Investigating Human Coastal Migration Through Exploration of a Paleolithic Site

该项目的基本目标是深入了解人类如何从非洲原来有限的区域扩散到包括所有大陆在内的全球分布。了解这一过程是如何发生的--特别是在其早期阶段--有可能揭示人类的基本适应。在国家科学基金会的支持下，来自美国和苏丹的阿曼纽尔·贝因博士和一个由美国和苏丹同事组成的国际团队将沿着苏丹红海海岸(非洲东北部)进行为期一季的高风险考古勘探，以定位与早期人类对海岸资源的利用和非洲以外的扩散事件有关的史前遗址。关于大约20万年前早期现代人首次出现在非洲，以及随后他们向欧洲和亚洲的扩散，人类学上正在形成一种新的共识。然而，对于早期人类迁出非洲的具体路线(例如西奈半岛和曼达布海峡)存在分歧。近年来，研究人员越来越多地支持早期人类在迁出非洲和其他地区的过程中利用沿海景观作为潜在的传播渠道的可能性。作为一个以漫长而不同种类的沿海地带为特征的区域，拟议的苏丹红海地区研究区是评估目前关于人类早期沿海迁出非洲的假设的关键区域。这项拟议的高风险考古勘探将检验红海盆地是早期人类可行的避难所和扩散走廊的假设。这一阶段研究的性质要求寻找古人类学遗址，并描述其地质背景和考古内容(如人工制品和化石的类型及其分布模式)。为了实现这些目标，拟议的研究将采用车辆辅助的行人调查(实地小组沿着既定的横断面行走)，使用GPS记录人工制品和化石密度，并在选定的分层地点测试挖掘。在这项试点调查期间收集的现场数据将输入专门设计的地理信息系统数据库，以容纳遗址出生地、文物/化石密度、重要环境特征的位置(河道、海岸线和稳定高原)和岩屑原料位置。这项试点工作的结果将使我们能够在这一重要区域开展长期、跨学科的实地工作。这种高风险勘探的学术价值在于，通过记录红海盆地较少被勘探的部分新的史前沿海遗址，研究将产生新的考古数据，用来澄清：a)红海盆地非洲一侧在人类适应、生存和迁出非洲方面所发挥的作用；b)占领非洲东北部、阿拉伯半岛和西南亚的原始人群体之间可能的人口和文化联系；c)将史前人类适应那里与邻近地区的性质进行比较。在更广泛的地理背景下，这项研究将有助于围绕早期人类迁出非洲的地理背景以及沿海栖息地在刺激原始人进化、适应和扩散方面的作用展开全球理论辩论。该项目的更广泛影响是，它将有助于促进来自两个美国机构和两所苏丹大学的研究人员--包括该学科中的两个少数民族--之间更大的国际古人类学研究合作。未来，它将为来自美国和非洲机构的学生提供多样化的研究机会。

The fundamental goal of this project is to gain insight into how humans spread from an originally limited region within Africa to a worldwide distribution which includes all continents. Understanding how this process - especially in its earliest stages - took place has the potential to shed light on basic human adaptations.With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Amanuel Beyin and an international team of colleagues from the US and the Sudan will conduct one season of high-risk archaeological exploration along the Sudanese Red Sea coast (northeast Africa) to locate prehistoric sites associated with early human use of coastal resources and dispersal events out of Africa. There is an emerging anthropological consensus on the first appearance of early modern humans in Africa around 200,000 years ago, and their subsequent dispersals to Europe and Asia. However, there is disagreement about the specific routes along which early humans dispersed out of Africa (e.g. the Sinai Peninsula vs the Bab al Mandab strait). The possibility of early humans using coastal landscapes as potential dispersal conduits during their migration out of Africa and beyond is receiving increasing support among researchers in recent years. As a region featuring a long and heterogeneous coastal strip, the proposed study area in the Sudanese Red Sea zone represents a vital region for assessing current hypotheses concerning early human coastal migration out of Africa. The proposed high-risk archaeological exploration will test the hypothesis that the Red Sea basin served as a viable refugium and dispersal corridor for early humans. The nature of the research at this stage requires finding paleoanthropological sites, and describing their geological settings and archaeological contents (such as types of artifacts and fossils and their distribution patterns). To achieve these goals, the proposed research will employ vehicle-assisted pedestrian surveys (field team walking along established transects), recording artifact and fossil concentrations with a GPS, and test excavations at selected stratified sites. Field data compiled during this pilot survey will be entered into a Geographic Information System database specifically designed to accommodate site proveniences, artifact/fossil density, locations of important environmental features (river channels, shorelines and stable plateau) and lithic raw material locations. The results of this pilot work will enable us to pursue a long-term, interdisciplinary fieldwork in this important region. The intellectual merits of this high-risk exploration are that, by documenting new prehistoric coastal sites from a less explored part of the Red Sea basin, the research will generate fresh archaeological data with which to clarify: a) the role that the African side of the Red Sea basin played in human adaptations, survival and dispersals out of Africa, b) possible demographic and cultural connections among hominid groups who occupied northeastern Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and Southwest Asia and, c) compare the nature of prehistoric human adaption there with neighboring regions. In a wider geographic context, this research will contribute to global theoretical debates surrounding the geographic contexts of early human dispersals out of Africa and the role of coastal habitats in stimulating hominid evolution, adaptations and dispersals. The broader impact of the project is that, it will contribute to advancing greater international paleoanthropological research collaboration among researchers - including two ethnic minorities in the discipline - from two US institutions and two Sudanese universities. In the future, it will provide diverse research opportunities for students from both American and African institutions.