Acheulean Hominins and Out of Africa Dispersals: Challenges and Advances

Summary

The dispersal of Acheulean hominins outside of Africa is one of the most important research areas in human evolutionary studies, having been the topic of paleoanthropologists and archaeologists for many decades. Yet, precise knowledge about the timing and geographic movement of archaic hominins across Eurasia is still in its infancy. The aim of this presentation is to discuss what we currently know about the distribution of Acheulean hominins, and to report on new field work findings in southern Asia, particularly in the Indian subcontinent and the Arabian peninsula. We examine technological trends and present new information on the dating of archaeological sites. We examine the role that climate change plays in the demographic history of Acheulean hominins and whether there is temporal overlap of archaic species and advancing groups of Homo sapiens populations. We address long-standing questions about whether Acheulean tool-making hominins moved into Eastern Asia, and the implications of this information with respect to our evolutionary history.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20630