Tautavel Man

Tautavel Man (Homo erectus tautavelensis) is a proposed subspecies of Homo erectus, the type specimen being 450,000-year-old fossil remains discovered in the Arago Cave in Tautavel, France. Excavations began in 1964, with the first notable discovery occurring in 1969.[2]

Tautavel Man
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Primates
Suborder: Haplorhini
Infraorder: Simiiformes
Family: Hominidae
Subfamily: Homininae
Tribe: Hominini
Genus: Homo
Species:
H. erectus
Subspecies:
†H. e. tautavelensis
Trinomial name
Homo erectus tautavelensis
de Lumley and de Lumley 1971[1]
Site of discovery in Tautavel, France

History of excavations


The first person to find objects at the location did so during 1828. These were animal bones considered antediluvian by Marcel de Serres, a professional geologist at the University of Montpellier.[3] The Proto-Mousterian Industry tools[4] found by Jean Abélanet during 1963, initiated the beginning of the Lumley led excavations of 1964.[5]

Discovery and representative fossils

The skeletal remains of two individual hominins have been found in the cave: a female older than 40 (Arago II, July 1969), and a male aged no more than 20 (Arago XXI, July 1971, and Arago XLVII, July 1979).[1] Recovered stone tools originate from within a 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) radius of the cave, while animal bones suggest the inhabitants could travel up to 33 kilometres (21 mi) for food.[6]

All fossils recovered from Arago were found by Henry and Marie-Antoinette de Lumley and are now located at the Institute for Human Palaeontology in Paris. Arago II is a nearly complete mandible with six teeth from a 40–55 years old female. Arago XXI is a deformed cranial fragment featuring the most complete pre-Neanderthal face accompanied by a frontal and a sphenoid bone. Arago XLVII is a right parietal bone, the sutures of which fits perfectly with Arago XXI. The two latter have an estimated developmental age of twenty, while a uranium series dating produced a fossil age of c.400,000 years (this is near the maximum limit for this method and the fossil may be older.)[1]

The male skull has a flat and receding forehead with well-developed supraorbital ridges ("eyebrows") and a large face with rectangular eye sockets. The cranial cavity had a volume of 1,150 cubic centimetres (70 cu in). The rest of the skeleton has been reconstructed from 75 fossil remains and casts from fossils found at other sites; an interpretation suggesting in a sturdier skeleton than that of modern humans and a height of 1.65 metres (5 ft 5 in).[7][8]

Through the thousands of years from the time that Arago XXI died, changes occurred to the structure of the bone known as "taphonomic transformations", modifying the shape of skull.[9] These had caused parts of the bone to become slightly bent,[10] including the front of the skull to lose symmetry.[11] Three-dimensional imaging using computers allowed a morphometric analysis of the skull and this was used to compare with skull dimensions of Homo sapiens sapiens and also to obtain a computer generated image of the hominins face.[9]

Compared to H. erectus in North Africa and China, H. erectus tautavelensis is closer to early H. sapiens and thus form a morphologically distinct group together with other European Middle Pleistocene hominins found in Steinheim, Swanscombe, and Pontnewydd, because they show some of the characteristics of Neanderthals. The oldest indirect evidence of hominins in Europe dates to perhaps 1 to 2 million years ago and while Arago is certainly younger, the stalagmite floor under the cave deposits has been ambiguously dated to 700,000 years old by electron spin resonance but to 300,000 years old by thermoluminescence. No signs of fire, ash, charcoal, burned stone, or clay is documented in the cave which seems to suggest the art of fire is a recent discovery, though traces at a 1 to 4 million years old erectus site in East Africa indicate the opposite.[12]

Arago XXI

Arago XXI is a deformed cranial fragment dated to approximately 450,000 years. The skull was found by H. Lumley and M.A. Lumley in the Arago Cave located at Tautavel France.[13] The hominin was twenty years old as indicated by the state of the fronto-pariental suture, and the gender is thought to be male.[2][14][15][16]

Archaeologists were uncertain of the age of the hominin, although finding the morphology comparable to the Petralona skull that is accepted as a Neanderthal of the Upper Pleistocene variate,[17] paleoanthropologists (Cartmill, Smith, et al) have classified the skull instead as Heidelberg.[18][19]

Ecology

The people of the cave ate elk, fallow deer, reindeer, musk ox, bison, Hemitragus bonali (bonal tahr),[20] argali, chamois and Stephanorhinus kirchbergensis.[12][21][22] Bones of Cervus elaphus acoronatus and Cervus elaphoids, two species of deer, Canis etruscus (wolf), and Ursus deningeri, were the most found animal remains in reducing order of number of findings by percentage in the interglacial stage, in the glacial stage the most were Equus mosbachensis (horse),[23] and Ovis ammon antiqua (non-extant mouflon), (plus C. e. acoronatus), and additionally remains of Hemitragus bosali.[24][25]

Arago Cave

Occupied from 600,000 to 400,000 B.P.,[26] the cave is of the earliest known from the middle Pleistocene to archaeology of the Pyrenees.[27] Scraper and chopper tools found within the cave were of the Tayacian Industry.[28][29] The current cave dimensions are smaller than those from the time when the hominin inhabited the cave, the current measurements being 30 metres long and between 10 and 15 metres wide.[30][31] During 2007 the Institut de Paléontologie de Humaine and the Centre Européen Recherche de Pre-historique de Tautavel, both having charge of the site, contacted the ENSG in order to construct a three dimensional model of the cave.[31]

Images
  • Work in Arago Cave, summer 2002.
  • Work in Arago Cave, summer 2008.
  • Stone tool.
  • Verdouble creek beneath Arago Cave.
  • Copy of cave bear fossil in cave floor (Musée de Préhistoire, Tautavel).
  • in situ reindeer fossils.
  • Replica of mandible XIII.
  • Reconstructed skeleton of Tautavel Man.
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See also

References
  1. Wood, Bernard A. (2011-03-31). Wiley-Blackwell encyclopedia of human evolution. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-4051-5510-6.
  2. "The major phases of the discovery". Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication. Archived from the original on 22 February 2014. Retrieved 1 January 2012.
  3. "Marcel de Serres" (in French). Tela Botanica et Réseau Ecole et Nature. 2006. Retrieved 2012-01-05.
  4. Boardman, John (1982). "1". The Cambridge ancient history: The prehistory of the Balkans; and the Middle East and the Aegean world, tenth to eighth centuries B.C. 3. Cambridge University Press. p. 79. ISBN 978-0-521-22496-3.
  5. "The Arago Cave". Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication. Archived from the original on 19 March 2005. Retrieved 1 January 2012.
  6. "Arago Cave, Languedoc-Roussillon, France". Archaeology Travel. Archived from the original on 26 April 2012. Retrieved 1 January 2012.
  7. "The Tautavel Man". Ministère de la culture et de la communication. Archived from the original on 13 January 2012. Retrieved 1 January 2012.
  8. Ranzi, C. "The Reconstruction of the Tautavel Man". Ministère de la culture et de la communication. Archived from the original on 14 January 2012. Retrieved 1 January 2012.
  9. Subsol, G.; Mafart, B.; Silvestre, A.; de Lumley, M.A. (2002). "3D Image Processing for the Study of the Evolution of the Shape of the Human Skull: Presentation of the Tools and Preliminary Results" (PDF). In B. Mafart; H. Delingette; G. Subsol (eds.). Three-Dimensional Imaging in Paleoanthropology and Prehistoric Archaeology. BAR International Series 1049. pp. 37–45.
  10. Ponce de León & Zollikofer 1999
  11. Mafart et al. 1999
  12. Chippindale, Christopher (9 October 1986). "At home with the first Europeans". New Scientist: 38–42. Retrieved 1 January 2012.
  13. "Arago 21". Smithsonian Institution. March 29, 2016. Retrieved 2019-12-15.
  14. Seidler, H.; Falk, D.; Stringer, C.; Wilfing, H.; Müller, G. B.; Zur Nedden, D.; Weber, G. W.; Reicheis, W.; Arsuaga, J. L. (1997). "A comparative study of stereolithographically modelled skulls of Petralona and Broken Hill: Implications for future studies of middle Pleistocene hominid evolution". Journal of Human Evolution. 33 (6): 691–703. doi:10.1006/jhev.1997.0163. PMID 9467776.
  15. Henke, Winfried; Hardt, Thorolf (2007). Handbook of paleoanthropology. Springer. p. 1708. ISBN 978-3-540-32474-4.
  16. "Homme de Tautavel (Homo erectus)". Hominidés.com (in French). Retrieved 2019-12-15.
  17. Stringer, C. B. (1974). "A multivariate study of the Petralona skull". Journal of Human Evolution. 3 (5): 397–404. doi:10.1016/0047-2484(74)90202-4.
  18. Cartmill, Matt; Smith, Fred H. (2009). The human lineage. John Wiley and Sons. p. 314. ISBN 978-0-471-21491-5.
  19. Poulianos, Aris N. (June 1981). "Pre-Sapiens Man in Greece". Current Anthropology. 22 (3): 287–288. doi:10.1086/202667.
  20. "A photographic collection of the world's Caprinae". IUCN/SSC - Caprinae Specialist Group. Archived from the original on 2011-12-06.
  21. Billia, Emmanuel M. E. (2006). "The skull of Stephanorhinus kirchbergensis (Jäger, 1839) (Mammalia, Rhinocerotidae) from Irkutsk Province, Eastern Siberia" (PDF). Russian Journal of Theriology. 5 (2): 63–71. doi:10.15298/rusjtheriol.05.2.03.
  22. Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication Archived 2012-01-02 at the Wayback Machine [NAVIGATION] to the information shown from this link is > THE ENVIRONMENT > FAUNA [Retrieved 2012-01-04]
  23. Bellai, Driss (1998). "Le Cheval du Gisement de Pléiscène de moyen de la caune l'Arago (Tautavel Pyrénées Orientales France)". Quaternaire. 9 (4): 325–335. doi:10.3406/quate.1998.1614.
  24. Jourdan and Moigne 1981
  25. Gamble, Clive (1999). The palaeolithic societies of Europe. Cambridge University Press. p. 149. ISBN 978-0-521-65872-0.
  26. Espinasse, Guillaume; Pérès, Dimitri (January 2009). "Fouilles d'été à Tautavel" (PDF) (in French). 283. Saga Information. Retrieved 2012-01-05. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  27. Byrne, Louise (April 2004). "Lithic tools from Arago cave, Tautavel (Pyrénées-Orientales, France): behavioural continuity or raw material determinism during the Middle Pleistocene?". Journal of Archaeological Science. 31 (4): 351–364. doi:10.1016/j.jas.2003.07.008.
  28. "Tautavel man". Encyclopædia Britannica. 1995. Retrieved 2012-01-04.
  29. John Wymer (1982). "Specialised hunter gatherers". The Palaeolithic Age. Taylor & Francis. pp. 121–122. ISBN 978-0-7099-2710-5. Retrieved 2012-01-04.
  30. "The Arago Cave". Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication. Archived from the original on 2011-11-04. Retrieved 2012-01-03.
  31. Chandalier, L.; Roche, F. "Terrestrial laser scanning for paleontologists: The Tautavel Cave" (PDF). Ecole National des Science Géographiques. Retrieved 5 January 2012. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
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