The Middle Paleolithic of the Crimea

在国家科学基金会的支持下，安东尼·马克斯博士和他的同事将继续在克里米亚进行考古工作。迄今为止的研究已经在几个地点发现了丰富的旧石器时代中期工业组合。这些化石中含有保存完好的动物遗骸，该小组现在将对这些化石进行详细研究。他们将分析这些材料，以重建旧石器时代中期人们生活的环境以及他们如何随着时间的推移而变化。动物遗迹还提供了人们如何利用资源的信息，因此这项研究将深入了解环境刺激和人类反应。 旧石器时代中期的人是大约4万年前出现在欧洲的解剖学上的现代人的直接祖先。在试图理解这些后来的适应过程中，旧石器时代中期提供了一个基准，正是通过对“不完全是人类”行为的理解，才能最好地理解我们自己亚种特有的行为适应。马克斯博士迄今为止的工作表明，这些早期的适应比考古学家预期的要复杂得多，而且这些群体在非常有限的地理距离内以独特而具体的方式适应。 这项研究之所以重要，有几个原因。它将为史前人类如何适应环境提供新的线索，并将为许多考古学家提供感兴趣的数据。

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Anthony Marks and his colleagues will continue archaeological work in the Crimea. Research to date has yielded rich assemblages of Middle Paleolithic industries at several sites. These contain with preserved faunal remains and the team will now conduct detailed studies of these. They will analyze these materials both to reconstruct the environments in which Middle Paleolithic peoples lived and how they changed over time. Faunal remains also provide information on how people utilize resources and thus the study will provide insight into environmental stimulus and human response. Middle Paleolithic peoples are the immediate predecessors of anatomically modern humans who appeared in Europe about 40,000 years ago. In the attempt to understand these later adaptations, the Middle Paleolithic provides a benchmark and it is through an understanding of `not quite fully human` behavior that the unique behavioral adaptations which characterize our own subspecies can best be understood. Dr. Marks work to date indicates that these earlier adaptations are more complex than archaeologists had expected and that groups adapted in distinct and specific ways over very limited geographic distances. This research is important for several reasons. It will shed new light on how prehistoric peoples adapted to their environments and will provide data of interest to many archaeologists.