Abstract
The Bab al-Mandab region has often been considered a primary crossing point for early hominins following a southern coastal route from East Africa to South and Southeast Asia. However, surprisingly little work has been done in the countries of Djibouti and Yemen, both of which hold the key to our understanding of the chronological, paleoenvironmental and adaptive contexts of such early movements. As a result, detailed and accurate information about hominin subsistence, raw material exploitation, climatic adaptations, and the rate and success of early dispersals in such regions still remain poorly understood. Being a part of the Rift Valley, Djibouti shows great potential for paleoanthropological research in parity with the rest of East Africa. Only one Oldowan site, near Lake Abbé, is currently known and dated to between 1.6 and 1.3 Ma by ESR, with presumably butchered remains of Elephas recki ileretensis and hundreds of artifacts on lavas. In addition, a complete articulated skeleton of Elephas recki recki was found in clays of the comparatively younger Gobaad Formation. Previous investigators have also reported a fragmentary maxilla, attributed to an older form of Homo sapiens and dated to ~250 Ka, from the valley of the Dagadlé Wadi. In Yemen and other parts of the Arabian Peninsula, archaeological investigations by numerous workers have yielded an abundance of Lower Paleolithic sites near the mountains and on fan surfaces, particularly in the Hadramaut area and the Tihama Plains, including the Al-Guza cave site with possible Oldowan artifacts. Surveys 25 to 40 km inland from the Gulf of Aden, South of Yemen, have yielded almost 40 Lower Paleolithic sites, including several Oldowan sites. Despite these commendable efforts, however, vast parts of both Djibouti and Yemen remain largely unexplored and much of the known evidence from both regions has not been absolutely dated or excavated. Until this is done, such data lend little support to early dispersal models that incorporate a southern coastal route to Southeast Asia during the Late Pliocene. This paper attempts to highlight and assess the earliest-known Mode 1 and Mode 2 evidence from Djibouti and Yemen, and correlate them with the available Plio-Pleistocene environmental records of the Bab al-Mandab region. Another objective is to provide a detailed synthesis of the original French publications on the paleoanthropological evidence from Djibouti, thus making it more widely available for comparative purposes.
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Chauhan, P.R. (2009). Early Homo Occupation Near the Gate of Tears: Examining the Paleoanthropological Records of Djibouti and Yemen. In: Hovers, E., Braun, D.R. (eds) Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Oldowan. Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9060-8_5
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