Berhane Asfaw - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Berhane Asfaw
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2021
Significance Understanding the evolution, dispersals, behaviors, and ecologies of early African H... more Significance Understanding the evolution, dispersals, behaviors, and ecologies of early African Homo sapiens requires accurate geochronological placement of fossils and artifacts. We introduce open-air occurrences of such remains in sediments of the Middle Awash study area in Ethiopia. We describe the stratigraphic and depositional contexts of our discoveries and demonstrate the effectiveness of recently developed uranium-series dating of ostrich eggshell at validating and bridging across more traditional radioisotopic methods ( 14 C and 40 Ar/ 39 Ar). Homo sapiens fossils and associated Middle Stone Age artifacts are placed at >158 and ∼96 ka. Later Stone Age occurrences are dated to ∼21 to 24 ka and ∼31 to 32 ka, firmly dating the upper portion of one of the longest records of human evolution.
This book presents a beautiful photo collection of the Konso stone tools, the Acheulean artifacts... more This book presents a beautiful photo collection of the Konso stone tools, the Acheulean artifacts. These artifacts include the world's oldest stone tools shaped to preconceived form. The volume illustrates early stone tool technology and its development from 1.75 to fewer than 1 million years ago.
Zooarchaeological attribute entry of Upper Herto fauna from excavations and surfac
Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 2017
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2020
Significance We report a rare example of a 1.4-million-y-old large bone fragment shaped into hand... more Significance We report a rare example of a 1.4-million-y-old large bone fragment shaped into handaxe-like form. This bone tool derives from the Konso Formation in southern Ethiopia, where abundant early Acheulean stone artifacts show considerable technological progression between ∼1.75 and <1.0 Mya. Technological analysis of the bone tool indicates intensive anthropogenic shaping. Edge damage, polish, and striae patterns are consistent with use in longitudinal motions, such as in butchering. The discovery of this bone handaxe shows that advanced flaking technology, practiced at Konso on a variety of lithic materials, was also applied to bone, thus expanding the known technological repertoire of African Early Pleistocene Homo .
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2020
Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of Japan, 1998
Six Milllon Years of Volcanic, Tectonic,Paleoenvironmental, and Paleoanthropological Records in t... more Six Milllon Years of Volcanic, Tectonic,Paleoenvironmental, and Paleoanthropological Records in the Middle Awash Region of Ethiopia.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2021
Body and canine size dimorphism in fossils inform sociobehavioral hypotheses on human evolution a... more Body and canine size dimorphism in fossils inform sociobehavioral hypotheses on human evolution and have been of interest since Darwin’s famous reflections on the subject. Here, we assemble a large dataset of fossil canines of the human clade, including all available Ardipithecus ramidus fossils recovered from the Middle Awash and Gona research areas in Ethiopia, and systematically examine canine dimorphism through evolutionary time. In particular, we apply a Bayesian probabilistic method that reduces bias when estimating weak and moderate levels of dimorphism. Our results show that Ar. ramidus canine dimorphism was significantly weaker than in the bonobo, the least dimorphic and behaviorally least aggressive among extant great apes. Average male-to-female size ratios of the canine in Ar. ramidus are estimated as 1.06 and 1.13 in the upper and lower canines, respectively, within modern human population ranges of variation. The slightly greater magnitude of canine size dimorphism in ...
Nature, Jan 11, 2016
The palaeobiological record of 12 million to 7 million years ago (Ma) is crucial to the elucidati... more The palaeobiological record of 12 million to 7 million years ago (Ma) is crucial to the elucidation of African ape and human origins, but few fossil assemblages of this period have been reported from sub-Saharan Africa. Since the 1970s, the Chorora Formation, Ethiopia, has been widely considered to contain ~10.5 million year (Myr) old mammalian fossils. More recently, Chororapithecus abyssinicus, a probable primitive member of the gorilla clade, was discovered from the formation. Here we report new field observations and geochemical, magnetostratigraphic and radioisotopic results that securely place the Chorora Formation sediments to between ~9 and ~7 Ma. The C. abyssinicus fossils are ~8.0 Myr old, forming a revised age constraint of the human-gorilla split. Other Chorora fossils range in age from ~8.5 to 7 Ma and comprise the first sub-Saharan mammalian assemblage that spans this period. These fossils suggest indigenous African evolution of multiple mammalian lineages/groups betwe...
Anthropological Science, 2015
Nature, Jan 12, 2003
Clarifying the geographic, environmental and behavioural contexts in which the emergence of anato... more Clarifying the geographic, environmental and behavioural contexts in which the emergence of anatomically modern Homo sapiens occurred has proved difficult, particularly because Africa lacked adequate geochronological, palaeontological and archaeological evidence. The discovery of anatomically modern Homo sapiens fossils at Herto, Ethiopia, changes this. Here we report on stratigraphically associated Late Middle Pleistocene artefacts and fossils from fluvial and lake margin sandstones of the Upper Herto Member of the Bouri Formation, Middle Awash, Afar Rift, Ethiopia. The fossils and artefacts are dated between 160,000 and 154,000 years ago by precise age determinations using the 40Ar/39Ar method. The archaeological assemblages contain elements of both Acheulean and Middle Stone Age technocomplexes. Associated faunal remains indicate repeated, systematic butchery of hippopotamus carcasses. Contemporary adult and juvenile Homo sapiens fossil crania manifest bone modifications indicati...
Homo erectusPleistocene Evidence from the Middle Awash, Ethiopia, 2009
... these marks. FIGURE 13.2 Excavation of the Daka calvaria BOU-VP-2/66 on the day of discovery.... more ... these marks. FIGURE 13.2 Excavation of the Daka calvaria BOU-VP-2/66 on the day of discovery. The low hills on the skyline are the Dulu Ali basalts and sediments, and the site of Aramis lies beyond these hills. Daka Member ...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2021
Significance Understanding the evolution, dispersals, behaviors, and ecologies of early African H... more Significance Understanding the evolution, dispersals, behaviors, and ecologies of early African Homo sapiens requires accurate geochronological placement of fossils and artifacts. We introduce open-air occurrences of such remains in sediments of the Middle Awash study area in Ethiopia. We describe the stratigraphic and depositional contexts of our discoveries and demonstrate the effectiveness of recently developed uranium-series dating of ostrich eggshell at validating and bridging across more traditional radioisotopic methods ( 14 C and 40 Ar/ 39 Ar). Homo sapiens fossils and associated Middle Stone Age artifacts are placed at >158 and ∼96 ka. Later Stone Age occurrences are dated to ∼21 to 24 ka and ∼31 to 32 ka, firmly dating the upper portion of one of the longest records of human evolution.
This book presents a beautiful photo collection of the Konso stone tools, the Acheulean artifacts... more This book presents a beautiful photo collection of the Konso stone tools, the Acheulean artifacts. These artifacts include the world's oldest stone tools shaped to preconceived form. The volume illustrates early stone tool technology and its development from 1.75 to fewer than 1 million years ago.
Zooarchaeological attribute entry of Upper Herto fauna from excavations and surfac
Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 2017
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2020
Significance We report a rare example of a 1.4-million-y-old large bone fragment shaped into hand... more Significance We report a rare example of a 1.4-million-y-old large bone fragment shaped into handaxe-like form. This bone tool derives from the Konso Formation in southern Ethiopia, where abundant early Acheulean stone artifacts show considerable technological progression between ∼1.75 and <1.0 Mya. Technological analysis of the bone tool indicates intensive anthropogenic shaping. Edge damage, polish, and striae patterns are consistent with use in longitudinal motions, such as in butchering. The discovery of this bone handaxe shows that advanced flaking technology, practiced at Konso on a variety of lithic materials, was also applied to bone, thus expanding the known technological repertoire of African Early Pleistocene Homo .
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2020
Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of Japan, 1998
Six Milllon Years of Volcanic, Tectonic,Paleoenvironmental, and Paleoanthropological Records in t... more Six Milllon Years of Volcanic, Tectonic,Paleoenvironmental, and Paleoanthropological Records in the Middle Awash Region of Ethiopia.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2021
Body and canine size dimorphism in fossils inform sociobehavioral hypotheses on human evolution a... more Body and canine size dimorphism in fossils inform sociobehavioral hypotheses on human evolution and have been of interest since Darwin’s famous reflections on the subject. Here, we assemble a large dataset of fossil canines of the human clade, including all available Ardipithecus ramidus fossils recovered from the Middle Awash and Gona research areas in Ethiopia, and systematically examine canine dimorphism through evolutionary time. In particular, we apply a Bayesian probabilistic method that reduces bias when estimating weak and moderate levels of dimorphism. Our results show that Ar. ramidus canine dimorphism was significantly weaker than in the bonobo, the least dimorphic and behaviorally least aggressive among extant great apes. Average male-to-female size ratios of the canine in Ar. ramidus are estimated as 1.06 and 1.13 in the upper and lower canines, respectively, within modern human population ranges of variation. The slightly greater magnitude of canine size dimorphism in ...
Nature, Jan 11, 2016
The palaeobiological record of 12 million to 7 million years ago (Ma) is crucial to the elucidati... more The palaeobiological record of 12 million to 7 million years ago (Ma) is crucial to the elucidation of African ape and human origins, but few fossil assemblages of this period have been reported from sub-Saharan Africa. Since the 1970s, the Chorora Formation, Ethiopia, has been widely considered to contain ~10.5 million year (Myr) old mammalian fossils. More recently, Chororapithecus abyssinicus, a probable primitive member of the gorilla clade, was discovered from the formation. Here we report new field observations and geochemical, magnetostratigraphic and radioisotopic results that securely place the Chorora Formation sediments to between ~9 and ~7 Ma. The C. abyssinicus fossils are ~8.0 Myr old, forming a revised age constraint of the human-gorilla split. Other Chorora fossils range in age from ~8.5 to 7 Ma and comprise the first sub-Saharan mammalian assemblage that spans this period. These fossils suggest indigenous African evolution of multiple mammalian lineages/groups betwe...
Anthropological Science, 2015
Nature, Jan 12, 2003
Clarifying the geographic, environmental and behavioural contexts in which the emergence of anato... more Clarifying the geographic, environmental and behavioural contexts in which the emergence of anatomically modern Homo sapiens occurred has proved difficult, particularly because Africa lacked adequate geochronological, palaeontological and archaeological evidence. The discovery of anatomically modern Homo sapiens fossils at Herto, Ethiopia, changes this. Here we report on stratigraphically associated Late Middle Pleistocene artefacts and fossils from fluvial and lake margin sandstones of the Upper Herto Member of the Bouri Formation, Middle Awash, Afar Rift, Ethiopia. The fossils and artefacts are dated between 160,000 and 154,000 years ago by precise age determinations using the 40Ar/39Ar method. The archaeological assemblages contain elements of both Acheulean and Middle Stone Age technocomplexes. Associated faunal remains indicate repeated, systematic butchery of hippopotamus carcasses. Contemporary adult and juvenile Homo sapiens fossil crania manifest bone modifications indicati...
Homo erectusPleistocene Evidence from the Middle Awash, Ethiopia, 2009
... these marks. FIGURE 13.2 Excavation of the Daka calvaria BOU-VP-2/66 on the day of discovery.... more ... these marks. FIGURE 13.2 Excavation of the Daka calvaria BOU-VP-2/66 on the day of discovery. The low hills on the skyline are the Dulu Ali basalts and sediments, and the site of Aramis lies beyond these hills. Daka Member ...
KONSO-GARDULA RESEARCH PROJECT Volume 2 Archaeological Collections: Background and the Early Acheulean Assemblages