So what do scholars mean when they say "behavioral modernity"? McBrearty and Brooks (citation below, and worth reading, every 111 pages of it) provided a list of four main areas of human existence that saw change and growth between the Lower Paleolithic and the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic.
Ecology
- Enlarged geographic range
- Marine resource exploitation (fish and shellfish)
Technology
- Bone tool technology
- Projectile point technology
- Stone tool technology involving blades and backed scrapers
- Special purpose tools
- Control of fire
- Hafting and composite tools (atlatl)
Economy and Social organization
- Specialized hunting for different species
- Group (organized) hunting
- Structured settlements, with hearths and living spaces
- Use of complex language
- Expanded exchange networks
- Systematic burials of adults and children
- Care for the elderly and infirm
Symbolic behavior
- Use of red ochre
- Personal ornaments (perforated shell beads)
- Abstract symbols engraved into bone objects
- Burials with grave goods
Sources and Further Information
Middle Stone Age Points from Sibudu Cave
Bibliography of Behavioral Modernity
Bouzouggar, A., et al. 2007 82,000-year-old shell beads from North Africa and implications for the origins of modern human behavior. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104(24):9964-9969.
Klein, Richard G. 2008 Out of Africa and the Evolution of Human Behavior. Evolutionary Anthropology 17:267-281.
McBrearty, Sally and Alison S. Brooks 2000 The revolution that wasn't: a new interpretation of the origin of modern human behavior. Journal of Human Evolution 39(5):453-563.
Nowell A. 2010. Defining Behavioral Modernity in the Context of Neandertal and Anatomically Modern Human Populations. Annual Review of Anthropology 39(1):437-452.
Vanhaeren, Marian, et al. 2006 Middle Paleolithic Shell Beads in Israel and Algeria. Science 312:1785-1788.
