Centre Français des Études Éthiopiennes

The Acheulean technological tradition, characterized by a large (>10 cm) flake-based component, represents a significant technological advance over the Oldowan. Although stone tool assemblages attributed to the Acheulean have been reported from as early as circa 1.6-1.75 Ma, the characteristics of these earliest occurrences and comparisons with later assemblages have not been reported in detail. Here, we provide a newly established chronometric calibration for the Acheulean assemblages of the Konso Formation, southern Ethiopia, which span the time period ∼1.75 to <1.0 Ma. The earliest Konso Acheulean is chronologically indistinguishable from the assemblage recently published as the world's earliest with an age of ∼1.75 Ma at Kokiselei, west of Lake Turkana, Kenya. This Konso assemblage is characterized by a combination of large picks and crude bifaces/unifaces made predominantly on large flake blanks. An increase in the number of flake scars was observed within the Konso Formation handaxe assemblages through time, but this was less so with picks. The Konso evidence suggests that both picks and handaxes were essential components of the Acheulean from its initial stages and that the two probably differed in function. The temporal refinement seen, especially in the handaxe forms at Konso, implies enhanced function through time, perhaps in processing carcasses with long and stable cutting edges. The documentation of the earliest Acheulean at ∼1.75 Ma in both northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia suggests that behavioral novelties were being established in a regional scale at that time, paralleling the emergence of Homo erectus-like hominid morphology.

Haematophagous bats exist only in Latin America, from México to the Northern provinces of Argentina. They are represented by three species, Desmodus rotundus, Diphylla ecaudata and Diaemus youngii. While two species feed only on blood of wild birds, one species, D. rotundus, causes losses feeding on livestock and could be a vector for rabies virus. The cases in which humans were bitten by the bat have increased in Brazil. Bats became a target of control activities by farming communities and local governments. Indiscriminate actions such as poisoning bats and destroying their roosts put the lives of other bat species, which are extremely important for the ecologic balance, at risk. The vaccination of exposed livestock against rabies, which would protect the endangered livestock, is not regularly carried out. The importance and current status of D. rotundus in the transmission of rabies in Brazil, the Public Health aspects, the importance for the livestock industry are shown and the consequences of reducing bat population are discussed. Alternatives to an indiscriminate bat-population reduction in the control of rabies are proposed.

Sudan and Uganda have for many years carried out an undeclared war. One little-known aspect of this conflict is the use of Zaire/Congo as an outside battlefield where proxy guerrilla organizations either fought each other or fought the armies of their sponsor’s enemy. From a small scale prior to 1996, the conflict grew to occupy a major place in terms of men engaged and battles fought after this proxy war morphed into the bigger ‘Congolese’ conflict which developed from the fall of President Mobutu and lasted until 2002.

Significance We report a rare example of a 1.4-million-y-old large bone fragment shaped into handaxe-like form. This bone tool derives from the Konso Formation in southern Ethiopia, where abundant early Acheulean stone artifacts show considerable technological progression between ∼1.75 and &lt;1.0 Mya. Technological analysis of the bone tool indicates intensive anthropogenic shaping. Edge damage, polish, and striae patterns are consistent with use in longitudinal motions, such as in butchering. The discovery of this bone handaxe shows that advanced flaking technology, practiced at Konso on a variety of lithic materials, was also applied to bone, thus expanding the known technological repertoire of African Early Pleistocene Homo .

Late Pliocene climate changes have long been implicated in environmental changes and mammalian evolution in Africa, but high-resolution examinations of the fossil and climatic records have been hampered by poor sampling. By using fossils from the well-dated Shungura Formation (lower Omo Valley, northern Turkana Basin, southern Ethiopia), we investigate palaeodietary changes in one bovid and in one suid lineage from 3 to 2 Ma using stable isotope analysis of tooth enamel. Results show unexpectedly large increases in C(4) dietary intake around 2.8 Ma in both the bovid and suid, and possibly in a previously reported hippopotamid species. Enamel δ(13)C values after 2.8 Ma in the bovid (Tragelaphus nakuae) are higher than recorded for any living tragelaphin, and are not expected given its conservative dental morphology. A shift towards increased C(4) feeding at 2.8 Ma in the suid (Kolpochoerus limnetes) appears similarly decoupled from a well-documented record of dental evolution indicating gradual and progressive dietary change. The fact that two, perhaps three, disparate Pliocene herbivore lineages exhibit similar, and contemporaneous changes in dietary behaviour suggests a common environmental driver. Local and regional pollen, palaeosol and faunal records indicate increased aridity but no corresponding large and rapid expansion of grasslands in the Turkana Basin at 2.8 Ma. Our results provide new evidence supporting ecological change in the eastern African record around 2.8 Ma, but raise questions about the resolution at which different ecological proxies may be comparable, the correlation of vegetation and faunal change, and the interpretation of low δ(13)C values in the African Pliocene.

The affinities of the Hippopotamidae are at the core of the phylogeny of Cetartiodactyla (even-toed mammals: cetaceans, ruminants, camels, suoids, and hippos). Molecular phylogenies support Cetacea as sister group of the Hippopotamidae, implying a long ghost lineage between the earliest cetaceans (approximately 53 Ma) and the earliest hippopotamids (approximately 16 Ma). Morphological studies have proposed two different sister taxa for hippopotamids: suoids (notably palaeochoerids) or anthracotheriids. Evaluating these phylogenetic hypotheses requires substantiating the poorly known early history of the Hippopotamidae. Here, we undertake an original morphological phylogenetic analysis including several "suiform" families and previously unexamined early Miocene taxa to test previous conflicting hypotheses. According to our results, Morotochoerus ugandensis and Kulutherium rusingensis, until now regarded as the sole African palaeochoerid and the sole African bunodont anthracotheriid, respectively, are unambiguously included within the Hippopotamidae. They are the earliest known hippopotamids and set the family fossil record back to the early Miocene (approximately 21 Ma). The analysis reveals that hippopotamids displayed an unsuspected taxonomic and body size diversity and remained restricted to Africa during most of their history, until the latest Miocene. Our results also confirm the deep nesting of Hippopotamidae within the paraphyletic Anthracotheriidae; this finding allows us to reconstruct the sequence of dental innovations that links advanced selenodont anthracotheriids to hippopotamids, previously a source of major disagreements on hippopotamid origins. The analysis demonstrates a close relationship between Eocene choeropotamids and anthracotheriids, a relationship that potentially fills the evolutionary gap between earliest hippopotamids and cetaceans implied by molecular analyses.

Fossils and artifacts from Herto, Ethiopia, include the most complete child and adult crania of early Homo sapiens . The endocranial cavities of the Herto individuals show that by 160,000 y ago, brain size, inferred from endocranial size, was similar to that seen in modern human populations. However, endocranial shape differed from ours. This gave rise to the hypothesis that the brain itself evolved substantially during the past ∼200,000 y, possibly in tandem with the transition from Middle to Upper Paleolithic techno-cultures. However, it remains unclear whether evolutionary changes in endocranial shape mostly reflect changes in brain morphology rather than changes related to interaction with maxillofacial morphology. To discriminate between these effects, we make use of the ontogenetic fact that brain growth nearly ceases by the time the first permanent molars fully erupt, but the face and cranial base continue to grow until adulthood. Here we use morphometric data derived from digitally restored immature and adult H. sapiens fossils from Herto, Qafzeh, and Skhul (HQS) to track endocranial development in early H. sapiens . Until the completion of brain growth, endocasts of HQS children were similar in shape to those of modern human children. The similarly shaped endocasts of fossil and modern children indicate that our brains did not evolve substantially over the past 200,000 y. Differences between the endocranial shapes of modern and fossil H. sapiens adults developed only with continuing facial and basicranial growth, possibly reflecting substantial differences in masticatory and/or respiratory function.

International audience

The rock-cut churches of Ethiopia have long intrigued visitors and historians – and have frustrated archaeologists seeking their sequence of construction. Do they belong to one grand ceremonial monastic plan, or a long-lived ritual centre, continually refashioned over time? Since the churches are cut into live rock, the conventional signals of archaeological phasing are hard to find. The authors address these problems at the famous site of Lalibela, showing that, embedded in the cuts and openings, the spoil heaps, and even in the now vanished sediments, the stratigraphic sequence is there to be read.

Abstract This article looks at how rural inhabitants navigated state power under a regime led by a former socialist party that negotiated its conversion to a market economy while keeping tight control on the whole society. In that regard, it addresses adjustment in a very specific context, by analysing a distinctive chronology, raising the ruling party's ability to negotiate with the international financial institutions, and considering popular reactions from a rural point of view. The regime led by the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) managed to delay measures of structural adjustment during the 1990s and 2000s while deepening structures of state control it partly inherited from the former military junta. Brutal structural adjustment plans were refused, while international financial institutions were kept away from the Ethiopian government's policy mix, by way of elaborate ideological and institutional arrangements. The EPRDF coined its own version of the “developmental state” and renewed state control of the economy while deepening its articulation to global markets. Under the EPRDF, all sectors of society and especially peasantries were closely monitored and mobilized in the name of development. But although the open expression of dissent remained rare, peasants resorted to many strategies to cope with political control and to some extent divert it. By taking agricultural policies as a case study, the article describes peasant practices and questions differences between resistance, false compliance, and diversion, underlining how blurred such labels can actually be.

The Hippopotamidae have been a major component of the African wetland fauna for the last 7 million years, following the ‘Hippopotamine Event,’ i.e., the sudden emergence in the fossil record of the subfamily Hippopotaminae, including both extant species. The general dearth of African fossiliferous deposits dated between 9.5 Ma and 7.5 Ma concealed until now the evolution that led to the Hippopotamine Event and the subsequent success of these large semiaquatic herbivores. Part of this evolution is unveiled by the hippopotamid dental remains found at Chorora, a late Miocene site of the southern Afar Depression in Ethiopia spanning most of the fossil-depleted time interval. Although fragmentary, these remains represent a new, mid-sized hippopotamid species dated to ca. 8 Ma, as well as a somewhat younger, larger form. A cladistic analysis of a large array of cetartiodactyls indicates that the Chorora taxa were basal to the latest Miocene hippopotamines. The new species displays a mosaic of dental characters that support the attribution of the new species to a new genus within Hippopotaminae. The new fossils also clarify the course of early hippopotamine dental evolution. The Chorora hippopotamids suggest that transition to a marked abundance of hippopotamines with their unique dental pattern in African ecosystems occurred within a relatively short time interval, most probably between 8 Ma and 7.5 Ma.http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:47B9381F-E3B5-40C9-B9AB-51CC3D0D3A8ASUPPLEMENTAL DATA—Supplemental materials are available for this article for free at www.tandfonline.com/UJVPCitation for this article: Boisserie, J.-R., G. Suwa, B. Asfaw, F. Lihoreau, R. L. Bernor, S. Katoh, and Y. Beyene. 2017. Basal hippopotamines from the upper Miocene of Chorora, Ethiopia. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. DOI: 10.1080/02724634.2017.1297718.

The monolithic churches of Lalibela are commonly regarded as evidence for the shift of the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia from Aksum to the Ethiopian Highlands during the thirteenth century AD. Recent research, however, has shown that the rock-cut churches were not created ex nihilo. New archaeological evidence has emerged for an earlier, local troglodytic culture, particularly at Washa Mika'el, further illuminating the cosmopolitan society that existed in medieval Ethiopia. This article considers the role played by this troglodytic culture in the Christianisation of the Ethiopian Highlands and how it attests continuity with its predecessors, especially in the way that sculpted decor are perpetuated and transformed in the frame of a new religious background.

During its 28 years of rule, the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) had built a strong system for controlling the Ethiopian state and civil society. This article looks at how the party first managed to keep control over the civil service. It analyses the functioning of civil servants’ evaluations called gimgema. Such evaluations comprise the filling of evaluation forms and sessions of criticisms and self-criticisms during which bureaus’ employees have to publicly acknowledge their mistakes and accuse colleagues. Bureau heads who are also party officials then decide on the employee’s future. The article describes the functioning of gimgema, its political efficiency, and some resistance strategies put in force by state agents. Born in a Marxist-Leninist ideological framework, gimgema is an Ethiopian variation on the global socialist evaluation theme, now fitting perfectly with neoliberal injunctions to ‘good governance’, ‘commitment’ and ‘transparency’. As a symbol of the EPRDF’s ideological evolution, gimgema exemplifies the ideological indeterminacy of government techniques.

Significance Understanding the evolution, dispersals, behaviors, and ecologies of early African Homo sapiens requires accurate geochronological placement of fossils and artifacts. We introduce open-air occurrences of such remains in sediments of the Middle Awash study area in Ethiopia. We describe the stratigraphic and depositional contexts of our discoveries and demonstrate the effectiveness of recently developed uranium-series dating of ostrich eggshell at validating and bridging across more traditional radioisotopic methods ( 14 C and 40 Ar/ 39 Ar). Homo sapiens fossils and associated Middle Stone Age artifacts are placed at &gt;158 and ∼96 ka. Later Stone Age occurrences are dated to ∼21 to 24 ka and ∼31 to 32 ka, firmly dating the upper portion of one of the longest records of human evolution.

Significance Humans have the proportionately smallest male canines among all anthropoids and little canine sexual dimorphism. However, the evolutionary emergence of this defining condition remains unclear because until now we have lacked a reliable method of determining dimorphism in weakly dimorphic fossil species. Using a probability-based method we recently developed, we estimated canine size dimorphism in the ∼4.5 million-year-old Ardipithecus ramidus and found it to be weak and comparable to that of modern humans. Our analysis of &gt;300 fossils spanning 6 million years shows that male canine size reduction occurred early in human evolution, broadly coincident with the adoption of bipedality. This suggests a profound and evolutionarily deep sociobehavioral shift that minimized male–male aggression, most likely mediated by female choice.

Abstract NOW ( New and Old Worlds ) is a global database of fossil mammal occurrences, currently containing around 68,000 locality-species entries. The database spans the last 66 million years, with its primary focus on the last 23 million years. Whereas the database contains records from all continents, the main focus and coverage of the database historically has been on Eurasia. The database includes primarily, but not exclusively, terrestrial mammals. It covers a large part of the currently known mammalian fossil record, focusing on classical and actively researched fossil localities. The database is managed in collaboration with an international advisory board of experts. Rather than a static archive, it emphasizes the continuous integration of new knowledge of the community, data curation, and consistency of scientific interpretations. The database records species occurrences at localities worldwide, as well as ecological characteristics of fossil species, geological contexts of localities and more. The NOW database is primarily used for two purposes: (1) queries about occurrences of particular taxa, their characteristics and properties of localities in the spirit of an encyclopedia; and (2) large scale research and quantitative analyses of evolutionary processes, patterns, reconstructing past environments, as well as interpreting evolutionary contexts. The data are fully open, no logging in or community membership is necessary for using the data for any purpose.

We present new material of the selenodont anthracothere Hemimeryx blanfordi from the Oligocene deposits of the Bugti Hills (Balochistan, Pakistan), collected between 1999 and 2002. This is the first undisputed Oligocene occurrence of the species, previously known from the early Miocene of Pakistan. Investigation of the molar enamel microstructure reveals a surprising mono-zonal Schmelzmuster, already detected in some middle to Late miocene selenedont anthracotheres. We include this observation combined with a morphological revision of H. blanfordi and a cladistic assessment of the dental evidence, to propose a new phylogenetic hypothesis regarding Hemimeryx and its close relatives. We confirm the clade including advanced bothriodontines, which we erect to a tribe rank and name Merycopotamini. The South Asian origin of Merycopotamini is consistent with hypothesized subsequent dispersal events of Merycopotamini from Asia to Africa.

International audience

The spatial relationships of the Early Oldowan toolmakers with their environment have been so far addressed through raw material procurement analyses and the characterization of hominid habitat. This paper proposes to integrate these two approaches into a broader spatial analysis encompassing archaeological and environmental data (palaeontological, geological and isotopic data) from Member F and lower Member G of the Shungura Formation (Lower Omo Valley, Ethiopia). Heterogeneity in data resolution induces a multiscale approach with three levels of analysis. The level of occurrence complex allows focusing on the characterization of archaeological occurrences and on their environmental settings. The level of “study area” allows working on hominid habitats and on their raw material procurement behaviours. Finally, at the Shungura Formation scale, we can address temporal issues related to the evolution of spatial behaviours between Member F and the lower part of Member G, ca. 2.3 to 2 million years (Ma). Les relations spatiales des tailleurs de pierre de l’Oldowayen ancien avec leur environnement ont fait jusqu’à présent l’objet de recherches axées sur l’acquisition de la matière première et sur l’habitat des hominidés. Ce papier développe les fondements d’une approche spatiale intégrant ces deux aspects au sein d’un travail croisant les données archéologiques et environnementales (paléontologiques, géologiques et isotopiques) du Membre F et de la partie inférieure du Membre G de la Formation de Shungura (basse vallée de l’Omo, Éthiopie). Ces données se situant à différents niveaux de résolution spatiale, une approche multi-scalaire est proposée : l’échelle du complexe d’occurrences archéologiques pour la caractérisation des occurrences archéologiques et de leur cadre environnemental, celle de « l’aire d’étude » pour laquelle vont être apportées des précisions sur l’habitat des hominidés et leurs approvisionnements en matière premières, et enfin celle de la Formation de Shungura pour confronter entre elles les données spatiales acquises dans le Membre F et dans la partie inférieure du Membre G, entre environ 2,3 et 2 millions d’années (Ma), dans une optique temporelle.

We describe five new specimens of Hippopotamidae from the Miocene of Napudet, a new site in southwestern Turkana Basin, Kenya. These specimens include fragmentary maxillae with teeth and a well-preserved mandibular symphysis. We attribute them to Kenyapotamus ternani, the least known species within Kenyapotamus, on the basis of relatively small dental dimensions and a clear distinction between the parastyle and the mesiostyle on the upper molars. This attribution suggests an age older than 10 Ma for Napudet. A cladistic analysis integrating these new data makes it possible to evaluate the relationships between middle Miocene hippopotamids and later representatives. The mandibular symphysis from Napudet, defining the plesiomorphic condition for mandibular morphology in Hippopotaminae, could be crucial for future phylogenetic reconstructions of the family. Mandibular morphology is a fast-evolving complex of characters, key in reconstructing the behavior and the past diversity of Hippopotamidae. Finally, this material demonstrates the potential of Napudet for augmenting the fossil record for a relatively ill-documented time interval (13–10 Ma).SUPPLEMENTAL DATA—Supplemental materials are available for this article for free at www.tandfonline.com/UJVPCitation for this article: Boisserie, J.-R., C. Kiarie, F. Lihoreau, and I. Nengo. 2017. Middle Miocene Kenyapotamus (Cetartiodactyla, Hippopotamidae) from Napudet, Turkana Basin, Kenya. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. DOI: 10.1080/02724634.2017.1272055.