Thomas Higham

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Thomas Higham (mostly: Tom Higham , born February 23, 1966 in Cambridge , England ) is a British prehistoric archaeologist and in the field of archaeometry, in particular, an expert on the radiocarbon dating ( 14 C method) of fossil bones. Higham is Professor of Archeology at the University of Oxford and Associate Director of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit (ORAU), which conducts 14 carbon dating using accelerator mass spectrometry . The age regulations published by him may have a. led to the fact that the first colonization of Europe by anatomically modern humans ( Homo sapiens ) was predated by several thousand years.

Life

Tom Higham is the son of the British archaeologist and anthropologist Charles Higham , who researched the emergence of agriculture and the early state formation in Southeast Asia . In 1967, nine months after Tom Higham's birth, the family moved to Dunedin , New Zealand , where Charles Higham was to set up an archeology institute at the University of Otago , and was appointed founding professor in 1968. Even as a teenager, Tom Higham helped with excavations during the summer holidays, among other things at the Ban Na Di site in Thailand , the archaeological importance of which his father had recognized in 1980. Tom Higham was infected by his father's enthusiasm for archeology, studied archeology himself, but followed his father's advice to devote himself to a particularly promising area: calculating the age of archaeological and paleontological finds. That is why Tom Higham wrote his doctoral thesis in 1994 in the chemistry department of the University of Waikato in Hamilton , specifically in its Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory , and then worked there as a postdoc and most recently as deputy head of the laboratory. In 2000 he moved to the University of Oxford, where he has been working at their 14 C laboratory since 2001 . Tom Higham and the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit are now internationally recognized as leaders in the field of radiocarbon technology. He is also Director of the Advanced Studies Center at Keble College, University of Oxford.

research

The background of Tom Higham's research interests are inaccuracies in the radiocarbon method developed by Willard Libby . This is based on the analysis of the 14 C / 12 C ratio in organic samples: Every living being builds these two carbon variants - according to their proportion in nature - into its body during its lifetime. After death, 14 C decays with a half-life of 5730 ± 40 years, so that (if the ratio to lifetime is known) it can be understood how old an organic sample is - the lower the 14 C portion, the older it is. However, the 14 C / 12 C ratio was not constant in the past, but was subject to natural fluctuations, which must be taken into account by calibration .

In addition, collagens , which due to their high carbon content make particularly suitable samples for dating, suck 14 C atoms from the surrounding soil “like a sponge” into them. Since 98 percent of all 14 carbon atoms have already decayed after around 30,000 years , according to Higham, even a slight infiltration of current carbon can significantly falsify the measurement results: “If only two percent of the carbon atoms in a sample come from the present, then a 14 C age of 33,000 years is calculated for a 44,000 year old bone . ”Since this error was not known in earlier dating, numerous age attributions apply to late Neanderthals and early Cro-Magnon humans - the first colonists of anatomically modern humans ( Homo sapiens ) of Europe - as presumably flawed. The previous example mentioned by Tom Higham in an article in the journal Nature referred to the fossil KC 4 from Kents Cavern , a partially preserved upper jaw of a Cro-Magnon man discovered in 1927 and aged 30,900 ± 900 years BP in 1989 had been attributed. In 2011, however, an age of 44,200 to 41,500 cal BP was calculated for the upper jaw in Higham's laboratory  , which makes the find one of the earliest evidence of the presence of Homo sapiens in Europe.

The correction of the age of the so-called Red Lady of Paviland from Wales , the world's first fossil of an individual of the genus Homo and the Hominini , which had been described by a scientist in a publication (1823) also caused a sensation in specialist circles . In 1968, an age of 22,000 years had been determined with the help of the radiocarbon method, which seemed to prove that Wales was also settled during one of the coldest phases of the Vistula Glaciation . In 2008, however, a study by Highams found an age of 33,000 years and thus a dating to the Denekamp warm period of the Vistula glacial period.

Another example of corrected dates are the Neanderthal finds from the El Sidron Cave in Spain . Repeated 14 C measurements had produced conflicting dates, resulting in a range between 10,000 and 50,000 BP. By electron spin resonance calculated data an age suggested 45000-39000 years. A study by the Oxford Laboratory also found an age at the upper limit of previous dating of 48,400 ± 3,200 BP.

For 40 Neanderthal sites from all over Europe, a research group led by Tom Higham also determined the time spans of the last evidence of their presence in the relevant regions between Russia and Spain. With the result that the era of the Neanderthals in Europe - the Moustérien - came to an end with 95.4% probability between 41,030 and 39,260 years (cal BP). The culture of Châtelperronia , which was also associated with the Neanderthals, ended around 40,000 years ago. From these data and the available dates for early Cro-Magnon humans it emerged that these and the Neanderthals lived together in Europe for only 2600 to 5400 years.

The first scientific studies by Tom Higham were devoted to the time of the first colonization of New Zealand.

Honors

Thomas Higham has been a fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand since 2018 .

Literature (selection)

  • with Katerina Douka: Ingenious Method Reveals Precious Human Remains Hidden in Fossil 'Junk'. In: Scientific American . December 2018
  • with Thibaut Devièse and others: Increasing accuracy for the radiocarbon dating of sites occupied by the first Americans. In: Quaternary Science Reviews. Volume 198, 2018, pp. 171–180, doi: 10.1016 / j.quascirev.2018.08.023
  • with Thibaut Devièse and others: Direct dating of Neanderthal remains from the site of Vindija Cave and implications for the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition. In: PNAS . Volume 114, No. 40, 2017, pp. 10606-10611, doi: 10.1073 / pnas.1709235114 , full text
  • with Adelphine Bonneau and others: The earliest directly dated rock paintings from southern Africa: new AMS radiocarbon dates. In: Antiquity. Volume 91, No. 356, 2017, pp. 322–333, doi: 10.15184 / aqy.2016.271
  • with Qiaomei Fu and others: Genome sequence of a 45,000-year-old modern human from western Siberia. In: Nature. Volume 514, 2014, pp. 445-449, doi: 10.1038 / nature13810
  • European Middle and Upper Palaeolithic radiocarbon dates are often older than they look: problems with previous dates and some remedies. In: Antiquity. Volume 85, No. 327, 2011, pp. 235–249, doi: 10.1017 / S0003598X00067570 , full text (PDF)
  • with Christopher Bronk Ramsey and others: Radiocarbon-Based Chronology for Dynastic Egypt. In: Science . Volume 328, No. 5985, 2010, pp. 1554–1557, doi: 10.1126 / science.1189395
  • with Fiona Brock and others: Current Pretreatment Methods for AMS Radiocarbon Dating at the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit (ORAU). In: Radiocarbon. Volume 52, No. 1, 2010, pp. 103-112, doi: 10.1017 / S0033822200045069
  • with Janet M. Wilmshurst and others: Dating the late prehistoric dispersal of Polynesians to New Zealand using the commensal Pacific rat. In: PNAS. Volume 105, No. 22, 2008, pp. 7676-7680, doi: 10.1073 / pnas.0801507105
  • with Roger M. Jacobi and Christopher Bronk Ramsey: AMS Radiocarbon Dating of Ancient Bone Using Ultrafiltration. In: Radiocarbon. Volume 48, No. 2, 2006, pp. 179-195, doi: 10.1017 / S0033822200066388
  • with Thomas E. Levy (Ed.): The Bible and Radiocarbon Dating. Archeology, Text and Science. Acumen Publishing, London 2005, ISBN 978-1-84553498-1
  • with Christopher Bronk Ramsey and Clare Owen (Eds.): Radiocarbon and Archeology: Fourth International Symposium, St. Catherine's College, Oxford, April 9-14, 2002. Conference Proceedings. Oxford University School of Archeology, Oxford 2004, ISBN 978-0-94781665-0

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Entry by Thomas Higham on the website of the Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory at the University of Waikato. ( Memento of December 9, 2000 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ a b c d Ewen Callaway: Date with history. In: Nature . Volume 485, 2012, pp. 27-29, doi: 10.1038 / 485027a
  3. ↑ Prof. Tom Higham, Principal Investigator. On: palaeochron.org , last accessed on January 16, 2019
  4. ^ A b Royal Society of New Zealand: Centenary cohort of Fellows announced. ( Memento from November 21, 2018 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Tom Higham on the Keble College, University of Oxford website
  6. ^ Tom Higham et al .: The earliest evidence for anatomically modern humans in northwestern Europe. In: Nature. Vol. 479, 2011, pp. 521-524, doi : 10.1038 / nature10484
  7. ^ Roger M. Jacobi and Tom Higham: The "Red Lady" ages gracefully: new ultrafiltration AMS determinations from Paviland. In: Journal of Human Evolution . Volume 55, No. 5, 2008, pp. 898-907, doi: 10.1016 / j.jhevol.2008.08.007
  8. ↑ Trinidad Torres et al .: Dating of the hominid (Homo neanderthalensis) remains accumulation from El Sidrón cave (Borines, Asturias, North Spain): an example of multi-methodological approach to the dating of Upper Pleistocene sites. In: Archaeometry. Volume 52, No. 4, 2010, pp. 680-705, doi: 10.1111 / j.1475-4754.2009.00491.x
  9. ^ Rachel E. Wood, Thomas FG Higham et al .: A new date for the Neanderthals from El Sidrón cave (Asturias, northern Spain). In: Archaeometry. Volume 55, No. 1, 2013, pp. 148-158, doi: 10.1111 / j.1475-4754.2012.00671.x
  10. ↑ Tom Higham, Katerina Douka et al .: The timing and spatiotemporal patterning of Neanderthal disappearance. In: Nature. Volume 52, No. 7514, 2014, pp. 306–309, doi: 10.1038 / nature13621
    Neanderthals died out 39,000 years ago at the latest. On: idw-online from August 20, 2014.
  11. ^ TFG Higham and Alan G. Hogg: Evidence for Late Polynesian Colonization of New Zealand: University of Waikato Radiocarbon Measurements. In: Radiocarbon. Volume 39, No. 2, 1997, pp. 149-192, doi: 10.1017 / S0033822200051997
  12. ^ Alan G. Hogg, Thomas FG Higham et al .: A wiggle-match date for Polynesian settlement of New Zealand. In: Antiquity. Volume 77, No. 295, 2003, pp. 116-125, doi: 10.1017 / S0003598X00061408
personal data
SURNAME Higham, Thomas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Higham, Tom; Higham, TFG
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British archaeologist and archaeometrist
DATE OF BIRTH February 23, 1966
PLACE OF BIRTH Cambridge , England