These findings challenge traditional beliefs about the timing and nature of cultural shifts during this vital duration in human history.Published in Nature Communications, the researchers insights into stone tool innovation recommend that the commonly held view of a transformation in culture and technology that enabled anatomically modern-day people to outcompete Neanderthals and other archaic human beings was a more complicated and nuanced procedure of cultural evolution.The team of scientists focused on the Middle-Upper Paleolithic (MP-UP) cultural shift, a crucial boundary in between two key phases in our development: The Middle Paleolithic period (250,000 to 40,000 years ago) saw anatomically modern humans existing side-by-side with Neanderthals and antiquated human beings existing at the very same time. Culturally, anatomically modern human beings and Neanderthals had comparable stone tool technology, such as making tools using Levallois techniques, which involved striking stones with a hammer-like tool.The Upper Paleolithic period (50,000 and 12,000 years ago) is the period in which anatomically contemporary human beings made large geographical expansions, and antiquated human beings went extinct. Throughout this period, new cultural aspects emerged in numerous worlds, including tool innovation, food acquisition, seafaring, and artistic expression in ornaments and cave art.The boost in the efficiency of stone tool cutting-edge (revealed in white lines) did not happen before or at the start of Homo sapiens wide dispersals in Eurasia but consequently took place after their preliminary dispersals, corresponding with the advancement of bladelet technology in the Early Upper Paleolithic.
