Des traces de boucherie aux outils lithiques de Masol (Pliocène supérieur, Inde du Nord). Une approche psychomotrice de l’origine et de l’identité des hominiens

Abstract

Masol is a geological formation located in the Northwestern Himalayan foothills. The lithostratigraphy attributed to the Late Pliocene was confirmed as early as the 1960s by faunal assemblage of the fossiliferous deposits called the Quranwala zone and then by paleomagnetism. The geomorphology is an inlier, incised around a part of the axis of the Chandigarh anticlinal which began to form 600,000 years ago. The UMR 7194 CNRS and the Society for Archaeological and Anthropological Research, Chandigarh, have conduct fieldworks in this area from 2007 to 2019, during which lithic artifacts and fossil bones with butchery marks were collected regularly and exclusively on the fossiliferous outcrops whose the Late Pliocene age is indisputable. Finally, the first chopper in place was extracted in 2017 in the deepest layer of the Quranwala zone. Ten years of geological studies over 50 hectares of silts and sandstones eroded annually, have consolidated the relevance of the Late Pliocene age of more than 300 artifacts scattered on both sides of the anticline axis. This dispersion is consistent with that of the butchery marks and makes Masol an exceptional site of human occupation by its extent and its duration, from the base of the Quranwala zone (at least 2.8 Ma) to its youngest layers, that corresponds to 50 meters of regular deposits. Here, we recall the geomorphology, the intentional origin of the cut marks and the lithic techno-typology of Masol collection 2008–2017, homogeneous and similar to the industry of Longgupo site in South China dated 2.5 Ma. Then we discuss the identity of the hominins on the basis of technical behaviors and subsistence strategies, the reasoned exploitation of carcasses and gestures, and the paleoenvironment. The whole is analyzed in the evolutionary perspective of a “cerebro-cerebellar” complexification Rubicon involved in the verticality of the brainstem and spinal cord specific to hominids.