Project

Above all, the social challenge of the project is the development of the knowledge about the key period of recent human evolution that is the emergence of Homo sapiens, whose most ancient remains were discovered in East Africa. This is the area where the earliest modern humans could be endemic. The new discoveries and dating of fossils together with the genetic evidence are consistent with this region providing the source population(s) for subsequent dispersals out of Africa. This evidence has led to a renewed interest in the MSA over the past decade, since all of the early fossils of H. sapiens from East Africa are associated with MSA artefacts. Most of the specimens are from Ethiopia: Kibish Formation, Herto Member of the Bouri Formation, Garba III at Melka Kunture, Aduma  and Porc Epic. Specimens from Tanzania are the Upper Ngaloba Beds at Laetoli, Mumba, and possibly the Lake Eyasi. The specimen from Singa in Sudan has been widely debated, but is probably associated with MSA lithics. However, despite the importance of the available evidence, the knowledge about evolutionary and behavioural patterns among hominin populations in Eastern Africa during the last 300 kya is still poor. Although there is a considerable number of sites known, relatively few of these are well-dated and most of the East African record consist in open air sites. The patchy distribution of East African MSA sites is related in the intermittent nature of their investigation and globally,  the contrast between the well-studied human fossil record and the paucity of data about MSA technology is striking. The MSA is conventionally defined as techno complex characterized by points and the frequent use of Levallois methods, lacking the large cutting tools found in ESA. However, the definition has been often changing in time. A technological reassessment of MSA has been attempted only in recent years but its variability is still poorly investigated. This is even more problematic, considering that Early MSA predates the first H. sapiens fossils and that the MSA technology could include the behavioural adaptation of multiple hominin populations. The MSA is gradually coming to a reassessing including the concept of behavioural modernity. The vision of a single origin and/or African modernity is shared by many researchers, but the criteria that define it are fluctuating and controversial.

The MSA in Africa, corresponding today to a period of more than 250,000 years (290 kya – ~30 kya), is currently the lab of this major societal issue. The project meets the ambitious matter to understand the origin of our species, now inhabiting the entire planet, but also the origin of its development and its distinctive features. With the growing interest of the international scientific community to the emergence of modern humans, the proposed advancement on MSA is particularly relevant from a cultural point of view.

The contribution of (H)ORIGIN project therefore lies at cultural and social level in its valorisation of scientific knowledge of the past, especially for a central time-period in the evolution of humans. For this project focusing on humanity, the issue can only be broken down according to the old questions of what makes us human, how it came to populate the whole world, what paths have been taken to achieve this. The subject is discussed in the international scientific press in the angles of anthropology, genetics, and linguistics. However we believe that Palaeolithic archaeology has a fundamental role to play in the debate. Archaeology is the primary source of data and helps provide a geological and chronological context. But above all, it is through the interpretation of archaeological data that can form strong assumptions about the behaviour of our ancestors and connect us to the fundamental question of “Who we are “.

The fieldwork in East Africa is a central part of the research project, focused on four different areas: the opening of MSA sites within the Italian Archaeological Mission in Southern Ethiopia; investigation in the West Turkana (Kenya) MSA sites within the IN-Africa project (PI Marta Mirazon Lahr);  the investigation of the MSA Site in Al Kiday, Sudan, directed by Donatella Usai; the survey for new MSA sites in the Buya area (Eritrea), in the frame of the Italian Mission directed by Alfredo Coppa (università di Roma la Sapienza).