Lincombian-Ranisian-Jerzmanowician

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Lincombian-Ranisian-Jerzmanowician
Kompleks Jerzmanowician-Ranisian-Lincombian zasieg.jpg
Geographical range Northwest Europe
Period Upper Paleolithic
Datesc. 45,000 years BP

Lincombian-Ranisian-Jerzmanowician (LRJ) is a European Upper Palaeolithic culture or technocomplex (industry) dating to the Initial Upper Palaeolithic, about 45,000 years ago. It is characterised by leaf points made on long blades, which were traditionally thought to have been made by the last Neanderthals, although more recently it has been recognised as having been produced by among the first anatomically modern humans in Europe. It is rarely found, but extends across northwest Europe from Wales to Poland. [1] [2] [3]

Contents

Chronology, major sites and distribution

Entrance to Ilsenhohle cave in Ranis in Thuringia, a key LRJ site Ilsenhohle Aussenansicht.jpg
Entrance to Ilsenhöhle cave in Ranis in Thuringia, a key LRJ site

The technocomplex is named after findings in Kents Cavern, which is situated on Lincombe Hill, Torquay (Devon, England), the cave of Ilsenhöhle in Ranis (Thuringia, Germany), and Nietopierzowa cave in Jerzmanowice (Kraków County, Poland). About 40 different sites have been identified. [4] Other sites in Britain in addition to Kent's Cavern includes, among others, Robin Hood Cave and Pinhole Cave in the Creswell Crags, Derbyshire, the Hyena Den at Wookey Hole, Somerset, Paviland Cave, Wales, Beedings, Sussex, and Grange Farm, Rutland. [5] [6] Sites in Belgium include the Goyet Caves and Spy Cave. [5] The LRJ complex may have emerged from the Bohunician complex. A 2023 study argued that the LRJ complex spanned the period 42-40,000 years ago, [5] but radiocarbon dating of Ranis has suggested the culture began earlier, around 45-47,000 years ago. [7] [8]

Description

A distinctive feature of the LRJ complex is blades with "leaf points", which are unifacially (one-side) or bifacially (both-sides) worked, which are thought to have been used as spear heads. [5]

Lifeways

The people of the LRJ complex lived in a cold glacial climate in a steppe tundra environment, alongside animals like woolly mammoths, woolly rhinoceros, wild horse, reindeer, red deer, cave bears, brown bears, wolverine, and cave hyenas. At Ilsenhöhle/Ranis, isotopic analysis indicates a diet heavy in large terrestrial mammals. LRJ peoples are thought to have been highly mobile, with the sparse number of bones with cut marks at Ilsenhöhle indicating that the cave was only briefly occupied during short visits. [8]

Genetics

Genetic sequencing of human remains found at Ilsenhöhle in Ranis associated with LRJ tools indicates that the producers of the technocomplex were modern humans, but a distinct early branch of the human migration out of Africa that diverged before the split between West Eurasians (related to modern Europeans and people in the Middle East) and East Eurasians (related to modern East and Southeast Asians, Siberian peoples and Native Americans) that became extinct and was not ancestral to later European Upper Palaeolithic human populations, such as those represented by the 38,000 year old Kostenki-14 individual, who is a member of an early diverging West Eurasian lineage. They were also unrelated to a 40,000 year old skeleton from Oase, Romania and several similarly aged skeletons from Bacho Kiro Cave, Bulgaria, who represented another basal lineage closer to but outside the West-East Eurasian split. The Zlatý kůň woman, a partial skeleton with a largely complete skull known from Koněprusy Caves in the Czech Republic, 230 kilometres (140 mi) away from Ilsenhöhle/Ranis, was found to be part of the same population as the LRJ-associated humans at Ilsenhöhle, with the Zlatý kůň woman found to be a distant relative (fifth or sixth-degree familial relationship) with two of the Ranis individuals, suggesting that they lived only 3 generations apart and thus roughly contemporaneous. [7]

Genetic evidence from Ranis also indicates a small population size, with an effective population size of only a few hundred people, correlating with the sparse archaeological record of the LRJ complex. [7]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Ashton, Nick (2017). Early Humans. London: William Collins. p. 315. ISBN   978-0-00-815035-8.
  2. ↑ Flas, Damien (5 December 2011). "The Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition in Northern Europe: the Lincombian-Ranisian-Jerzmanowician and the issue of acculturation of the last Neanderthals". World Archaeology. 43 (4): 605–627. doi:10.1080/00438243.2011.624725. S2CID   162261765.
  3. ↑ Hunt, Katie (1 February 2024) Bones found in 8-meter-deep pit may 'fundamentally change' history of humans in Europe, CNN
  4. ↑ Flas, Damien. 2006. La transition du Paléolithique moyen au supérieur dans la plaine septentrionale de l'Europe. Les problématiques du Lincombien-Ranisien-Jerzmanowicien. PhD diss., Université de Liège, Belgium.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Demidenko, Yuri E.; Škrdla, Petr (23 May 2023). "Lincombian-Ranisian-Jerzmanowician Industry and South Moravian Sites: a Homo sapiens Late Initial Upper Paleolithic with Bohunician Industrial Generic Roots in Europe". Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology. 6 (1). doi:10.1007/s41982-023-00142-2. ISSN   2520-8217. PMC   10202755 . PMID   37250589.
  6. ↑ Dinnis, Robert (20 August 2025). "The Early Upper Palaeolithic in British caves: problems and potential". Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. doi:10.1111/1467-9655.14313. ISSN   1359-0987.
  7. 1 2 3 Sümer, Arev P.; Rougier, Hélène; Villalba-Mouco, Vanessa; Huang, Yilei; Iasi, Leonardo N. M.; Essel, Elena; Bossoms Mesa, Alba; Furtwaengler, Anja; Peyrégne, Stéphane; de Filippo, Cesare; Rohrlach, Adam B.; Pierini, Federica; Mafessoni, Fabrizio; Fewlass, Helen; Zavala, Elena I. (20 February 2025). "Earliest modern human genomes constrain timing of Neanderthal admixture". Nature. 638 (8051): 711–717. doi:10.1038/s41586-024-08420-x. ISSN   0028-0836. PMC   11839475 . PMID   39667410.
  8. 1 2 Smith, Geoff M.; Ruebens, Karen; Zavala, Elena Irene; Sinet-Mathiot, Virginie; Fewlass, Helen; Pederzani, Sarah; Jaouen, Klervia; Mylopotamitaki, Dorothea; Britton, Kate; Rougier, Hélène; Stahlschmidt, Mareike; Meyer, Matthias; Meller, Harald; Dietl, Holger; Orschiedt, Jörg (31 January 2024). "The ecology, subsistence and diet of ~45,000-year-old Homo sapiens at Ilsenhöhle in Ranis, Germany". Nature Ecology & Evolution. 8 (3): 564–577. doi:10.1038/s41559-023-02303-6. ISSN   2397-334X. PMC   10927544 . PMID   38297138.


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