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The term Atérien describes a culture of the Late Stone Age ( English Late Stone Age ) in northern Africa , which lasted from 40,000 to 35,000 years ago, according to other authors up to 18,000 or even 10,000 years ago. Its distribution area is the entire North and Central Sahara , especially eastern Algeria , reaching in the south to the 18th parallel. The Atérien was named after the Bir Al Ater site in Algeria. In the east, Egypt differs significantly from the areas of Atérien by a Levallois and Moustero-Levallois find inventory.
Stone tools / lithic inventory
The Flint - ( Silex ) device of Aterian were lighter and smaller than previous tools. Typical finds are for the first time handle tips (so-called atérien tips ), scrapers , scrapers , drills and burins . The extension of the handle may have been used to stock the tools in wood or bone .
Leaf tip
Atérien tip
scraper
Environment and economy
The people of the Atérien were hunters and gatherers . The fauna at this time is typical of savannahs (elephant, rhinoceros, giraffe, lion, antelope), but at that time in a cooler, humid climate in a landscape with open deciduous forests .
Cultural classification
Carriers of the Atérien culture were not - as previously assumed - Neanderthals , whose presence in Africa has recently been questioned, but anatomically modern humans ( Homo sapiens ), as shown by several sites in Morocco ( Témara , Dar es Soltane 2 and El Harourader) can be occupied.
Finds from the time before the Atérien were determined to be final Acheulées , Levallois finds were found in some places , so that here it can be safely assumed that there was a gap in the population. For the first time after an Acheuléen that was uniformly spread across Africa, a clear spatial structure of different cultures on this continent is evident. The Atérien was followed by the culture of the Epipalaeolithic Capsia , with Ibéromaurusia lying in between in the northwest . It is still unclear whether there was also a settlement gap between these two cultures due to an excessively dry climate in the Sahara.
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Jean-Jacques Hublin : Recent evolution in Northwestern Africa. In: Aitken, M., Mellars, P., Stringer, CB (Eds.): The Origin of Modern Humans, the Impact of Science-Based Dating. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 337, 1992, pp. 185-191.
- ↑ Kupczik, K., Hublin, J.-J .: Mandibular molar root morphology in Neanderthals and Late Pleistocene and recent Homo sapiens. Journal of Human Evolution, 2010 (in press), doi : 10.1016 / j.jhevol.2010.05.009 .