrating soft hammer techniques are present. Together with these were found artifacts demonstrating Levallois techniques represented by flakes, points, blades and end and side scrapers. The discovery in the lake margin paleolandscape of a large quantity of juvenile and adult hippopotamus fossil bones with cut marks show that the hominids were very actively engaged. The association of the large cutting tools that are characteristic of the Acheulean techno-complex with the more distinct MSA tool kit demonstrate the likelihood use of large cutting tools for butchery. The three Herto Homo sapiens idaltu crania show cut marks made during the process of defleshing using sharp edge stone tools. These post mortem modifications, and manipulation of the crania as demonstrated best on the child and broken adult crania suggest that Homo sapiens idaltu had ritual mortuary practices for which the dimension, context and meaning could only be revealed only by further discoveries. The paper will present in detail the available data from Herto.