The Aurignacian (/ɔːrɪɡˈneɪʃən/) is an archaeological industry of the Upper Paleolithic associated with Early European modern humans (EEMH) lasting from 43,000 to 26,000 years ago. The Upper Paleolithic developed in Europe some time after the Levant, where the Emiran period and the Ahmarian period form the first periods of the Upper Paleolithic, corresponding to the first stages of the expansion of Homo sapiens out of Africa.[4] They then migrated to Europe and created the first European culture of modern humans, the Aurignacian.[5]
The Proto-Aurignacian and the Early Aurignacian stages are dated between about 43,000 and 37,000 years ago. The Aurignacian proper lasted from about 37,000 to 33,000 years ago. A Late Aurignacian phase transitional with the Gravettian dates to about 33,000 to 26,000 years ago.[6][5]
The type site is the Cave of Aurignac, Haute-Garonne, south-west France. The main preceding period is the Mousterian of the Neanderthals.
A "Levantine Aurignacian" culture is known from the Levant, with a type of blade technology very similar to the European Aurignacian, following chronologically the Emiran and Early Ahmarian in the same area of the Near East, and also closely related to them.[7] The Levantine Aurignacian may have preceded European Aurignacian, but there is a possibility that the Levantine Aurignacian was rather the result of reverse influence from the European Aurignacian: this remains unsettled.[8]
The Aurignacian tool industry is characterized by worked bone or antler points with grooves cut in the bottom. Their flint tools include fine blades and bladelets struck from prepared cores rather than using crude flakes.[10] The people of this culture also produced some of the earliest known cave art, such as the animal engravings at Trois Freres and the paintings at Chauvet cave in southern France. They also made pendants, bracelets, and ivory beads, as well as three-dimensional figurines. Perforated rods, thought to be spear throwers or shaft wrenches, also are found at their sites.
Aurignacian figurines have been found depicting faunal representations of the time period associated with now-extinct mammals, including mammoths, rhinoceros, and tarpan, along with anthropomorphized depictions that may be interpreted as some of the earliest evidence of religion.
Many 35,000-year-old animal figurines were discovered in the Vogelherd Cave in Germany.[11] One of the horses, amongst six tiny mammoth and horse ivory figures found previously at Vogelherd, was sculpted as skillfully as any piece found throughout the Upper Paleolithic. The production of ivory beads for body ornamentation was also important during the Aurignacian. The famous paintings in Chauvet cave date from this period.
Typical statuettes consist of women that are called Venus figurines. They emphasize the hips, breasts, and other body parts associated with fertility. Feet and arms are lacking or minimized. One of the most ancient figurines is the Venus of Hohle Fels, discovered in 2008 in the Hohle Fels cave in Germany. The figurine has been dated to 35,000 years ago and is the earliest known, undisputed example of a depiction of a human being in prehistoric art.[12][13] The Lion-man of Hohlenstein-Stadel, found in the Hohlenstein-Stadel cave of Germany's Swabian Alb and dated to 40,000 years ago, is the oldest known anthropomorphic animal figurine in the world.
Aurignacian finds include bone flutes. The oldest undisputed musical instrument was the Hohle Fels Flute discovered in the Hohle Fels cave in Germany's Swabian Alb in 2008.[14] The flute is made from a vulture's wing bone perforated with five finger holes, and dates to approximately 35,000-40,000 years ago.[14] A flute was also found at the Abri Blanchard in southwestern France.[15]
Gallery
Decorated ivory pendant from Stajnia Cave, Poland, c. 41,500 BP[16]
Stone tools from the Aurignacian culture are known as Mode 4, characterized by blades (rather than flakes, typical of mode 2 Acheulean and mode 3 Mousterian) from prepared cores. Also seen throughout the Upper Paleolithic is a greater degree of tool standardization and the use of bone and antler for tools. Based on the research of scraper reduction and paleoenvironment, the early Aurignacian group moved seasonally over greater distances to procure reindeer herds within cold and open environments than those of the earlier tool cultures.[17]
A 2019 demographic analysis estimated a mean population of 1,500 persons (upper limit: 3,300; lower limit: 800) for western and central Europe during the Aurignacian period (~42,000 to 33,000 y cal BP).[21]
A 2005 study estimated the population of Upper Palaeolithic Europe from 40–30 thousand years ago was 1,738–28,359 (average 4,424).[22]
The sophistication and self-awareness demonstrated in the work led archaeologists to consider the makers of Aurignacian artifacts the first modern humans in Europe. Human remains and Late Aurignacian artifacts found in juxtaposition support this inference. Although finds of human skeletal remains in direct association with Proto-Aurignacian technologies are scarce in Europe, the few available are also probably modern human. The best dated association between Aurignacian industries and human remains are those of at least five individuals from the Mladeč caves in the Czech Republic, dated by direct radiocarbon measurements of the skeletal remains to at least 31,000–32,000 years old.[10]
At least three robust, but typically anatomically-modern, individuals from the Peștera cu Oase cave in Romania, were dated directly from the bones to ca. 35,000–36,000 BP. Although not associated directly with archaeological material, these finds are within the chronological and geographical range of the Early Aurignacian in southeastern Europe.[10] On genetic evidence it has been argued that both Aurignacian and the Dabba culture of North Africa came from an earlier big game huntingLevantine Aurignacian culture of the Levant.[23]
The Aurignacian material culture is associated with the expansion of 'early West Eurasians' during the Upper-Paleolithic, replacing or merging with previous Initial Upper Paleolithic cultures to which possibly relates the European Châtelperronian.[29][30]
The entrance to the Potočka Zijalka, a cave in the Eastern Karavanke, where the remains of a human residence dated to the Aurignacian (40,000 to 30,000 BP) were found[32]
^H. Martin (1906). "Industrie Moustérienne perfectionnée. Station de La Quina (Charente)". Bulletin de la Société Préhistorique de France (in French). 3 (6): 233–239. doi:10.3406/bspf.1906.7784. JSTOR27906750.(subscription required)
^Williams, John K. (2006). "The Levantine Aurignacian: a closer look"(PDF). Lisbon: Instituto Português de Arqueologia (Trabalhos de Arqueologia Bar-Yosef O, Zilhão J, Editors. Towards a Definition of the Aurignacian. 45): 317–352.
^Fu 2016: "GoyetQ116-1 is chronologically associated with the Aurignacian cultural complex. Thus, the subsequent spread of the Vestonice Cluster, which is associated with the Gravettian cultural complex, shows that the spread of the latter culture was mediated at least in part by population movements."
^ abcMellars, P. (2006). "Archeology and the Dispersal of Modern Humans in Europe: Deconstructing the Aurignacian". Evolutionary Anthropology. 15 (5): 167–182. doi:10.1002/evan.20103. S2CID85316570.
^Talamo, Sahra; et al. (2021). "A 41,500 year-old decorated ivory pendant from Stajnia Cave (Poland)". Scientific Reports. 11 (1): 22078. Bibcode:2021NatSR..1122078T. doi:10.1038/s41598-021-01221-6. PMC8626500. PMID34837003. S2CID244699451. Here, we report the discovery of the oldest known human-modified punctate ornament, a decorated ivory pendant from the Paleolithic layers at Stajnia Cave in Poland. ... The punctate decorative motif is one of the artistic innovations that developed during the Early Aurignacian in Europe and the Eurasian Upper Paleolithic in the Russian Plains. Thus far, these marks on mobile objects have been interpreted as hunting tallies, arithmetic counting systems, or lunar notation, whereas others have suggested aesthetic purposes. The looping curve represented on the Stajnia pendant is similar to the engraved patterns of the Blanchard plaque. Whether these marks indicate cyclic notations or kill scores remain an open question, although the resemblance with the lunar analemma is striking.
^Seguin-Orlando, Andaine; Korneliussen, Thorfinn S. (28 November 2014). "Genomic structure in Europeans dating back at least 36,200 years". Science. 346 (6213): 1113–1118. Bibcode:2014Sci...346.1113S. doi:10.1126/science.aaa0114. PMID25378462. S2CID206632421. The few AMH fossils associated with these initial UP industries are morphologically variable. In western Eurasia, the distinctive Aurignacian toolkit, first observed at Willendorf (Austria) by 43.5 ka, became predominant across the earlier range by 39 ka. Although analyses of ancient human genomes have advanced our understanding of the European past, revealing contributions from Paleolithic Siberians, European Mesolithic, and Near Eastern Neolithic groups to the European gene pool, the possible contribution of the earliest Eurasians to these later cultures and to contemporary human populations remains unknown. To investigate this, we sequenced the genome of Kostenki 14 (K14, Markina Gora)
^Hoffecker, John F. (January 2011). "The early upper Paleolithic of eastern Europe reconsidered". Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews. 20 (1): 24–39. doi:10.1002/evan.20284. PMID22034081. S2CID32216495. The determination of a complete genome from ancient mtDNA extracted from a skeleton associated with Layer III at Kostenki 14 indicates that mtDNA subgroup U2 is represented among the people who occupied the central East European Plain at ca. 35,000 cal BP. This subgroup is widely distributed today in southern and central Asia, the Near East, and Europe, and is linked to one of the oldest genetic markers in Europe, mtDNA haplogroup U. At Kostenki 14, this subgroup is associated with artifacts assigned to the Gorodtsovan Culture but reinterpreted here as an Eastern Aurignacian assemblage.
^Bocquet-Appel, J.-P.; Demars, P.-Y.; Noiret, L.; Dobrowsky, D. (2005). "Estimates of Upper Palaeolithic meta-population size in Europe from archaeological data". Journal of Archaeological Science. 32 (11): 1656–1668. Bibcode:2005JArSc..32.1656B. doi:10.1016/j.jas.2005.05.006.
^Forster, P.; Romano, V.; Olivieri, A.; Achilli, A.; Pala, M.; Battaglia, V.; Fornarino, S.; Al-Zahery, N.; Scozzari, R.; Cruciani, F.; Behar, D. M.; Dugoujon, J.-M.; Coudray, C.; Santachiara-Benerecetti, A. S.; Semino, O.; Bandelt, H.-J.; Torroni, A. (2007). "Timing of a Back-Migration into Africa". Science. 316 (5821): 50–53. doi:10.1126/science.316.5821.50. PMID17412938. S2CID34614953., "Sequencing of 81 entire human mitochondrial DNAs (mtDNAs) belonging to haplogroups M1 and U6 reveals that these predominantly North African clades arose in southwestern Asia and moved together to Africa about 40,000 to 45,000 years ago. Their arrival temporally overlaps with the event(s) that led to the peopling of Europe by modern humans and was most likely the result of the same change in climate conditions that allowed humans to enter the Levant, opening the way to the colonization of both Europe and North Africa. Thus, the early Upper Palaeolithic population(s) carrying M1 and U6 did not return to Africa along the southern coastal route of the "out of Africa" exit, but from the Mediterranean area; and the North African Dabban and European Aurignacian industries derived from a common Levantine source."
^Vallini, Leonardo; Marciani, Giulia; Aneli, Serena; Bortolini, Eugenio; Benazzi, Stefano; Pievani, Telmo; Pagani, Luca (2022-04-07). "Genetics and Material Culture Support Repeated Expansions into Paleolithic Eurasia from a Population Hub Out of Africa". Genome Biology and Evolution. 14 (4): evac045. doi:10.1093/gbe/evac045. ISSN1759-6653. PMC9021735. PMID35445261. The UP branch would have then emerged from a putative OoA population Hub well after 45 ka, a scenario that finds support in previous hypotheses on the appearance of UP techno-complexes (e.g. Aurignacian) in Europe, although the role of migrations and exchange between Europe, Western Asia, and the Levant is still debated (Conard 2002; Mellars 2006; Teyssandier 2006; Davies 2007; Hoffecker 2009; Le Brun-Ricalens et al. 2009; Nigst et al. 2014; Zilhão 2014; Hublin 2015; Bataille et al. 2020; Falcucci et al. 2020).
^ abLanger, William L., ed. (1972). An Encyclopedia of World History (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company. p. 9. ISBN978-0-395-13592-1.
^Debeljak, Irena; Turk, Matija. "Potočka zijalka". In Šmid Hribar, Mateja; Torkar, Gregor; Golež, Mateja; et al. (eds.). Enciklopedija naravne in kulturne dediščine na Slovenskem – DEDI (in Slovenian). Archived from the original on 2012-05-15. Retrieved 12 March 2012.