Josh Hooton

Anthropology
Signature Assignment
10-11-14

Title of Article: Discontinuity of Human Presence at Atapuerca during the Early Middle
Pleistocene: A Matter of Ecological Competition?
Ill be honest, I read through about 15 abstracts of articles before I found one
that I thought I might be able to make some sense out of. This article presents arguments
about the continuity of the presence of humans between 0.7 mya and 0.5 mya. Before I go
on to that I would like to say how this assignment helped me to achieve the objectives listed
in the syllabus. First of all, I noticed that most of the articles written on this site are targeted
on very specific subjects and time zones. The authors did their research and have given us
several references to look up and further understand their work. It also brought to my
attention that if I were to ever write a scholarly article on the subject of anthropology I
would certainly have to hit the glossary of our textbook so I could use the right wording and
be able to understand what I was saying.
This particular article really caught my attention, because how could there have
possibly been a discontinuation of the population of early humans? The article gives us
three options of how this could be explained: The first option is that a discontinuity
occurred between the early and middle Pliestocene human populations and thus, Europe
was almost completely depopulated during this time. The second explanation takes into
account what may have went on if there was a continuity in human population. This
explanation claims that perhaps the humans were restricted because of environmental
conditions. The third possible scenario is that the early Pleistocene populations scarcely
survived and were replaced by Archulean immagrants about 0.5 million years ago. The
articles writer does however submit that the possibility of a lack of evidence could be the
reason for the gap, however they doubt this because of the abundance and preservation of
stone tools that these human species created. They are easily able to find these tools and
identify how old they are and therefore who made them and other important factors.
The article goes on to explain to us that there was no hominin presence in Europe
from the time period of 0.5 million years ago to 0.7 million years ago, or at least there is lack
of sufficient evidence. I found this article intriguing because I wondered what could have
possibly happened to the species that was so much more mentally developed than really
any other species out there. It is also interesting for me to think that there are things out
there that could drive us out of existence as well. Whether we like to believe it or not we
never know what could happen with our environments and surrounding species. In my
personal opinion I think the most viable option of what happened was that the hominin
species were forced to live in a very remote area and therefore are very hide to find. I
believe that the hominins would have been to smart to become completely extinct in an
area. I think they most likely moved out of a dangerous area and continued to thrive and
adapt as they learned where the best and most efficient places to live were.
I am glad I discovered this article and more particularly this website, because I think
it will be something that will help me to learn and progress as I continue through college
and enter harder more pressing classes.