24. Ibid., pages 25–27.
25. Rudgley, Op. cit., page 88 and Mellars and Stringer, Op. cit., page 428. A curious aspect to stone tool technology is that in some sites the hand-axes do not appear to have been used. This has prompted some palaeontologists to suggest that the accumulation of such ‘tools’ was in fact an early form of ‘peacock plumage’, in effect a showing-off device as an aid to attracting mates. Klein and Edgard, Op. cit., page 107. Even today, certain Eskimo groups distinguish between tools used on animals and tools used only on social occasions. Mellars and Stringer. Op. cit., page 359. H erectus is sometimes known as H. rhodesiensis in Africa but this term is falling into disuse.
26. Rudgley, Op. cit., page 163. Experiments conducted on Neanderthal bones, by Steven Churchill at Duke University in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, support the idea that they used both arms to thrust spears, not throw them. This, at 230,000–200,000 years ago. New Scientist, 23 November 2002, pages 22–23. Archaic H. sapiens is also known as H. helmei and H. heidelbergensis.
27. Rudgley, Op. cit., page 176.
28. Ibid., page 177.
29. Ibid., page 226.
30. Mellars and Stringer, Op. cit., 214.
31. El País (Madrid), 12 August 2002, page 1.
32. Francesco d’Errico, ‘The invisible frontier. A multiple species model for the origin of behavioral modernity’, Evolutionary Anthropology, volume 12, 2003, pages 188–202.
33. Mellars and Stringer, Op. cit., page 156.
34. This may also explain why Neanderthals made repeated use of caves for short periods of time: to build fires, raise the temperature in a confined space, and get at the meat. Then they moved on.
35. Rudgley, Op. cit., page 217. At the same time, these skeletons have been found only in areas relatively light on carnivores, which may mean that all we are seeing is the differential remains of other animals’ scavenging behaviour.
36. Mellars and Stringer, Op. cit., page 217.
37. Ibid., page 219.
38. Paul Mellars, ‘Cognitive changes in the emergence of modern humans in Europe’, Cambridge Archaeological Journal, volume 1, number 1, April 1991, pages 63–76. This view is contradicted by a study published later in the same journal, by Anthony E. Marks et al., which showed that there is no difference between burins produced by Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans. ‘Tool standardisation in the middle and upper Palaeolithic’, Cambridge Archaeological Journal, volume 11, number 1, 2001, pages 17–44.
39. Mellars, Op. cit., page 70.
40. James Steele et al., ‘Stone tools and the linguistic capabilities of earlier hominids’, Cambridge Archaeological Journal, volume 5, number 2, 1995, pages 245–256.
41. Merlin Donald, Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1991, pages 149–150.
42. Ibid., page 163.
43. Merlin Donald, A Mind So Rare: The Evolution of Human Consciousness, New York: W. W. Norton, 2001, page 150.
44. Donald, Origins of the Modern Mind, Op. cit., page 210.
45. Donald, A Mind So Rare, Op. cit., page 150.
46. John E. Pfeiffer, The Creative Explosion, New York: Harper & Row, 1982.
47. N. Goren-Inbar ‘A figurine from the Acheulian site of Berekhet Ram’, Mitekufat Haeven, volume 19, 1986, pages 7–12.
48. Francesco d’Errico and April Nowell, ‘A new look at the Berekhet Ram figurine: Implications for the Origins of Symbolism’, Cambridge Archaeological Journal, volume 9, number 2, 1999, pages 1–27.
49. For the beads at Blombos cave, see: Kate Douglas, ‘Born to trade’, New Scientist, 18 September 2004, pages 25–28; for the ‘flute’, see: I. Turk, J. Dirjec and B. Kavur, ‘Ali so v slovenjii nasli najstarejse glasbilo v europi?’ [The Oldest musical instrument in Europe discovered in Slovenia?], Razprave IV, razreda SAZU (Ljubliana), volume 36, 1995, pages 287–293.
50. Francesco d’Errico, Paolo Villa, Ana C. Pinto Llona and Rosa Ruiz Idarraga, ‘A Middle Paleolithic origin of music? Using cave-bear bones to assess the Divje Babel bone “flute”’, Antiquity, volume 72, 1998, pages 65–79.
51. Oppenheimer, Op. cit., pages 115–117.
52. Ibid., page 127.
53. Mithen, Op. cit., page 174.
54. Ibid., page 175.
55. Mircea Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas, volume 1, London: Collins, 1979, page 17.
56. The Times (London), 17 February 2003, page 7. New York Times, 12 November 2002, page F3.
57. International Herald Tribune, 16 August 2002, pages 1 and 7.
58. Stephen Shennan, ‘Demography and cultural innovation: a model and its implication for the emergence of modern human culture’, Cambridge Archaeological Journal, volume 11, number 1, 2001, pages 5–16.
59. Oppenheimer, Op. cit., pages 112–113.
60. Mithen, Op. cit., page 195.
61. By the same token, the fact that the Neanderthals were around in the Ice Age, and produced no art that we know of, strongly suggests that they were intellectually incapable of producing such artefacts.
62. Mithen, Op. cit., 197.
63. Ibid.
64. Rudgley, Op. cit., 196.
65. At the el-Wad cave in the Mount Carmel area near Haifa in Israel, a piece of flint was discovered, dating to 12,800–10,300 BP, which had been modified as a sort of artistic double-entendre. From certain angles, the figure resembles a penis (say the modern palaeontologists), from another angle it looks like a set of testicles, though the actual carving, when examined in detail, represents a couple, seated, facing each other, and engaged in sexual intercourse. Rudgley, Op. cit., pages 188–189.
66. Eliade, Op. cit., page 20.
67. Scientific American, November 2000, pages 32–34.
68. Mellars and Stringer, Op. cit., page 367. Randall White further reports that many of the beads were made of ‘exotic’ materials – ivory, steatite, serpentine – the raw materials for which were obtained in some cases from 100 kilometres (60 miles) away. This raises the possibility of early ideas of trade. Ibid., 375–376. Different sites had similar motifs (sea shells, for example) at similar excavation levels, showing that early aesthetic ideas radiated between peoples (an early form of fashion?). Ibid., page 377.
69. Mithen, Op. cit., page 200.
70. David Lewis-Williams, The Mind in the Cave, London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 2002, page 127.
71. Ibid., pages 199–200 and 216–217.
72. Ibid., pages 224–225.
73. Ibid., pages 285–286.