A demographic perspective on the Middle to Later Stone Age transition from Nasera rockshelter, Tanzania

作者：Tryon Christian A^*; Faith J Tyler

来源：Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences, 2016, 371(1698): 20150238.

DOI：10.1098/rstb.2015.0238

• modern human origins
• East Africa
• residential mobility
• paleodemography

Increased population density is among the proposed drivers of the behavioural changes culminating in the Middle to Later Stone Age (MSA-LSA) transition and human dispersals from East Africa, but reliable archaeological measures of demographic change are lacking. We use Late Pleistocene-Holocene lithic and faunal data from Nasera rockshelter (Tanzania) to show progressive declines in residential mobility-a variable linked to population density-and technological shifts, the latter associated with environmental changes. These data suggest that the MSA-LSA transition is part of a long-term pattern of changes in residential mobility and technology that reflect human responses to increased population density, with dispersals potentially marking a complementary response to larger populations.
This article is part of the themed issue 'Major transitions in human evolution'.

• 出版日期2016-7-5