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是如何从最初的非洲有限地区传播到包括所有大陆在内的全球分布的。了解这个过程是如何发生的，特别是在它的最初阶段，有可能揭示人类的基本适应。在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，Amanuel Beyin博士和来自美国和苏丹的同事组成的国际团队将沿着苏丹红海海岸（非洲东北部）进行一个季节的高风险考古勘探，以定位与早期人类利用沿海资源和非洲分散事件相关的史前遗址。关于早期现代人大约在20万年前首次出现在非洲，随后分散到欧洲和亚洲，人类学上有一个逐渐形成的共识。然而，关于早期人类离开非洲的具体路线（例如西奈半岛与曼德海峡）存在分歧。近年来，研究人员越来越多地支持早期人类在非洲及其他地区迁徙过程中利用沿海景观作为潜在传播通道的可能性。作为一个具有长而异质性沿海带的地区，苏丹红海地区的拟议研究区域代表了评估有关早期人类沿海迁移出非洲的当前假设的重要区域。这项高风险的考古探索将检验红海盆地是早期人类可行的避难所和分散走廊的假设。这一阶段研究的本质是寻找古人类遗址，并描述其地质环境和考古内容（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行人调查（实地小组沿着已确定的样带行走），用GPS记录人工制品和化石浓度，并在选定的分层地点进行测试挖掘。在这一试点调查期间收集的实地数据将输入一个地理信息系统数据库，该数据库专门设计用于容纳地点产地、人工制品/化石密度、重要环境特征（河道、海岸线和稳定的高原）的位置和石器原料的位置。这项试点工作的结果将使我们能够在这一重要地区进行长期的跨学科实地考察。这种高风险探索的智力优势在于，通过记录红海盆地一个较少被探索的部分的新的史前海岸遗址，这项研究将产生新的考古数据，用以澄清：a)红海盆地的非洲一侧在人类适应、生存和走出非洲的过程中所起的作用；b)居住在非洲东北部、阿拉伯半岛和西南亚的原始人类群体之间可能存在的人口统计学和文化联系；c)将史前人类在那里的适应性质与邻近地区进行比较。在更广泛的地理背景下，这项研究将有助于围绕早期人类走出非洲的地理背景以及沿海栖息地在促进原始人类进化、适应和扩散方面的作用的全球理论辩论。这个项目更广泛的影响是，它将促进来自两个美国机构和两所苏丹大学的研究人员（包括该学科的两个少数民族）之间更大的国际古人类研究合作。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.