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Middle Palaeolithic
noun
- the period between the Lower and the Upper Palaeolithic, usually taken as equivalent to the Mousterian
adjective
- of or relating to this period
Example Sentences
The stone tools from Le Moustier -- used by Neanderthals during the Middle Palaeolithic period of the Mousterian between 120,000 and 40,000 years ago -- are kept in the collection of Berlin's Museum of Prehistory and Early History and had not previously been examined in detail.
Another of the sites investigated in the Megalopolis area of the southern Peloponnese peninsula — home of the enormously later sites of Mycenae, Olympia and Pylos — contained the oldest Middle Palaeolithic remains found in Greece, dating to roughly 280,000 years ago.
However, the cave hit the news headlines in 2010 when analysis of ancient DNA3 from a bone in a Middle Palaeolithic layer indicated that the specimen was a previously unknown type of hominin from a branch of the evolutionary tree near H. sapiens.
Analyses of ancient DNA from the site4–6 indicated the presence of Neanderthals and Denisovans there during the Middle Palaeolithic.
There is some evidence of post-depositional disturbance, but the crucial late Middle Palaeolithic and Initial Upper Palaeolithic layers show relatively little sign of disturbance.
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