This ongoing project concerns the emergence of cultural modernity, presumably appearing with the first arrival of Modern humans in Europe and the extinction of Neanderthal populations (50,000 - 35,000 years ago). Cultural modernity is a primary behavior of Modern humans, who store symbolic information outside the human brain. One expression of symbolic reasoning is the adoption of technological changes in response to environmental challenges, in contrast to earlier responses that typically used existing technologies in new ways.

Indications for behavioral modernity and technological changes in Europe probably began with the arrival of anatomically Modern humans coming from Africa via the Near East (Out of Africa hypothesis. Biological and cultural changes are linked to the replacement of Neanderthal populations (living more than 400,000 years ago in Europe) by Modern human. The first evidence for modern behavior in Europe is attributed to the Aurignacian culture when the previous Neandertal lithic remains are qualified as Mousterian culture. The so-called "Transitional or Early Upper Paleolithic cultures", which are chronologically between the Aurignacian and Mousterian, are problematic because of the lack of human fossils and the link with previous and later cultures.

Were Neanderthals able to reproduce modern human behavior? Were the last Neanderthal technologies influenced by the appearance of Modern humans in Europe and what is the evidence in the archeological record?

I propose to examine and validate the context of The Field Museum`s archeological collections from various areas in Eurasia which were dated between 80,000-30,000 years ago. Furthermore, I would like to characterize their lithic assеmblages and to isolate their technological elements and economic behaviors of cultural modernity. This new study can be integrated with my previous results from probably similar assemblages from Near East (Ksar Akil), Middle East-Zagros mount (Warwasi and Yafteh) or Eastern Balkans (Bacho Kiro, Temnata and Kozarnika).

Moreover, I wish to excavate caves or open-air sites with human occupations from the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition in Northern Bulgaria. Excavating sites from this period in Eastern Balkans would provide opportunities to discover human fossils and to further enrich the research into human origins.