Behavioral Differences between Archaic and Modern Humans in the Levantine Mousterian

Abstract

Early modern and archaic humans are associated with similar lithic industries in the Middle Paleolithic of the southern Levant, but new data suggest that they used the environment in different ways. Evidence from analyses of seasonally deposited increments of the teeth of the animals they hunted suggests that modern humans primarily practiced a strategy ofcirculating seasonal mobility, while archaic humans in the same region 30,000 years later were more residentially mobile. Analyses of their lithic hunting technology further suggest that archaic humans hunted more frequently than did modern humans. We argue that this greater hunting intensity may have been a strategy for coping with the consequences of resource biodepletion resulting from long‐term, multiseasonal occupation of sites. These behavioral contrasts may be related to some of the morphological differences between early modern and archaic humans.