There is a growing body of archaeological evidence for the earliest modern humans in the Levant and Turkey, in the form of Upper Palaeolithic stone tools, and ornaments – and some bones.
In the 1940s, archaeologists began to excavate down through 19m of deposits at the site of Ksar ‘Akil, near Beirut in Lebanon. They found twenty-five layers containing Upper Palaeolithic archaeology. In the deepest layers, they found Levallois-type technology (stone tools made from prepared cores), typical of the Middle Palaeolithic, alongside classic, reshaped Upper Palaeolithic tools, like end-scrapers and burins. In later layers, the Levallois cores are replaced by cone-shaped prismatic cores, from blade manufacture – a hallmark of the Upper Palaeolithic. Dating of layers above and below the earliest Upper Palaeolithic stratum at Ksar ‘Akil suggests that those tools were being made there somewhere between 43,000 and 50,000 years ago.3 And the discovery of a skeleton at Ksar ‘Akil confirmed that it was modern humans who were making those tools.4 Dating of the Upper Palaeolithic at Kebara also suggests the presence of modern humans in the area by 43,000 years ago.5
Tracing the northwards expansion of people into Turkey has been problematic. The Palaeolithic of Turkey has long been in the shadows, mostly because comparatively little archaeological research has been carried out there.6 Many Palaeolithic sites in Turkey are just ‘findspots’, where stone tools have been spotted on the surface. Relatively few have been excavated, but in the last twenty years archaeologist have been striving to plug this gap, and some interesting finds have emerged, which help us to trace the journey of those early European colonisers.
The archaeological site of Üçagizli lies on the rocky south-west coast of Turkey, about 150km north of Ksar ‘Akil, and near the city of Antakh (ancient Antioch). The partially collapsed cave was first discovered in the 1980s, and excavations began there in earnest in the 1990s, leading to the discovery of Upper Palaeolithic artefacts in red clay sediments. The tool manufacture at Üçagizli seems to follow a very similar pattern to Ksar ‘Akil: the oldest Upper Palaeolithic layers in fact contain a mixture of ‘Middle Palaeolithic’ technology alongside more classic, retouched tools. Just as at Ksar ‘Akil, the Levallois cores disappear in the higher layers, to be replaced by prismatic cores, where blades have been knocked off by soft-hammer or indirect percussion. But at Üçagizli there are also tools made of bone and antler. The earliest Upper Palaeolithic layers date to between 41,000 and 44,000 years.3
Throughout the Upper Palaeolithic layers at both Ksar ‘Akil and Üçagizli, the archaeologists discovered classic signs of the Upper Palaeolithic – and of modern humans: ornaments. The vast majority are small seashells, pierced through to be used as beads or pendants. More than five hundred shell beads have been found at Üçagizli alone. It’s possible to see how the holes have been created in the shells – some by scratching away, while others seem to have been punched through with a pointed tool – and it’s quite clear that these holes were made by humans and not by other, natural processes. There were shells from marine snails Nassarius gibbosula, Columbella rustica and Theodoxus jordani, as well as the pretty, ridged bivalve Glycymeris. From the large collection of shells at Üçagizli, it looks as if those hunter-gatherers also enjoyed the taste of seafood: bigger shells, from limpets (Patella) and the edible snail Monodonta also appear, unpierced, in the archaeological strata. The archaeologists were sure that these shells had been collected for food as they were not wave-worn like the empty seashells that wash up on beaches, and, in addition, many of them were burnt.
The shell beads from Üçagizli are not – by a long stretch – the earliest ornaments: the pierced shells from Skhul in Israel date to between 100,000 and 135,000 years ago.7 Shell beads were also found in Blombos Cave, dating to around 75,000 years ago, and the evidence for ochre use goes back to beyond 160,000 years ago at Pinnacle Point. These finds suggest that art and ornamentation is probably almost as old as the human species itself. But the Üçagizli beads are useful as a marker for modern human presence. They show that modern humans were bringing with them a shared culture, and perhaps an awareness of identity and a system of communication that did not seem to have been there among archaic human populations.3
There is a scarcity of Upper Palaeolithic sites in Turkey. Kuhn6 argues that the Anatolian Plateau, most of which lies more than a kilometre above sea level, would have been a cold, unwelcoming place during the late Pleistocene, and that modern humans (as well as other animals) would have gravitated towards the warmer coast. With a higher sea level today, any Pleistocene coastal sites would now be submerged. Nevertheless, Üçagizli is an extremely important site, a stepping stone into Europe, with Upper Palaeolithic artefacts going back more than 40,000 years, anticipating the spread of the classic Upper Palaeolithic culture, the ‘Aurignacian’, from east to west across Europe, between about 40,000 and 35,000 years ago.8
This all seems to fit together very neatly, but we need to be aware that these initial movements into Europe are occurring at an awkward time for radiocarbon dating, and some dates obtained during the twentieth century might need reassessment. And not only do archaeologists and anthropologists argue about the exits from Africa, there is also debate about the route into Europe, and where Upper Palaeolithic culture began. Kuhn6 seems convinced by the dating of Üçagizli, but also suggests that this culture may represent a spread southwards from Europe, rather than northwards from the Zagros Mountains and the Levant. Other researchers have argued that Upper Palaeolithic culture may have arisen in the Russian Altai, north of the Zagros Mountains, with a dispersal of modern humans, carrying this technology, coming into Europe from around the Caucasus Mountains and the northern coast of the Black Sea.9
However, most researchers seem to agree that Üçagizli and Ksar ‘Akil fit very well with a model where modern humans, bearing an Upper Palaeolithic, pre-Aurignacian toolkit, arrive in the Levant, spread north into Turkey, and then westwards through Europe.8
Crossing the Water into Europe: the Bosphorus, Turkey
Making my own way up through the Asian part of Turkey, I reached a watery barrier: the Bosphorus. This narrow strait connects the Black Sea in the north to the Sea of Marmara, and at its southern end the Sea of Marmara narrows down again to form the Dardanelles, connecting through to the Aegean Sea.
In Istanbul, I took the ferry to cross the glittering Bosphorus, from the Asian to the European side. I thought about the early colonisers reaching this waterway, and Bulbeck’s ideas about coastal and estuarine adaptations, and the possible use of watercraft in the Palaeolithic. It didn’t seem to me that the modern Bosphorus and the Dardanelles would have constituted much of a barrier to the early pioneers.
In fact, when I looked into it, it turned out that the Bosphorus was dry during the Pleistocene. It wasn’t until after the Ice Age that the sea level rose sufficiently to flood the Bosphorus and connect them. Boreholes drilled down through the sediments at the bottom of the strait show how and when the connection between the two bodies of water was established: the Sea of Marmara spread northwards and eventually opened into an estuary at the southern end of the Black Sea, around 5300 years ago, and the Bosphorus was formed. Interestingly, it looks like there was another, intermittently open, connection between the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea during the Pleistocene, to the east, from what is now the Gulf of Izmit.1 So even if the Bosphorus wasn’t there to cross, there may have been times when the colonisers would have got their feet wet crossing from Asia to Europe.
From the Bosphorus region colonisers could have headed northwards to the coast of the Black Sea, or continue beachcombing westwards along the Mediterranean coast, and it appears that they did both. There are a scattering of sites with Upper Palaeolithic stone tools, on or close to the Mediterranean coast, in Italy, France and northern Spain, and there are also sites dotted along both the European and Asian shorelines of the Black Sea. An important early Upper Palaeolithic site is Bacho Kiro, in Bulgaria, where a ‘pre-Aurignacian’ toolkit – with lots of
blades – has been found, dating to 43,000 years ago. Moving northwards up the west coast of the Black Sea, the colonisers would have reached the great delta of the Danube, in modern-day Romania. They could have then used the waterway as a superhighway into the heart of Europe: there are many Upper Palaeolithic sites along the Danube and its tributaries. The conventional radiocarbon dates for this westwards spread across Europe suggested it took place between 45,000 and 35,000 years ago. New, calibrated radiocarbon dates for these sites suggest that this dispersal into central and western Europe happened fairly rapidly, between 46,000 and 41,000 years ago. This speedy spread across Europe may have been helped by another episode of global warming, the Hengelo interstadial.2, 3, 4, 5
Face to Face with the First Modern European:
Oase Cave, Romania
My next destination was a site along that Danube corridor. I travelled to Romania, to meet geologist and speleologist (cave expert) Silviu Constantin, who was going to introduce me to the cave where the earliest known modern human fossil in Europe had been discovered.
From Bucharest, we drove east, following the Danube fairly closely, like our predecessors 40,000 years before. We drove and drove, and eventually reached a small village in the south-western Carpathians, the name of which I cannot disclose because the exact locality of the cave was secret. A couple of stray dogs chased our car up the hill, excitedly barking, but when we stopped and got out they ran away. We were staying in the 7 Brazi (fir trees) Pensiune, high up on the hill overlooking the village.
The following morning, we met up with the team of cavers who were accompanying us – Mihai Bacin (leading the team), Virgil Dragusin and Alexandra Hillebrand – and sorted out caving gear for the trip before heading off to the cave itself. We drove through wooded valleys and past abandoned factories, and eventually turned off on to a dirt track. About a quarter of a mile later, we reached a point where the road had collapsed. We all got out to take a look, and, after hauling some large stones into the hole, decided that it was passable, and cautiously drove the cars over the roughly stopped-up breach. It held. We pulled up just around the corner from the collapsed track. The cave itself was below us in the steep-sided valley, and we scrambled down the wooded slope, lugging our equipment down to the stream bank at the bottom. Once we were down, I could see the tall, slit-like entrance of the cave, with the stream emerging from it.
This was Peştera cu Oase, the Cave of Bones. It was incredibly exciting to be standing there, in front of a place that I had read so much about. A colleague from Bristol University, João Zilhao, had been part of the team that excavated there in 2003–5, so I had heard a lot about the cave from him. Unfortunately, he was in Portugal investigating another cave, but that left me in Silviu’s capable hands – he had also been one of the excavating team, and he had dated the finds from the cave.
On 16 February 2002, a group of intrepid cave divers were exploring the cave. The cavers had made their way into the depths, past a duck-under and through a longer, underwater section, and up a steep ramp to an area littered with animal bones. ‘They found a human mandible, right on top of the flowstone. It was probably dug out recently by an animal. It was just sitting there, waiting for someone to discover it,’ said Silviu.
When the mandible was radiocarbon dated, it was found to be 35,000 years old, the oldest known remains of a modern human in Europe.
‘You must have been pretty excited to get that date back,’ I said.
‘I remember everyone was excited,’ said Silviu. ‘The oldest human was here, in Romania. We were proud that it was in one of our caves.’
The cave was an exciting proposition for scientists studying this period of prehistory. In 2003, an international team of archaeologists visited the cave, and discovered masses of bones – mostly cave bear, but also some other human material: fragments of a skull. These pieces were found further down the slope than the mandible, in part of the cave that was subsequently, and evocatively, named Panta Strãmoşilor (the Ramp of the Ancestors). The skull and mandible were from two different individuals.
The place where the bones were found is hard to get to now – and involves that dive.
‘The archaeologists were trying to figure out how such a massive bone deposit could come into the cave,’ said Silviu. As a geologist and a caver, he had joined the team to answer this question. He could also help with dating – using uranium series dating on stalagmites. From his investigation, it seems that Peştera cu Oase once had another entrance, allowing the cave bears access. In fact, the two galleries that lead off from the Ramp of the Ancestors both seem to have had openings in the past. Today, these entrances have collapsed, and are practically blocked off, although some small animals – such as rodents – still fall down into the cave through the sinkholes.1
The majority of the bones in Oase belonged to cave bears. There were also bones of other cave-dwellers such as wolf and cave lion, which had presumably made their dens in there at various times. However, also found in the cave were skeletal remains of distinctly non-cave-dwellers such as ibex and red deer. These could have been brought into the cave by people, but there were no signs of such habitation in the cave, nor any cut marks on the animal bones to suggest that they had been eaten by humans. That left geological processes and carnivores to explain the accumulation of bones in the cave. In 2005, the archaeologists returned to excavate the cave; they found many more bones, but also important clues as to how the skeletal remains had ended up there. Underneath a covering of stalagmite, they found a 30cm-thick layer of cave bear and other animal bones, many bearing the tooth marks of bears and wolves. This looked like a collection of bones of animals eaten by carnivores denning in the cave, as well as the cave-dwellers themselves. Under that was a layer of bones mixed with sand, gravel and cobbles, and these were sorted by size – larger bones at the top of the slope, smaller ones at the bottom, and many of the bones in this layer had rounded-off edges. These bones had been swept into this part of the cave by flooding. So it seemed that the animal bones in Oase had ended up there through a combination of cave-dwelling carnivores bringing their dinner home, and flooding.
‘So how do you think the human bones ended up in the cave?’ I asked Silviu.
‘Most probably they had been washed in.’
There were no gnaw marks on these bones, so perhaps a person, or even a buried skeleton, had fallen in through a sinkhole and then the bones had been washed further down the cave by floods.1 Nevertheless, it seems rather strange that there are only cranial remains – a skull and a mandible, and no other parts of the skeleton – but there are still a lot of bones in Oase. Perhaps the rest of the skeleton will yet be found.
I followed Silviu into the cave – wading along the stream and into the first great gallery, with Mihai, Virgil and Alexandra following behind. The roof was very high, and hung with enormous stalactites. Towards the back of this gallery were a series of pools with stalagmite edges. We followed the stream around to the left, where the roof plunged down. We were lucky that day: there hadn’t been much rain the previous weeks and days, so the water level was low enough to enable us just to keep our heads above water. In a wetter period this would have been a duck-under. Still, it was an awkward manoeuvre: under the water, the cave floor sloped away from the gap I was aiming for, and I couldn’t get a foothold. As my feet slipped, I gave up trying to walk through the gap, and swam through it instead. On the other side, I was wading shoulder-deep, hanging on to a rope to keep me close to the shallower right-hand wall. The floor of the tunnel gradually rose up until the water was just knee-high.
We all made our way along this narrow, tunnel-like part of the cave. Sometimes the floor dipped down and we would plunge in up to our chests again. Eventually, we reached a wider part of the tunnel, but the roof sloped down and down until it touched the water: this was the siphon, and the end of the line for me. I would have had to dive to get to the Ramp of the Ancestors. It was frustrating in a way, but I had known that I would only b
e able to get this far. I still felt privileged to have come so close, and to have explored the cave where Europe’s earliest modern human had been found. Silviu and I sat down on a convenient stalagmite and I asked him about excavating in the cave. It sounded arduous and difficult – getting to the site was one thing, taking in tools and bringing back bags of sediment and bones, through the siphon and through the duck-under another altogether – but the results had been worth it. When the skull had been dated, it was even older than the mandible: around 40,000 years old. And there were some things about the skull and mandible that seemed a little odd.
Leaving Oase, Silviu and I drove back to Bucharest, where I would be able to see the skull and mandible. We had travelled close to the Danube on the way out to Oase, but on the way back we took a route through the beautiful wooded gorges of the Carpathians. Where the gorges opened out into valleys, fields were visible in which people were cutting hay and heaping it on to three-legged wooden frames to make stacks. The haystacks varied from field to field and village to village. Some were tall and thin, others squat and conical. We slowed down to pass a heavily laden hay cart pulled by two horses.
The centres of the villages were often lined with low, terraced cottages, but on the outskirts there were more often than not massive, ugly tower blocks. These buildings seemed so incongruous among the fields. ‘Why build blocks of flats in villages?’ I asked Silviu. ‘They were built by Ceauşescu,’ he said. ‘He wanted to create more land for farming.’ ‘But it seems like there’s plenty of land,’ I suggested. ‘Yes. There is. Ceauşescu wanted to destroy the villages.’ It was strange to think that it really wasn’t that long ago – 1989 – that Ceauşescu had been removed from power. Romania was a country in recovery.
The Incredible Human Journey Page 26