PACEA, UMR 5199, CNRS, Université de Bordeaux, Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication (MCC), F-33400, Pessac, France.
Department of Anthropology, New York University, CSHO, New York, NY, 10003, USA.
Sci Rep. 2019 Nov 1;9(1):15817. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-50647-6.
The transition from Middle to Upper Paleolithic is a major biological and cultural threshold in the construction of our common humanity. Technological and behavioral changes happened simultaneously to a major climatic cooling, which reached its acme with the Heinrich 4 event, forcing the human populations to develop new strategies for the exploitation of their environment. The recent fieldwork at Les Cottés (France) transitional site offers a good opportunity to document subsistence strategies for this period and to provide for the first time high-resolution insights on its evolution. We present the results of the complete zooarchaeological and taphonomic analysis of the transitional sequence, associated with a large regional synthesis of the subsistence strategy evolution during the Middle to Upper Paleolithic. We conclude that, while there is no major change in the hunting strategies, the butchery activities evolved in strict correlation with the development of range weapons. In addition, the demise of carnivore seems to be a consequence of the human pressure on the environment. Our study demonstrates how the faunal component of the environment became a structuring element of the human social organization, being at the base of future cultural evolutions.
从中石器时代到旧石器时代的过渡是我们共同人类形成过程中的一个主要的生物和文化的门槛。技术和行为的变化与主要的气候变冷同时发生，气候变冷在 Heinrich 4 事件中达到顶峰，迫使人类群体为开发环境开发新的策略。最近在法国的 Les Cottés 过渡地点进行的实地考察为记录这一时期的生存策略提供了很好的机会，并首次提供了关于其演变的高分辨率见解。我们介绍了完整的动物考古学和埋藏学分析的结果，这些分析与中石器时代到旧石器时代过渡序列有关，还结合了对该地区生存策略演变的综合研究。我们的结论是，虽然狩猎策略没有重大变化，但随着范围武器的发展，屠宰活动也发生了严格的变化。此外，肉食动物的灭绝似乎是人类对环境施加压力的结果。我们的研究表明，环境的动物群成分如何成为人类社会组织的一个结构要素，是未来文化演变的基础。
