The Great Crossroads
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The Great Crossroads, one of the twelve divisions of the globe, is centered on Eurasia, with its northernmost extent meeting Northern Oceania and The Atlantic World at the North Pole. This vast region excludes the eastern, western, and southern extremities of the Eurasian landmass, which spans a significant portion of the Earth's surface.
The Ural Mountains, running approximately north to south, serve as the traditional boundary between Europe and Asia, as well as between Russia proper and Siberia.
For the purposes of this framework, The Great Crossroads includes Mongolia; western China, including Xinjiang and the Tibetan Plateau; the northern half of the Indian subcontinent; Afghanistan; the Iranian Plateau; Mesopotamia; eastern Arabia; the northern Levant; northeastern Cyprus; western and southwestern Anatolia; the Caucasus; Eastern Europe; Siberia; the Eastern Balkans; Eastern Scandinavia; the Baltic Sea basin; and Middle Europe.
- The southwestern boundary runs diagonally from south-central Germany, through the eastern Alps, the Balkans, and western Asia, terminating in the southern third of the Arabian Peninsula in the vast desert known as the Rub’ al Khali.
- The southern boundary divides South India from North India, following the generally recognized demarcation that includes the Narmada River, and separates the Indian Ocean-facing southeastern Arabian coast from the Persian Gulf-focused eastern Arabia.
- The southeastern boundary runs diagonally from the Bay of Bengal, following India’s border with Myanmar, marking the division between South Asia and both Southeast Asia and Eastern Asia.
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Homo georgicus is a species of Homo that was suggested in 2002 to describe fossil skulls and jaws found in Dmanisi, Georgia in 1999 and 2001, which seem intermediate between Homo habilis and H. erectus.
A partial skeleton was discovered in 2001.
The fossils are about one million eight hundred thousand years old.
The remains were first discovered in 1991 by Georgian scientist, David Lordkipanidze, accompanied by an international team which unearthed the remains.
Implements and animal bones were found alongside the ancient human remains.
Scientists thought at first that they had found mandibles and skulls belonging to Homo ergaster, but size differences led them to name a new species, Homo georgicus, which would be the descendant of Homo habilis and ancestor of Asian Homo erectus.
Paleolithic sites in Potohar near Pakistan's capital Islamabad, will yield the stone tools of the Soan Culture, an archaeological culture of the Lower Paleolithic (from around 1,800,000 to about 300,000 BP) in Pakistan, contemporary to the Acheulean.
It is named after the Soan River Valley in the Sivalik Hills, Pakistan.
The bearers of this culture are thought to be Homo erectus.
Hundreds of edged pebble tools will be discovered in Adiyala and Khasala, about sixteen kilometers (ten miles) from Rawalpindi terrace on the bend of the river.
Hand axes and cleavers will be found at Chauntra.
No human skeletons of this age have yet been found.
As in Africa, fossils that seem to represent subspecies of Homo sapiens have been found in Central Europe at Vértesszőlős (about three hundred and fifty thousand years old), ...
...Steinheim (two hundred and fifty thousand to three hundred and fifty thousand years old), ...
...Biache, and ...
...Swanscombe.
The Swanscombe fossil from southern England, the skull of an adult female with heavy brow ridges and a large projecting face.
Identified as Homo heidelbergensis, the Swanscombe skull dates to the Hoxnian Interglacial of four hundred thousand years ago, and since this follows the extreme Anglian ice age which drove humans out of the British Isles, the Swanscombe people must represent a re-colonization.
It is among these and similar finds in Africa that the line of distinction between Homo erectus and Homo sapiens becomes dim, for one species is apparently grading imperceptibly into its successor.
The fragments of a Neanderthal skull disinterred from a deposit of limestone at the Ehringsdorf quarries along the Ilm River, roughly two point four kilometers from Weimar, Germany, is known as the Ehringsdorf skull.
The deposits in which this skull were found came from the travertines belonging to the second half of the last (Eemian) interglacial period.
The estimated age of the remains are one hundred and fifty thousand to one hundred and twenty thousand years.
German anthropologist Franz Weidenreich will publish a monograph on the subject in 1928, titled Der Schädelfund von Weimar-Ehringsdorf, where he will describes it as the skullcap of an adult female.
His suggestion that the frontal area of the remains showed evidence of being struck leads to the conclusion that the subject was murdered.
In addition, he determined that the lack of a cranial base meant the skull had been opened for the purpose of extracting the brain.
However, the remains are so fragmentary that little attention was paid to this opinion.
Scottish anthropologist Arthur Keith made a study of the skull in 1931, concluding that it belonged to an individual less than twenty years old.
Although classed as an early Neanderthal type, the skull bears some features found in the species Homo sapiens.
In particular, it has a rounded occipital bone.
The Moderns are taller, more slender, and less muscular than the Neanderthals, with whom they share—perhaps uneasily—the Earth.
Though their brains are smaller in overall size, they are heavier in the forebrain, a difference that may allow for more abstract thought and the development of complex speech.
Yet, the inner world of the Neanderthals remains a mystery—no one knows the depths of their thoughts or how they truly expressed them.
The fearsome cave bear (Ursus spelaeus) likely became extinct around 27,800 years ago, according to recent fossil reassessments.
Rather than a single cause, a combination of factors is believed to have led to its extinction. While overhunting by humans has largely been dismissed—since human populations at the time were too small to pose a significant threat—evidence suggests that cave bears and humans may have competed for shelter, particularly in caves.
Mitochondrial DNA research indicates that the cave bear's genetic decline began long before its extinction, ruling out climate change-induced habitat loss as the direct cause. However, a recent DNA study suggests that cave bear populations started declining around 50,000 years ago, coinciding with an increase in human populations.
Unlike its close relative, the brown bear, the cave bear was highly dependent on a vegetarian diet, making it less adaptable to environmental changes. Additionally, evidence suggests that cave bears exclusively used caves for hibernation, unlike brown bears, which could hibernate in thickets or other natural shelters. This specialized hibernation behavior likely contributed to high winter mortality when suitable caves were unavailable.
As human populations gradually expanded, both Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans increasingly occupied caves as living quarters, reducing the availability of essential hibernation sites for cave bears. Over time, this competition for shelter may have contributed to their gradual extinction.
Interestingly, cave bears are rarely depicted in prehistoric cave paintings, leading some researchers to speculate that human hunters may have avoided them, or that their habitat preferences simply did not overlap with early human settlements.