THE UNKNOWN HISTORY OF PREHISTORIC GREECE
THE PELASGIANS AGAINST HOSTILE NATURE AND THE HARSH CLIMATE
In the same period, the Pliocene (12-2 million years ago), giant conifers grow: Sequoiadendron, Cedar, Glyptostrobus, Alder, Sassafras, etc. In the Pleistocene, flora and fauna in Greece change.
Some species disappear, new species such as the Woolly Rhinoceros and the Woolly Mammoth make their appearance. Dwarf forms of elephants, rhinoceroses and hippos are created on the islands of the Aegean. However, there were also animals with a form reminiscent of their current counterparts, ancestors of lions and cows, bison, panthers, lynxes, bears, wild boars.
Abandoning the life of hunter-gatherers to engage in agriculture and animal husbandry, Neolithic people began to exterminate animals, starting with mammoths and dwarf elephants of the Aegean. Gradually, bison, leopards, lions and other large mammals disappeared. However, the existence of lions is attested to in sources from the 2nd century AD, while leopards and cheetahs are depicted with great fidelity in vases and mosaics.
Macedonia is the land that gave us the only great anthropological relic of the Pleistocene, the skull of the Neanderthal of Petralona (possibly from a woman, about 25 years old). The first tools of the Middle Paleolithic period were found in Thessaly, on the banks of the Pinios River, near Larissa and are dated together with fossilized zoological remains to the early phase of the Upper Pleistocene (100,000-50,000 years ago). The great abundance of scrapers shows that people processed animal skins. They may have been collected in the camps before or after hunting, or perhaps they stayed for a while.
But also in other places in the interior of the country, Middle Paleolithic tools have been identified (Kranona, Theopetra, near Kalambaka). Usually, on the banks of a ravine or a marsh, in a major passage and certainly in places frequented by herds of animals.
There are also reliable indications of modern settlement of caves or shelters under rocks.
The most important and abundant findings of the Middle Paleolithic have been found so far in Epirus, mainly in the valley of the Louros River, at the site of Kokkinopilos (50,000-35,000 years ago). Similar tools have been found in 15 other sites in Epirus, always in red clay. In the Asprohaliko cave, a little further south, bones of bears, deer species, rhinoceroses, etc. were found.
Remains of Paleolithic man have also been found in the Ionian Islands, mainly in Corfu, again in red clay (Gravas cave). This is explained if we consider that during the glacial period, when the sea level was at least 100 m lower than today, Corfu was connected to Epirus. Thus, the hunters of Asprohalikos, for example, could easily reach there by following their prey.
In Zakynthos, as in Kefalonia, there are Paleolithic traces. Fossilized bones of large mammals testify that the islands communicated with the opposite mainland.
The Peloponnese was certainly inhabited during the Upper Pleistocene period. In 1960, the first Middle Paleolithic tools were found in its westernmost point, east of the Chlemoutsi Castle, as well as in the coastal area of western Achaia, from Lakkopetra in the north to Katakolo in the south. Findings at Vasilaki, near the Erymanthos valley, are convincing of the wider dissemination of the Middle Paleolithic and its possible spread throughout the Peloponnese.
Discoveries by Dim. Theocharis in Thrace, in N. Euboea and mainly in N. Sporades, (in Alonissos), are the oldest remains of the presence and activity of Paleolithic man in the Aegean. As in the Ionian Islands, so here, during periods of ice ages and low sea levels, most of the islands were united with Magnesia. Without a doubt, future research will provide many new details about the life of the man who perhaps lived to see the final phases of the submergence of the Aegean.
A skull found in a cave in southern Greece is the oldest Homo Sapiens fossil ever discovered in Europe, scientists announced on Wednesday (10.07.2019).
Until now, the earliest specimens of modern humans found in Europe were less than 45,000 years old. The skull found in the Apidima cave in Mani is almost five times older, dating back more than 210,000 years, according to researchers in the journal Nature.
The announcement of the significant discovery was made by a team of Greek and foreign scientists. The news is being reported internationally by scientific journals as the find is likely to reshape the story of how humans spread to Europe and may reshape theories about the history of our species, the New York Times writes.
As Ms. Harvati told APE-MPE, "the results of our research show the importance of the Greek area for human evolution. We have the oldest modern human outside Africa, which places the arrival of Homo sapiens in Europe more than 150 thousand years earlier than we thought until now. This work is the result of 25 years of my research in Africa, Europe and especially in Greece.
As a Greek, I hope that research in Greece will continue, as I believe that our country still has a lot to offer in the field of paleoanthropology." The researchers estimate that two groups lived in the Apidima cave, an early Homo sapiens population, which was later replaced by a Neanderthal population, who pre-existed in the wider area of southern Greece. In turn, the Neanderthals were replaced by ancestors of modern humans from the Upper Paleolithic period, whose earliest presence in the region dates back to about 40,000 years ago.
During the Upper Paleolithic period, about 40,000 years ago, newly arrived modern humans settled in the region, as in the rest of Europe. Their presence is confirmed by the excavation of finely crafted stone tools and other finds. On the other hand, the Neanderthals disappeared around the same time. “This discovery highlights the importance of Southeastern Europe in human evolution,” Ms. Harvati emphasized.
One of the few sites in Greece that preserves a stratigraphic sequence from at least the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic (40,000-10,000 BC) to the end of the Neolithic period (7,000-3,000 BC) is the Franchthi cave in SW Argolis.
In the Paleolithic and Mesolithic periods, Franchthi was a refuge for mobile hunters, gatherers and fishermen, who used tools made of hard and sharp stones, such as flint and obsidian, for their daily needs.
The Mesolithic is particularly important for the history of the cave, as it is associated with social and economic changes. The first burials, open sea voyages and the first examples of systematic fishing appear.
The earliest inhabitants of Greece were called Pelasgians, as were all the tribes that inhabited Greece in prehistoric times. Strabo mentions that the Pelasgian tribe lived in the Thessalian region called Pelasgian Argos and later called Pelasgiotida.
The Pelasgian was the first man to emerge from the earth and thus became the progenitor of mankind. “I believe that the Greek nation has always spoken the language it speaks today. At first, when it separated from the Pelasgians, it was small and weak, but its power increased when other nations, such as the Pelasgians, joined it…” (Herodotus I, 58)
(Pictured: Apidima 1 skull fragment and reconstruction. (Katerina Harvati, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen)
The 200,000 Years of Greeks
These findings were compared to modern Greek DNA samples. The results confirm Greek DNA is a straight continuum.
The research yielded Neanderthal and Homo sapiens fossils from the Palaeolithic era in Greece, supporting the current dating.
Apidima 1, the oldest evidence of Homo sapiens outside Africa is more than 150,000 years older than previous H. sapiens discovered in Europe.
It shows a mixture of modern human and primitive features, and is confirmed to be more than 210,000 years old (which made it even older than the Neanderthal skull "Apidima 2" found at the cave). The second oldest is the maxilla from Misliya cave, Mount Carmel, Israel, which was dated 190,000 years.
Over 20,000 bones, bone fragments, and teeth from various fauna had been collected by Theodore Pitsios and his team since 1978, making this DNA confirmation possible.
In addition to the genetic samples discovered, there were also primitive stone tools found, including hand axes.
Photo: Location of Apidima Cave on the western shore of Mani Peninsula in Southern Greece. Σπήλαιο Απήδημα (Spilaio Apidima) is a complex of five caves, and four smaller caves.
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Narrative:
{Apidima Cave:
[https://www.jstor.org/stable/29540829?seq=1]
The Apidima Cave (Greek: Σπήλαιο Απήδημα, Spilaio Apidima) is a complex of four small caves[2] located on the western shore of Mani Peninsula in southern Greece A systematic investigation of the cave has yielded Neanderthal and Homo sapiens fossils from the Palaeolithic era
One skull fossil, given the name Apidima 1, shows a mixture of modern human and primitive features and has been dated to be more than 210,000 years old, older than a Neanderthal skull ("Apidima 2") found at the cave, which makes Apidima 1 the oldest proof of Homo sapiens living outside Africa.
Apidima 1 is more than 150,000 years older than previous H. sapiens finds in Europe....}
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apidima_Cave
{Quarternary large mammals from the Apidima Caves (Lakonia, S Peloponnese, Greece):
Summary
The large mammalian remains from the most important Quaternary site in Apidima (South Peloponnese, Greece) have been studied in the present paper.
Two Middle Pleistocene hominid skulls, associated with many fossilized animal bones, as well as bone and lithic artefacts, underline the importance of this prehistoric site.
The study of the most representative specimens of the fauna showed the presence of carnivores, mainly felids, mustelids and foxes; herbivores, mainly small bovids and cervids; very large mammals, such as hippopotamids and elephants; as well as micro-mammals (leporids and rodents) and birds, which lived in the area from the Middle Pleistocene to Holocene.
From the study of this fauna the paleoecology and the paleoenvironment of the area are discussed, in con-junction with the Palaeolithic activities of the Man during this period...
Systematic Palaeontology Introduction
The paleontological study is mainly based on the determinable, well preserved and most representative large mammal material, as the statistical study of the bone fragments is given by L a x (1995).
The study took place in the Museum of Anthropology of Athens University, where this material is stored, during the years 1991-97.
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{Homo sapiens in the Peloponnese:A 210,000-year-old skull fragment found in southern Greece may be the oldest evidence of the presence of modern humans outside Africa
1978, a team of researchers from the University of Athens found two incomplete hominin skulls in the Apidima Cave, off the coast of the Mani peninsula in southern Greece.
Since then, the fragmented material, which was acquired in a geological context that makes dating difficult, had not been the subject of any research of significant impact.
Last month, an article published in the journal Nature by the team of Greek paleoanthropologist Katerina Harvati [https://uni-tuebingen.de/.../harvati-papatheodorou-katerina/]
of the University of Tübingen, Germany, put one of the skulls, named Apidima 1, at the center of a controversy. According to their research, the skeletal fragment probably belonged to a Homo sapiens who lived in the Peloponnese region 210,000 years ago.
If correct, this hypothesis would give Apidima 1 the status of being the oldest H. sapiens fossil found outside Africa, where modern man is believed to have originated approximately 350,000 years ago. Currently, the oldest fossil outside the African continent attributed to H. sapiens—although without absolute consensus—is a 190,000-year-old jawbone found in the Misliya Cave in Israel. Apidima 2, the other skull, is thought to be from a Neanderthal who inhabited the Mediterranean 170,000 years ago.
The Neanderthals, a hominin species that occupied part of Eurasia before Homo sapiens, with whom they coexisted in some locations, went extinct around 40,000 years ago.
The study’s findings are far from achieving a consensus. In June of this year, shortly before the article was published in Nature, French paleoanthropologist Marie-Antoinette de Lumley, from the Institute of Human Paleontology in Paris, released a 78-page pamphlet on the two Peloponnese skulls.
In the booklet, she classified Apidima 1 and Apidima 2 as representatives of a group of Homo erectus, a more archaic hominin species than modern humans, which was evolving toward becoming Neanderthals.
Lumley’s dating of the two skulls found an age of approximately 160,000 years, 50,000 years less than that obtained by the Harvati team for Apidima 1.
Other researchers also considered the 210,000-year-old age associated with the alleged H. sapiens skull fragment to be exaggerated. The authors of the Nature paper used a dating method based on the presence of certain atomic forms of the elements uranium and thorium in fossilized bone. The technique allows the dating of material up to 300,000 years old.
According to Warren Sharp, a researcher at the University of California at Berkeley and an expert on uranium dating, the results of the analysis of the Apidima 1 fragments were inconclusive and provided dates ranging from 300,000 to less than 40,000 years. “The apparent dates span a long period and we don’t know if any one of them is really reliable,” Sharp told Science.
The search for remnants of different species of hominins that, at different times in prehistory, left Africa—from the most archaic species such as Homo habilis and Homo erectus, to the most modern, H. sapiens—is an issue subject to review and debate as new findings appear, which are almost always controversial.
The Peloponnese skull fragments, in particular Apidima 1, will be one more such case. For Brazilian archaeologist Mark Hubbe of Ohio State University in the United States, the evidence found supports the conclusions of Harvati’s research.
“We must always keep in mind that the Apidima 1 fossil is composed of only part of the neurocranium,” Hubbe observes. “I don’t doubt that it really is from a modern human. But right now it’s hard to tell how it compares to other H. sapiens fossils from Africa.”
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{Humans may have reached Europe by 210,000 years ago:
By 40,000 years later, Neanderthals had taken over the site
A few fossilized bones from the back of a skull may prove that our species spread into Eurasia much earlier than previously suspected. A new study of the partial skull, which was excavated from Apidima Cave in southern Greece 40 years ago, suggests that the fossil is Homo sapiens and that it’s roughly 210,000 years old. That makes it the oldest member of our species ever found outside of Africa...
The result may offer an uncanny fossil snapshot of our complicated history with the Neanderthals. Genetic studies of Neanderthal DNA have suggested that those living in Europe sometime after 270,000 years ago met early waves of human migrants.
Those encounters left traces of human alleles in Neanderthal genomes, in the same way that Neanderthals, in turn, left traces in our modern genomes. Harvati says that Apidima 1 may be part of that long-lost group of humans who mingled with Neanderthals and then, apparently, disappeared.
Genetic evidence suggests that non-African populations today all descend from the wave of humans who dispersed into the rest of the world between 70,000 and 50,000 years ago. Older waves of dispersal, humans who left tools and bones at sites like Misliya, Qafzeh, and Skhul Caves in Israel, seem to have faded away without leaving descendants behind.
And at several of those sites in Israel, the fossil record contains Homo sapiens remains in earlier layers, followed by Neanderthals in later ones. That suggests that somehow, Neanderthals temporarily replaced humans living in the area. Something similar likely happened to the first wave (or waves) of humans in Europe, as well....}
A broken skull chiselled from a lump of rock in a cave in Greece is the oldest modern human fossil ever found outside Africa, researchers claim.
The partial skull was discovered in the Apidima cave on the Mani peninsula of the southern Peloponnese and has been dated to be at least 210,000 years old.
If the claim is verified – and many scientists want more proof – the finding will rewrite a key chapter of the human story, with the skull becoming the oldest known Homo sapiens fossil in Europe by more than 160,000 years.
Katerina Harvati Katerina Harvati [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katerina_Harvati], the director of paleoanthropology at the University of Tübingen in Germany, said the skull revealed that at least some modern humans had left Africa far earlier than previously thought and reached further geographically to settle as far away as Europe....}
[https://www.theguardian.com/.../piece-of-skull-found-in...]
"Apidima Cave fossils provide earliest evidence of Homo sapiens in Eurasia":
Abstract
Two fossilized human crania (Apidima 1 and Apidima 2) from Apidima Cave were discovered in the late 1970s but have remained enigmatic owing to their incomplete nature, taphonomic distortion and lack of archaeological context and chronology.
Here we virtually reconstruct both crania, provide detailed comparative descriptions and analyses, and date them using U-series radiometric methods. Apidima 2 dates to more than 170 thousand years ago and has a Neanderthal-like morphological pattern
By contrast, Apidima 1 dates to more than 210 thousand years ago and presents a mixture of modern human and primitive features. These results suggest that two late Middle Pleistocene human groups were present at this site an early Homo sapiens population, followed by a Neanderthal population.
Our findings support multiple dispersals of early modern humans out of Africa, and highlight the complex demographic processes that characterized Pleistocene human evolution and modern human presence in southeast Europe...cont'd @
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1376-z?proof=t