17 Apples and Oranges: Morphological Versus Behavioral Transitions in the Pleistocene Daniel E. Lieberman and Ofer Bar-Yosef Introduction Paleoanthropologists who seek correspondences between the fossil and archaeological records of the Pleistocene have a frustrating task. The fossil record suggests that Homo erectus (or possibly H. ergaster) migrated out of Africa by 1.8 Ma and then evolved in Africa, Europe and Asia into a group of taxa or populations—often termed collectively as “archaic Homo”—that are chiefly distinguished from early African H. erectus by larger brains and faces. While many subsequent events are unclear, archaic Homo populations in various parts of the Old World had different subsequent evolutionary histo- ries: in Africa they were ancestral to modern H. sapiens; in Europe they evolved into the Neanderthals; and in Asia they persisted as H. erectus and/or archaic Homo. A series of archaeological transitions, defined prima- rily on the basis of lithic technologies, also occurred over the same time period, but with little evident corre- lation to the species identified in the fossil record (Figure 17.1). We have no idea who created the earliest lithic industry, the Oldowan, that first appears approxi- mately 2.6 Ma (Semaw et al. 2003). Moreover, the Oldowan gave rise to various chopper-chopping tool industries that persisted for almost two million years throughout much of the old world. The Acheulian indus- try, characterized by handaxes, first appears at about 1.7 Ma (Dominguez-Rodrigo et al. 2001), significantly after the first appearance of early H. erectus in East Africa and Eurasia. Acheulian industries are present in Africa, western and south Asia, and western Europe until about 250 Ka but have no more correlation to any hominid species than the contemporaneous core-chopper or core and flake industries. Likewise, the Middle Paleolithic (MP) and Middle Stone Age (MSA) indus- tries, based on prepared core reduction techniques, are widely present by 250 Ka although they may be as old … one is not being too daring in pointing to major contrasts between archaic and modern humans. — David Pilbeam (1986:334) as 500 Ka in East Africa (Deino and McBrearty 2002; McBrearty this volume). MP/MSA industries were pro- duced by archaic and modern Homo; they are also corre- lated with the origins of H. sapiens in Africa (McBrearty and Brooks 2000). Finally, the Upper Paleolithic (UP) and Later Stone Age (LSA) industries, based mostly on prismatic blade core reduction techniques, first appear about 45 Ka in East Africa and the Levant, and are widely associated with modern humans. In Europe, the Chatelperronian, a blade-based lithic industry, is associat- ed with a secondary burial of a Neanderthal at St. Cesaire (Leveque and Vandermeersch 1980) and a few isolated fragments at Arcy sur Cur (Hublin et al. 1996). Why so little correspondence? There are three possi- ble explanations for the poor correlations apparent between archaeological industries and hominid species. First, the taxonomies may be wrong. The most extreme example of this viewpoint is the multiregional hypothesis which proposes that the Lower, Middle and Upper Paleolithic industries are all products of a single, highly variable species, H. sapiens, that has been present since about 1.8 Ma (Wolpoff 1999). A second possibility is that there are correspondences, either in shared-derived cultural features (Foley and Lahr 1997), or in aspects of behavior that are subtle or difficult to discern in the archaeological record. Lieberman and Shea (1994), for example, suggested that Neanderthals and modern humans in the Levant had differences in hunting fre- quencies and mobility strategies. Alternatively, Klein has suggested that the Upper Paleolithic marks a cognitive, neurological shift within H. sapiens that is not evident from cranial remains, but which accounts for the rapid expansion of H. sapiens throughout the world and the corresponding demise of archaic Homo taxa such as the Neanderthals (Klein 1995; Klein and Edgar 2002).