Caspian Culture
The Caspian Sea is a landlocked endorheic body of water and lies between Russia and Iran, a fresh-water lake in its northern portions. The sea is estimated to be about 30 million years old. It became landlocked about 5.5 million years ago. Early remnants of hominid occupation in North Africa, for example, were found in Ain el Hanech, near Saïda (ca. 200,000 B.C.). Geographically, the Azores, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Djibouti are sometimes included Modern humans (i.e. Homo sapiens sapiens), are believed to have emerged around 100,000 years ago and began migrating out of Africa during the Middle Paleolithic period.
North Africa was the site of the highest state of development of Middle Paleolithic flake-tool techniques in the second subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Tools of this era, starting about 30,000 B.C., are called Aterian (after the site Bir el Ater, south of Annaba) and are marked by a high standard of workmanship, great variety, and specialization. Phylogenetic separation of Modern humans dates to this period, as Mitochondrial Eve (Ethiopia, Kenya or Tanzania) to roughly 150,000 years ago, Y-chromosomal Adam to roughly 90,000 years ago. The existence of Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam co-existed with a large human population. While 'Eve' is believed to be alive 140,000 years ago, 'Adam' lived only 60,000 years ago.
The Homo genus (Neanderthals) that inhabited Europe and parts of western Asia became extinct in Europe approximately 24,000 years ago. In Siberia, Middle Paleolithic populations are evidenced only in the southern portions. In the New World, the Pacific coast of North America may have been free of ice such as to allow the first peoples in North America to come down this route prior to the formation of the ice-free corridor in the continental interior.
The Beginning of the Holocene extinction event (11,000 BC), a large number of extinctions span numerous families of plants and animals including mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and arthropods at a rate of this extinction event appears to be much more rapid than the "Big Five" mass extinctions - the disappearance of large mammals, known as megafauna. By the end of the last ice age 9,000 to 13,000 years ago with the presence of man-made driving factors and its very short geological timescale. The Wisconsinian glaciation of North America left widespread impacts on the North American landscape carved by ice deepening old valleys. The culture that has been connected with the wave of extinctions in North America is the paleo-Indian culture associated with the Clovis people. Very broadly the Upper Paleolithic (in the Franco-Cantabric region) dates to between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago, roughly coinciding with the last of four major ice ages in the further past and the appearance of high culture and before the advent of Agriculture.
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The Capsian culture (named after the town of Gafsa) was a Mesolithic culture of the Maghreb, which lasted from about 10,000 B.C. to 6000 BC. It was concentrated mainly in modern Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, with some sites attested in Cyrenaica (Libya). It was in the early Capsian period that the first domesticated sheep and goats appear in the area. Decorative art is widely found at their sites, including figurative and abstract rock art, and ocher is found coloring both tools and corpses. Ostrich eggshells were used to make beads and containers; seashells were used for necklaces. It is traditionally divided into two variants (often contemporaneous): traditional Capsian, characterized by flake and blade tools, and upper Capsian, with a much greater variety of geometric microliths. Bone tools were also used, and shell beads and decorated objects were made. Capsian sites are typically accompanied by shell mounds and dark-colored ash deposits; some involve caves, while others are open-air. They are often near springs or passes. |
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| Starting around 18,000 B.C. in Palestine, throughout the Levant followed the Aurignacian or Levantine Upper Paleolithic the forest vegetation retreated to be replaced by steppe of the Negev desert in Israel and Sinai, and the Syro-Arabian desert. The Mesolithic began at the end of the Pleistocene epoch around 8000 B.C. with he early rise of agriculture to emerge into the Neolithic period. Such conditions also delayed the coming of the Neolithic until as late as 5000 B.C. in Northern Europe. | |