Palaeogenetic evidence suggests that the last common ancestor of present-day humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans lived around 765-550 thousand years ago (ka)1. However, both the geographical distribution and the morphology of these ancestral humans remain uncertain. The Homo antecessor fossils from the TD6 layer of Gran Dolina at Atapuerca, Spain, dated between 950 ka and 770 ka (ref. 2), have been proposed as potential candidates for this ancestral population3. However, all securely dated Homo sapiens fossils before 90 ka were found either in Africa or at the gateway to Asia, strongly suggesting an African rather than a Eurasian origin of our species. Here we describe new hominin fossils from the Grotte à Hominidés at Thomas Quarry I (ThI-GH) in Casablanca, Morocco, dated to around 773 ka. These fossils are similar in age to H. antecessor, yet are morphologically distinct, displaying a combination of primitive traits and of derived features reminiscent of later H. sapiens and Eurasian archaic hominins. The ThI-GH hominins provide insights into African populations predating the earliest H. sapiens individuals discovered at Jebel Irhoud in Morocco4 and provide strong evidence for an African lineage ancestral to our species. These fossils offer clues about the last common ancestor shared with Neanderthals and Denisovans.
La Grotte des Contrebandiers, which contains Middle Stone Age (MSA) occupations dating to Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5 and Later Stone Age (LSA) occupations in MIS 2, presents an opportunity to investigate the local impacts of late Pleistocene climate variability on the subsistence strategies of human groups in the Atlantic coastal region of Morocco. This study uses stable oxygen isotopes from large herbivore tooth enamel (δ18Oenamel values) to explore shifts in precipitation regimes and water deficit in plants through time at the site. In addition, δ18Oenamel values are paired with marine mollusk abundance data to explore variation in coastal resource use during climate intervals with variable sea levels. We find that δ18Oenamel values among evaporation-sensitive (ES) and evaporation-insensitive (EI) taxa reveal distinctions between MIS 2 and 5 as well as variation within MIS 5 consistent with orbital-scale climate shifts. Furthermore, we find that during climate intervals with higher inferred sea levels, marine resources were either incorporated into diets more frequently or less field processing occurred. Despite climate variability recorded in δ18Oenamel proxies, mammalian species composition among faunal assemblages at Contrebandiers do not vary drastically, indicating persistence of mixed scrubland-grassland habitats through time. Human diets at the site were affected most strongly by physical modification of coastal geography than by other climate factors, given that vegetation and animal communities of the Moroccan littoral generally had sufficient ecological flexibility to cope with local climate fluctuations in the late Pleistocene.
The early Islamic settlement of Tamdult in southern Morocco is at the centre of an archaeological mining-metallurgical landscape with strong evidence for the production and working of lead, silver, copper and brass. Here, we provide an overview of the various metallurgies identified, and discuss their likely common origin from a sulfidic complex lead-zinc-copper ore mineralisation, leading to two distinct primary products: silver pellets and brass ingots. The presence of ancient mining traces, multiple locales of copper and lead smelting, fragments of litharge, numerous coin moulds with silver traces, and various types of ore, slag, crucibles and moulds linked to brass making, constitutes the most comprehensive inter-connected set of chaînes opératoires for copper, brass, lead and silver production in northwestern Africa. The initial results presented here allow key aspects of the raw material procurement and processing to be reconstructed, and to identify remaining gaps in our understanding and documentation of early medieval metal production on the western fringes of the Sahara.
The North African desert margin is considered one of the most sensitive areas to future climate changes, yet the periodicities, coupling mechanisms and external forcing of Holocene environmental variability remain poorly understood. To investigate millennial- to centennial-scale periodicities in Holocene climatic variability and geomorphological processes, we use a Holocene sediment record from Lake Sidi Ali in the semiarid to sub-humid Middle Atlas with a robust 210Pb / 137Cs and pollen-concentrates-based 14C chronology. We use a high-resolution core scanning-XRF record, in order to distinguish between lake-internal (e.g., chemical precipitation) and lake-external (e.g., detrital input) processes. Redfit and Wavelet time series analyses reveal distinct periodicities of millennial to centennial scale. By a correlation analysis of extracted, highly significant, frequency analysis spectra, three XRF-based “Redfit Proxy Groups” (RPGs) which potentially reflect different hydroclimatic forcing mechanisms were derived. Subsequently, we integrated environmental and climatic proxies from the same core (Cedrus pollen abundance, magnetic susceptibility, δ18O and δ13C values of ostracod shells, grain-size endmembers and total organic carbon) and used their wavelet domain to improve the interpretation. Finally, we identified two main periodicity regimes that affected, on the one hand, the hydrological regime and, on the other hand, the lake productivity and catchment erosion dynamics. For RPG 1 (Ca, Sr, Ca/Ti, Sr/Ti), we identified 2 and 1 kyr periodicities, which we interpret as precipitation/evaporation related proxies in the context of North Atlantic and solar forcing. For RPG 2 (Fe, Ti, K, Si/Ti), we observe 3.5 and 1.5 kyr periodicities, which we interpret as driven by lake productivity or detrital input. Overall, our results show that Holocene environmental variability at Lake Sidi Ali was structured by two partly decoupled regimes: hydroclimatic variability linked to precipitation/evaporation changes and catchment-related variability linked to erosion, productivity and terrestrial sediment supply.
