Tryon Christian A, Roach Neil T, Logan M Amelia V
Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, 20013-7012, USA.
J Hum Evol. 2008 Oct;55(4):652-64. doi: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2008.03.008. Epub 2008 Jul 30.
Rift Valley sites in southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya preserve the oldest fossil remains attributed to Homo sapiens and the earliest archaeological sites attributed to the Middle Stone Age (MSA). New localities from the Kapedo Tuffs augment the sparse sample of MSA sites from the northern Kenya Rift. Tephrostratigraphic correlation with dated pyroclastic deposits from the adjacent volcano Silali suggests an age range of 135-123ka for archaeological sites of the Kapedo Tuffs. Comparisons of the Kapedo Tuffs archaeological assemblages with those from the adjacent Turkana and Baringo basins show broad lithic technological similarity but reveal that stone raw material availability is a key factor in explaining typologically defined archaeological variability within this region. Spatially and temporally resolved comparisons such as this provide the best means to link the biological and behavioral variation manifest in the record of early Homo sapiens.
埃塞俄比亚南部和肯尼亚北部的裂谷地区保存着归因于智人的最古老化石遗迹以及归因于中石器时代（MSA）的最早考古遗址。来自卡佩多凝灰岩的新地点增加了肯尼亚北部裂谷地区稀疏的MSA遗址样本。与相邻的西拉利火山的 dated 火山碎屑沉积物的凝灰地层对比表明，卡佩多凝灰岩的考古遗址年龄范围为13.5万至12.3万年。将卡佩多凝灰岩的考古组合与相邻的图尔卡纳和巴林戈盆地的组合进行比较，显示出广泛的石器技术相似性，但表明石材原料的可获得性是解释该地区类型学定义的考古变异性的关键因素。这样的时空分辨比较提供了将早期智人记录中表现出的生物和行为变异联系起来的最佳方法。
