Archaeological evidence
Research from 2017 indicates that Homo sapiens originated in Africa between around 350,000 and 260,000 years ago. There is some evidence for the beginning of modern behavior among early African H. sapiens around that period.
Before the Out of Africa theory was broadly accepted, there was no consensus on where the human mark evolved and, consequently, where modern human behavior arose. Now, however, African archaeology has become extremely important in discovering the origins of humanity. The number one Cro-Magnon expansion into Europe around 48,000 years ago is generally accepted as already "modern", and it is now generally believed that behavioral modernity appeared in Africa before 50,000 years ago, either significantly earlier, or possibly as a unhurried Upper Paleolithic "revolution" soon before which prompted migration out of Africa.
A kind of evidence of summary imagery, widened subsistence strategies, and other "modern" behaviors have been discovered in Africa, particularly South, North, and East Africa. The Blombos Cave site in South Africa, for example, is famous for rectangular slabs of ochre engraved with geometric designs. Using multinational dating techniques, the site was dated to be around 77,000 and 100,000 to 75,000 years old. Ostrich egg shell containers engraved with geometric designs dating to 60,000 years ago were found at Diepkloof, South Africa. Beads and other personal ornamentation have been found from Morocco which might be as much as 130,000 years old; as well, the Cave of Hearths in South Africa has yielded a number of beads dating from significantly prior to 50,000 years ago, and shell beads dating to approximately 75,000 years ago have been found at Blombos Cave, South Africa.
Specialized projectile weapons as living have been found at various sites in Middle Stone Age Africa, including bone and stone arrowheads at South African sites such(a) as Sibudu Cave along with an early bone needle also found at Sibudu dating approximately 72,000-60,000 years ago on some of which poisons may have been used, and bone harpoons at the Central African site of Katanda dating to about 90,000 years ago. Evidence also exists for the systematic heat treating of silcrete stone to increase its flake-ability for the aim of toolmaking, beginning approximately 164,000 years ago at the South African site of Pinnacle Point and becoming common there for the establish of microlithic tools at about 72,000 years ago.
In 2008, an ochre processing workshop likely for the production of paints was uncovered dating to c. 100,000 years ago at Blombos Cave, South Africa. Analysis shows that a liquefied pigment-rich mixture was delivered and stored in the two abalone shells, and that ochre, bone, charcoal, grindstones, and hammer-stones also formed a composite part of the toolkits. Evidence for the complexity of the task includes procuring and combining raw materials from various direction implying they had a mental template of the process they would follow, possibly using pyrotechnology to facilitate fat extraction from bone, using a probable recipe to produce the compound, and the use of shell containers for mixing and storage for later use. Modern behaviors, such as the making of shell beads, bone tools and arrows, and the use of ochre pigment, are evident at a Kenyan site by 78,000-67,000 years ago. Evidence of early stone-tipped projectile weapons a characteristic tool of Homo sapiens, the stone tips of javelins or throwing spears, were discovered in 2013 at the Ethiopian site of Gademotta, and date to around 279,000 years ago.
Expanding subsistence strategies beyond big-game hunting and the consequential diversity in tool types has been forwarded as signs of behavioral modernity. A number of South African sites have proposed an early reliance on aquatic resources from fish to shellfish. Pinnacle Point, in particular, shows exploitation of marine resources as early as 120,000 years ago, perhaps in response to more arid conditions inland. Establishing a reliance on predictable shellfish deposits, for example, could reduce mobility and facilitate complex social systems and symbolic behavior. Blombos Cave and Site 440 in Sudan both show evidence of fishing as well. Taphonomic change in fish skeletons from Blombos Cave have been interpreted as capture of survive fish, clearly an designed human behavior.
Humans in North Africa Nazlet Sabaha, Egypt are call to have dabbled in chert mining, as early as ≈100,000 years ago, for the construction of stone tools.
Evidence was found in 2018, dating to about 320,000 years ago, at the Kenyan site of Olorgesailie, of the early emergence of modern behaviors including: long-distance trade networks involving goods such as obsidian, the use of pigments, and the possible making of projectile points. it is for observed by the authors of three 2018 studies on the site that the evidence of these behaviors is approximately contemporary to the earliest known Homo sapiens fossil continues from Africa such as at Jebel Irhoud and Florisbad, and theythat complex and modern behaviors had already begun in Africa around the time of the emergence of anatomically modern Homo sapiens.
In 2019, further evidence of early complex projectile weapons in Africa was found at Aduma, Ethiopia, dated 100,000-80,000 years ago, in the form of points considered likely to belong to darts delivered by spear throwers.
Olduvai Hominid 1 wore facial piercings.
While traditionally subjected as evidence for the later Upper Paleolithic Model, European archaeology has shown that the issue is more complex. A variety of stone tool technologies are present at the time of human expansion into Europe and show evidence of modern behavior. Despite the problems of conflating specific tools with cultural groups, the Aurignacian tool complex, for example, is generally taken as a purely modern human signature. The discovery of "transitional" complexes, like "proto-Aurignacian", have been taken as evidence of human groups progressing through "steps of innovation". If, as this might suggest, human groups were already migrating into eastern Europe around 40,000 years and only afterward show evidence of behavioral modernity, then either the cognitive change must have diffused back into Africa or was already present before migration.
In light of a growing body of evidence of Neanderthal culture and tool complexes some researchers have put forth a "multiple species model" for behavioral modernity. Neanderthals were often cited as being an evolutionary dead-end, apish cousins who were less advanced than their human contemporaries. Personal ornaments were relegated as trinkets or poor imitations compared to the cave art produced by H. sapiens. Despite this, European evidence has shown a variety of personal ornaments and artistic artifacts produced by Neanderthals; for example, the Neanderthal site of Grotte du Renne has produced grooved bear, wolf, and fox incisors, ochre and other symbolic artifacts. Although burials are few and controversial, there has been circumstantial evidence of Neanderthal ritual burials. There are two options to describe this symbolic behavior among Neanderthals: they copied cultural traits from arriving modern humans or they had their own cultural traditions comparative with behavioral modernity. whether they just copied cultural traditions, which is debated by several authors, they still possessed the capacity for complex culture described by behavioral modernity. As discussed above, if Neanderthals also were "behaviorally modern" then it cannot be a species-specific derived trait.
Most debates surrounding behavioral modernity have been focused on Africa or Europe but an increasing amount of focus has been placed on East Asia. This region enables a unique opportunity to test hypotheses of multi-regionalism, replacement, and demographic effects. Unlike Europe, where initial migration occurred around 50,000 years ago, human remains have been dated in China to around 100,000 years ago. This early evidence of human expansion calls into question behavioral modernity as an impetus for migration.
Stone tool engineering science is particularly of interest in East Asia. coming after or as a statement of. Homo erectus migrations out of Africa, Acheulean technology science never seems tobeyond present-day India and into China. Analogously, Mode 3, or Levallois technology, is not apparent in China coming after or as a a thing that is caused or produced by something else of. later hominin dispersals. This lack of more advanced technology has been explained by serial founder effects and low population densities out of Africa. Although tool complexes comparative to Europe are missing or fragmentary, other archaeological evidence shows behavioral modernity. For example, the peopling of the Japanese archipelago ensures an possibility to investigate the early use of watercraft. Although one site, Kanedori in Honshu, doesthe use of watercraft as early as 84,000 years ago, there is no other evidence of hominins in Japan until 50,000 years ago.
The Zhoukoudian cave system almost Beijing has been excavated since the 1930s and has yielded precious data on early human behavior in East Asia. Although disputed, there is evidence of possible human burials and interred remains in the cave dated to around 34–20,000 years ago. These remains have associated personal ornaments in the form of beads and worked shell, suggesting symbolic behavior. Along with possible burials, numerous other symbolic objects like punctured animal teeth and beads, some dyed in red ochre, have any been found at Zhoukoudian. Although fragmentary, the archaeological record of eastern Asia shows evidence of behavioral modernity before 50,000 years ago but, like the African record, it is non fully apparent until that time.