The Initial Upper Paleolithic (also IUP, c. 50,000–40,000 BP) covers the first stage of the Upper Paleolithic, during which modern human populations expanded throughout Eurasia.
Technology, art and distribution
The Initial Upper Paleolithic period is characterized by a broadly shared material culture and tools associated with an early modern human dispersal >45kya. These IUP tools are characterized by a combination of elements of the Levallois technique (faceted platforms, hard hammer percussion, flat-faced cores). There are broadly two major IUP-affilated types: 'microlithic blades' (or microblades) and 'core & flakes' (or CAF assemblages). While most archaeologists agree on the existence of a shared set of traits, it remains unclear how much those can be related to a single demic diffusion event, or be explained by cultural transmission or convergence.[2][3][4]
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Microblade and core & flake sites in Eastern Asia
The dispersal of IUP-affilated material culture into Europe, Central Asia and Siberia as well as Northwest China may stem from a distinct migration wave than the dispersal of IUP-affilated material culture into the South, Southeast and East Asian region as well as Oceania.[2][5] While the IUP types in Europe, Central Asia and Siberia, such as the Bacho Kiro, Ust'-Ishim, and Kara-Bom sites, are primarily affilated with microblades, the IUP-types in South, Southeast, and East Asia, as well as Oceania, such as the Tianyuan site, are primarily affilated with core and flake tools. A distinct type of IUP-affilated technology has also been found in Nwya Devu, a Paleolithic site on the Tibetan plateau.[6][5]
In Eastern Asia the Initial Upper Paleolithic corresponds to the spread of 'core & flakes'. Although there is a sharp border between core/flake-based tools in Northern China and nearby blade-based tools in Mongolia, the Shuidonggou site displays both types, pointing to a period of contact or adaption.[6] The 'core & flake' tools may be associated with the major source of ancestry for modern Eastern Asians, having arrived in East Asia via a southern route through South Asia into Southeast Asia and subsequently rapidly expanding northwards.[7][8][9]
In Europe and Central Asia, the Initial Upper Paleolithic corresponds to the spread of a particular techno-complex in Eurasia,[10] to which possibly relates the European Châtelperronian.[11] The European UP-affilated Aurignacian complex (Protoaurignacian and Early Aurignacian) with its famous Cave art seems to correspond to another, later, human wave which spread through the Levant area.[10] In effect Aurignacian (42,000-28,000 BP) layers generally postdate late Mousterian and Initial Upper Paleolithic assemblages.[12] Aurignacian seems to have emerged out of the Initial Upper Paleolithic around 43,000 to 42,000 cal BP, in a process that is yet to be determined.[13]
Initial Upper Paleolithic sites are considered as forming the earliest culture of modern humans in Europe.[10][18] However, these people do not appear to have been the ancestors of later Europeans as the very few ancient DNA (aDNA) samples recovered from this period are not related to later samples.[19] They ended in Bacho Kiro cave and Oase, but this wave of colonization did not go as far as Western Europe and apparently was not successful.[20]
Ancient East Eurasians and Ancient West Eurasians diverged around 46,000 years ago, with Ancient East Eurasians rapidly further diverging since 45,000 years ago, which aligns with the timeframe of the Initial Upper Paleolithic.[17]
These early Eurasian populations probably mated episodically with Neanderthals in the period between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago, probably during the initial phase of their expansion in the Middle East, and they carried ~2–9% Neanderthal ancestry in their genomes.[21] It is also considered that the early modern human coexisted with Neanderthals in Europe for a period of about 3,000–5,000 years.[22]
Among the earliest modern humans which have been directly dated to this period are:[23]
These individuals (except Tianyuan)[26] did not contribute substantially to modern humans, although showing some similarities with modern Siberian people, but from around 37,000 a new wave of modern humans emerged, creating a single founder population, which became ancestral to modern Europeans, exemplified by individuals such as Kostenki-14.[27]
^Bennett, E. Andrew; Liu, Yichen; Fu, Qiaomei (3 December 2024). "Reconstructing the Human Population History of East Asia through Ancient Genomics". Elements in Ancient East Asia. doi:10.1017/9781009246675. ISBN978-1-009-24667-5. ... ancient and modern genomic studies appear to favor a southern route into East Asia for the majority of genetic diversity present there today. ... If these East Asian IUP sites were to be linked to populations related to Ust' Ishim it would appear these people left no detectable genetic legacy in modern East Asia. It may also be found that the material at some of these IUP sites was created by populations derived from East Asian lineages linked to or branching from Tianyuan.
^ abcHublin, Jean-Jacques; Sirakov, Nikolay (11 May 2020). "Initial Upper Palaeolithic Homo sapiens from Bacho Kiro Cave, Bulgaria"(PDF). Nature. 581 (7808): 299–302. Bibcode:2020Natur.581..299H. doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2259-z. PMID32433609. S2CID218592678. Archaeological and palaeontological evidence strongly suggest that the initial modern colonization of eastern Europe and central Asia should be related to the spread of techno-complexes assigned to the Initial Upper Palaeolithic. This first expansion may have started as early as 48 ka cal BP. The earliest phases of the Aurignacian complex (Protoaurignacian and Early Aurignacian) seem to represent another modern wave of migrations, starting in the Levant area. The expansion of this techno-complex throughout Europe completed the modern colonization of the continent.
^Tryon, Christian A. (12 December 2015). "The Aurignacian Viewed from Africa". Palethnologie. Archéologie et sciences humaines (7). doi:10.4000/palethnologie.693. ISSN2108-6532. In many parts of Europe and the Levant, Aurignacian strata postdate a complex array of regionally specific late Mousterian and Initial Upper Paleolithic assemblages variably attributed to Neanderthals and H. sapiens that likely record an interval of profound behavioral and demographic changes
^Hublin, Jean-Jacques (15 June 2015). "The modern human colonization of western Eurasia: when and where?". Quaternary Science Reviews. 118: 194–210. Bibcode:2015QSRv..118..194H. doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2014.08.011. hdl:11858/00-001M-0000-0024-11F6-F. Over a geographical domain, covering a large portion of Eurasia, the IUP displays a number of shared features in terms of blank production. Although its exact chronology is still under investigation, the start of its expansion out of southwest Asia most likely predates 47 ka cal BP, as suggested by the dates obtained at Bohunice (Richter et al., 2009) and Kara-Bom (Goebel et al., 1993). This early expansion would be more in agreement with an older date for the beginning of the IUP (Marks, 1983) than with those produced at Ksar Akil (Douka et al., 2013) and Üçagızlı (Kuhn et al., 2009). The recent discovery of the femur of Ust-Ischim in Siberia, directly dated at 45 ka BP and indisputably modern both anatomically and genetically, completes the more fragmentary discoveries from Ksar Akil (layer XXV), Üçagızlı and Bacho Kiro (layer 11), and brings support to the notion that the IUP represents a wave of migrations of fully modern humans. This wave, however, might not have been completely successful and apparently did not make it to western Europe.
^ abPrüfer, Kay; Posth, Cosimo (June 2021). "A genome sequence from a modern human skull over 45,000 years old from Zlatý kůň in Czechia". Nature Ecology & Evolution. 5 (6): 820–825. Bibcode:2021NatEE...5..820P. doi:10.1038/s41559-021-01443-x. ISSN2397-334X. PMC8175239. PMID33828249. A female individual from Zlatý kůň, Czechia. We found that she belonged to a population that appears to have contributed genetically neither to later Europeans nor to Asians. (...) A complete genome has been produced from the ~45,000-year-old remains of Ust'-Ishim, a Siberian individual who showed no genetic continuity to later Eurasians. This contrasts with the ~40,000-year-old East Asian individual from Tianyuan whose genome is more closely related to many present-day Asians and Native Americans than to Europeans. From Europe, only the partial genome of an individual called Oase 1 and dated to ~40 ka has been recovered, and this showed no evidence of shared ancestry with later Europeans
^Hajdinjak et al. 2021, p. 253, "They have been directly radiocarbon-dated to between 45,930 and 42,580 calibrated years before present (cal. BP), and their mitochondrial genomes are of the modern human type, suggesting that they are the oldest Upper Palaeolithic modern humans that have been recovered in Europe.".
^Fu, Qiaomei (2016). "The genetic history of Ice Age Europe". Nature. 534 (7606): 200–205. Bibcode:2016Natur.534..200F. doi:10.1038/nature17993. PMC4943878. PMID27135931. Whereas the earliest modern humans in Europe did not contribute substantially to present-day Europeans, all individuals between ~37,000 and ~14,000 years ago descended from a single founder population which forms part of the ancestry of present-day Europeans." (...) "First, at least some of the initial modern humans to appear in Europe, exemplified by Ust'-Ishim and Oase1, failed to contribute appreciably to the current European gene pool. Only from around 37,000 years ago do all the European individuals analyzed share ancestry with present-day Europeans
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