Abrigo do Lagar Velho
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The Lagar Velho site is a rock-shelter in the Lapedo valley, a limestone canyon ca. 140 km north of Lisbon in central Portugal.
In 1998, the discovery of an early Upper Paleolithic human burial in this site has provided evidence of early modern humans from southern Iberia. The remains, the largely complete skeleton of an approximately 4-year-old child buried with pierced shell and red ochre, is dated to ca. 24,500 years B.P. The cranium, mandible, dentition, and postcrania present a mosaic of European early modern human and Neanderthal features. The temporal bone has an intermediate-sized juxtamastoid eminence. The mandibular mentum osseum and the dental size and proportions, supported by mandibular ramal features, radial tuberosity orientation, and diaphyseal curvature, as well as the pubic proportions align the skeleton with early modern humans. Body proportions, reflected in femorotibial lengths and diaphyseal robusticity plus tibial condylar displacement, as well as mandibular symphyseal retreat and thoracohumeral muscle insertions, align the skeleton with the Neandertals. This morphological mosaic indicates admixture between regional Neanderthals and early modern humans dispersing into southern Iberia. It establishes the complexities of the Late Pleistocene emergence of modern humans and refutes strict replacement models of modern human origins.
The broader implications of this finding are multiple. First, it means that the degree of abruptness in sociocultural and technological complexes around the time of the transition from the Middle to Upper Paleolithic need say little about the degree of human biological population continuity. Second, the geographical location and temporal position of the transition need not constrain the degree to which there was admixture between local archaic and early modern human populations. Third, it is inappropriate to apply a species distinction with strict implications of reproductive isolation to the Neandertals versus early modern humans. And fourth, hypotheses (60-63) that full population replacement of late archaic humans by early modern humans took place everywhere outside of the (presumably African) core area of modern humans can be rejected. It is therefore necessary to go beyond the categorical models that have been used commonly to characterize the late archaic to early modern human and the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transitions and to recognize the complex regional, temporal, human biological, and cultural processes as well as historical trajectories that took place.
This (morphological) mosaic indicates admixture between late archaic and early modern humans in Iberia, refuting hypotheses of complete replacement of the Neandertals by early modern humans and underlining the complexities of the cultural and biological processes and events that were involved in modern human emergence.
[edit] Main source
Duarte et al. (1999) - The early Upper Paleolithic human skeleton from the Abrigo do Lagar Velho (Portugal) and modern human emergence in Iberia. PNAS, Vol. 96, Issue 13, 7604-7609, June 22.
