Anthropology 150

 Population increase

 Expansion of human populations into new regions of the earth

 Increasing regional diversity (cultural diversification)

 Increased diversification of subsistence

 Increased diversification of material culture (more tool types, appearance of new types of material culture)

 More complex tools: blade tools from indirect percussion, boomerangs, spearthrowers, atlatls, bow and arrow

 Larger social groups

 Greater symbolic expression

Cave art proliferates in Western Europe

Many of the caves may have Been seasonal aggregation Sites, where large groups Gathered during times of Peak resource availability

Art may have been one medium for the negotiation Of social identity

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 Brain re-organization

 E.g. Richard Klein’s theory of “neural breakthrough”

 Changing social conditions

 Larger groups

 Emergent social inequality

 Changing gender relationships

 Human genetic diversity is reduced with the extinction of the Neandertals

 Human cultural diversity dramatically increases as people immigrate to new regions of the earth and becomes isolated from one another