Subscription Center
This Web-only article is a special rich-media presentation of the feature, "When the Sea Saved Humanity," which appears in the August 2010 issue of Scientific American. The presentation was created by Zemi media. Find all our other interactive offerings here.
July 21, 2010 | 25
See what we're tweeting about
Deadline: Jul 14 2013
Reward: $1,000,000 USD
This is a Reduction-to-Practice Challenge that requires written documentation and&
Deadline: Jul 30 2013
Reward: $100,000 USD
The Seeker desires a method for producing pseudoephedrine products in such a way that it will be extremely difficult for clandestine che
Powered By: 
YES! Send me a free issue of Scientific American with no obligation to continue the subscription. If I like it, I will be billed for the one-year subscription.
25 Comments
Add CommentMust have been a crowded place with all the other mammals!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMust have been a crowded place with all those other mammals!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe work of Elaine Morgan makes sense in this scene.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe work of Elaine Morgan makes sense in this scene
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is very intriguing, the work being done there by these teams. All this long forgotten history be re discovered is fascinating.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow did they date the age of the relevant cave deposits to 164K BP?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe relevant deposits in the ave were dated to 164K BP. How was the dating acccomplished?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDuring the Stone Age, coastal hunters sheltered in some of the caves from todays italian Mediterranean Sea shore cliffs. In the case of Modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens), who displaced Neanderthals in Europe and western Asia between 45,000 and 24,000 BP, the Grimaldi site helps in the understanding heralding the Upper Palaeolithic behaviour of humankind. Natural cavities at the base of this cliff, at Grimaldi (Ventimiglia, Italy), have provided rock-shelters for humans dating back to 300,000 years ago.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere, groups developed techniques and material equipment that were culturally distinctive, giving us the opportunity to see mankind in the same way as a biologist has the ability to see life, and to note similarities and dissimilarities with the living.
The Gravettian layer, precisely defined by the AMH, demonstrates the technical skills of the phase. The Cro-Magnons, like the Neanderthals, were seasonally-nomadic; however, the diversity of the resources exploited within the territory along the Grimaldi sea coast suggests a longer-term site within which a complex symbolic culture developed.
PINILLA B., PEREZ-PEREZ A., PUECH B. & P.-F. PUECH (manuscript) Usure Dentaire et Mode Masticatoire de la Dame du Cavillon : variabilit� de la nourriture des hommes modernes lors du premier maximum glaciaire, in H. de Lumley (ed): La Dame du Cavillon. Paris : Institut de Pal�ontologie Humaine.
Pierre-Fran�ois PUECH pfpuech@yahoo.fr
CAN WE STILL HEAR THE CRO-MAGNON MAN is available free at: independent.academia.edu/pfpuech/Papers
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPierre Francois PUECH
Marean mentions that the first substantial wave of migration out of Africa was around 50,000 years ago. But many other sources have mentioned 80,000 to 100,000 years ago. Could there be a conflict here? Also, the Neandertals had definitely become established in Europe before the start of MIS6. I am having trouble resolving the time lines.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne quibble about Marean's theory of heat treating:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHeating buried stones to 617 � F. would take a very hot fire since most of the heat from an open fire would be lost upward into the air.
Not impossible though: I myself have created great heat (no way to measure it at the time) deep in sand by burning wood down to charcoal and then lightly covering the still smoldering charcoal.
Fascinating the Elaine Morgan posited the theory that there appeared to be a "marine period" in early human evolution - this was in the mid-1970s! This So. African site certainly fits that idea very well.
very, very cool.......It all happened in Africa way before Europe!!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVery, very, cool...It all happened in Africa waaay before Europe...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI always thought that nip-tide was when sun and moon were aligned on opposite sides of the Earth and spring-tide when they were aligned on the same side of the Earth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWas I wrong?
They must have fixed the dates using Carbon-14 analysis. The presentation stated that the inhabitants created microblades by heating rocks. This means campfires, and also means a history of when those fires were made, based on analysis of the charcoal remnants found.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat makes it interesting is the fact that we are (Humanity) descendents from a very small group of genitors, interbreeding closely and sharing a relatively uniform culture. Those of us still inclined to think one sup specie of Homo S is superior to another are confronted with an unwanted reality. Where does the clean slate theory stand (Hume) in this scenario. ?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSurely the sea-level at Pinnacle Point would have been much lower during MSI6 than it is today. The shore-line could have been a hundred meters lower and kilometers away.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCan we somehow boycot and report the behavior of the 2 previous posters?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAgree to keep marketing out.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHumanity has followed the path of several species; namely that of the cheetha; which 10000 years ago became almost extinct and has since suffered from the resulting genetic poverty .
It is probable that several times during our long evolution from the unicellular mode to the present state, we came close to going the way of the dynosaures.
Listened to the podcast on my iPhone, and came right here. Disappointed that there was nothing to see. Maybe next time your vendor could use HTML5. :-(
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor the past few weeks I've been watching these videos almost nightly with my 15 month old son. They really help him settle down to sleep, or close to it. And it's definitely not from boredom; he gets upset when I pause them and switch to another window so the video can buffer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't know if it's Dr. Marean's voice or mannerisms, but my son is fascinated. And I must say I don't mind a bit watching them over and over myself. I doubt my son has learned all that much, but I have.
Thanks!
I saw one possible flaw in the article. The author supposes the ocean currents that promoted upwelling in this region were as strong as they are today. With the kinds of climate changes associated with the ice ages, is it not possible the upwelling was not like it is today? Could the ocean currents not act the same? A drop of several hundred meters in sea level could affect local currents by causing under water features to dry up and interfere with local currents.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPrehistoric man probably depended a lot more on the process of trial and error than modern anthropologists believe. For example, if you were a prehistoric human banging two rocks together to make blades, you'd probably get a whole lot of chips that were too small to be of much use... ie, the aforementioned "bladelets". In fact, that's precisely what the sharp stone chips uncovered in South Africa look like -- discarded pieces of stone as opposed to arrowheads. Similarly, prehistoric humans probably lined their firepits with rocks much like modern campers, then subsequently discovered that that these stones made better blades than the un-heat-treated variety.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGreat work. How encouraging to see an anthropologist actually taking the idea seriously that coastal life might have played a major part in human evolution and going to the trouble to obtain empirical data to test it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt seems to me that if humans lived on the coasts ca 165Ka then they must have moved through water than our chimp ancestors too. If they moved more, they drowned more and this, simply, would provide enough selection to support Hardy's/Morgan's ironically labelled "aquatic ape" theory - even if Hardy's timescale may have been way out.
Some of the main Special Collector's Edition article, and its predecessors, I think, are baffling to me. First of all, the map on p. 55 of the article isn't identified clearly. Does that show today's Africa, which I hope it does, or is it supposed to be the world during Marine Isotope Stage 6, which one could justifiably conclude from the caption? I guess it has to be the former, because it is patently untrue from that map that "Only a handful of regions could have had the natural resources to support groups of hunter-gatherers."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThen, I have to wonder about the statement, "Only a few regions could have supported our species, namely, those with grassland or Mediterranean scrub vegetation." Is the author saying that only grassland or Mediterranean shrub biomes survived in Africa at that time?
All of humanity bottled up along the southern coast, closer to the Antarctic than any other part of the continent, during an ice age? Perhaps they weren't as smart as the author supposes after all. Or else I'm not.
Evidence for the existence and persistence of today's Benguela upwelling and Agulas current through those major climatic shifts?
What am I missing?