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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand if organizations can leverage recovery/continuous improvement (RCI) capabilities and two competencies to mitigate manifest supply chain (SC) disruptions. Specifically, the authors examine how learning from previous experience and SC disruption-orientation affects organizations’ capability to recover/continuously improve once a SC disruption has manifested. In addition, knowing that organizational inertia likely exists during disruptions, the authors examine the mediating effects of routine rigidity on proposed relationships. Design/methodology/approach To determine how these antecedents impact an organization’s RCI capabilities, the authors collected survey data from 219 procurement managers and analyzed these records using structural equation modeling. Findings The results indicate that by fostering SC disruption-orientation and developing competencies to learn from previous experience, firms can enhance their RCI capabilities, which in turn improves operational performance. Furthermore, the authors demonstrate how routine rigidity mediates the positive effects these antecedents have on the RCI capabilities construct. Originality/value By developing these risk management (RM) tactics and managing routine rigidity, organizations broaden their continuous improvement capability, which enables practitioners to respond to and recover from manifest disruptions. When used in conjunction with other RM tactics, such as inventory and/or redundant capacity, organizations can address an array of disruption scenarios.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to understand consumers’ use of online retail channels. This study examines how tracking capabilities, delivery speed, trust, logistics carriers’ reputation, people important to the consumer and online reviews influence Millennials’ online purchasing attitudes and intentions. Design/methodology/approach A survey was administered to 321 Millennials. Subsequently, it was used to test both direct and indirect hypotheses using structural equation modeling techniques. Findings The study determined that tracking capabilities, trust, people important to the consumer and online reviews directly influence online purchase attitude and by extension intention formation. The results also revealed that logistics carrier reputation moderates the trust to online purchase attitude linkage. Research limitations/implications This work improves the explanatory power of the theory of reasoned action by linking logistics factors to online shopping behavior. Further, it provides insight into the moderating influence of logistics carriers’ reputation. Practical implications For retailers, the results provide information on how to better develop ecommerce service offerings. By providing information about logistics services and capabilities during the ecommerce transaction, retailers can improve the chance that consumers will complete online purchases. Originality/value This research fills a gap in the literature regarding how to influence millennial consumers. Moreover, findings strengthen the understanding of online-purchasing attitudes and intentions formation, important to retailers developing new online shopping platforms and technologies.

Niespolo et al. (1) report 230Th/238U “burial ages” for ostrich eggshell fragments from a 3.8-m-thick Middle Stone Age (MSA) sequence at Ysterfontein 1 shelter, west coast of South Africa (2). The ages are in expected stratigraphic order and imply that the entire 3.8-m sequence accumulated in as little as 2,300 y around 115,000 y ago. The authors believe they have identified the oldest firmly dated evidence for systematic human exploitation of coastal resources and that the remarkably rapid rate of deposition means that local MSA people were exploiting coastal resources as intensively as … [↵][1]1Email: rklein{at}stanford.edu. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1

Mindfulness is an important emerging topic. Individual mindfulness in IT use has not been studied systematically. Through three programmatic empirical studies, this paper develops a scale for IT mindfulness and tests its utility in the post-adoption system use context. Study 1 develops a measure of IT mindfulness and evaluates its validity and reliability. Study 2 employs a laboratory experiment to examine whether IT mindfulness can be manipulated and whether its influence is consistent across technological contexts. Study 3 places IT mindfulness in a nomological network and tests the construct’s utility for predicting more active system use (e.g., trying to innovate and deep structure usage) as well as more automatic system use (e.g., continuance intention). Our primary contribution includes the development and validation of a scale for IT mindfulness. In addition, we demonstrate that IT mindfulness (1) differs from important existing concepts such as cognitive absorption, (2) can be manipulated, (3) more closely relates to active system use than automatic system use, and (4) provides more predictive power within the IS context than general trait mindfulness.

To insure appropriate inventory levels in retail outlets, replenishment managers concern themselves with both timing of shipments and quantity of product available within the store. While organizat...

The fossil indications for speech, inferred from skull endocasts and from the anatomy of the vocal tract, the vertebral column, and the bony ear, suggest that there was a grade shift from the australopiths ( Australopithecus and Paranthropus ), who lived mainly before two Ma (million years ago), to species of Homo , who lived mainly afterwards. The australopiths were probably no more capable of speech than living chimpanzees are, but bones suggest that all fossil species of Homo anticipated living humans in their speech ability. The oldest well-documented stone tools, assigned to the Oldowan Tradition between 2.6 and 1.76 Ma, required a sophisticated understanding of how to produce sharp-edged flakes routinely. Verbal instruction, albeit at a rudimentary level, was probably required to transmit this understanding between individuals and from generation to generation. More complex, though still primitive forms of language were likely linked to post-Oldowan technological advances, including the appearance of the Acheulean Tradition, defined by hand axes and other shaped stone tools 1.76 Ma, the addition of more refined hand axes to the Acheulean Tradition 1–0.7 Ma, and finally the abandonment of hand axes in favor of a wide variety of flake tools, probably often mounted on wooden handles, in the African Middle Stone Age and west Eurasian Middle Paleolithic beginning 300–250 ka (thousands of years ago). Putative art objects and personal ornaments that occasionally occur in African Middle Stone Age sites between 100 and 60 ka may imply “symbolism”, intimately connected to language historically, but if the limited archaeological evidence is accepted, it implies a form of symbolism that was qualitatively different from the unambiguous historical variety. The historical kind, marked by indisputable art and personal ornaments, appeared only 50–40 ka, which suggests this was also when full-fledged language appeared. The abrupt appearance of language and other fully modern cognitive traits 50–40 ka surely occurred in Africa, and enhanced cognition is likely to explain the nearly simultaneous expansion of fully modern Africans to Eurasia, where they replaced or swamped the Neanderthals and other non-modern humans. Ancient DNA could be used to test the idea that fully featured language appeared about 50 ka, if it becomes possible to determine whether the Neanderthals and other non-modern humans lacked some genes that underpin language and other cognitive functions in all living people.

Southern and northwestern Africa have provided the oldest known shell middens, dating from the Last Interglacial (MIS 5, ∼128–71 ka) and the early part of the succeeding glaciation (MIS 4, ∼71–59 ka). However, when and if older, suitably situated, stratified coastal sites are found, they are likely to show that routine shellfishing began much earlier, perhaps from the time that people first occupied coasts. Ethnohistoric records suggest that ancient people would have shellfished mainly during twice-monthly periods when the intertidal zone is maximally exposed. Caloric and nutrient return for coastal shellfishing effort can be quite high, but only when the intertidal is exposed, and archaeology implies that like ethnohistorically observed groups, ancient shellfish collectors depended more on terrestrial and marine vertebrates and on plants. Shellfishing can generate highly visible and durable archaeological signatures, and only a few collecting episodes each year could have produced the oldest middens, which span many millennia. Shell middens are so far unknown in European Neanderthal (Mousterian) and succeeding Upper Paleolithic sites, probably because suitably situated sites have yet to be found. Consistently large gastropod size in the oldest known middens suggests that human population growth cannot explain either the occasional presence of “symbolic” artifacts or the innovative burst that coincides with the spread of fully modern Africans to Eurasia 60–50 ka.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to determine if internal integration, information sharing, and training constitute direct antecedents to organizations’ warning and recovery capabilities. Assuming that organizations periodically face various supply chain risks, the authors intend to show that managers can develop these antecedent competencies in ways that bolster their supply chain risk management (SCRM) capabilities. Design/methodology/approach To understand the relationships between the antecedents and SCRM capabilities, the authors used Q-sorts and confirmatory factor analysis to develop new warning and recovery measures. The authors then collected survey data from 231 hospital supply managers and analyzed these records using structural equation modeling. Findings The results indicate that internal integration and training positively affect organizations’ warning and recovery capabilities, in both a direct and indirect manner. The authors also illustrate how managers can leverage their SCRM capabilities to affect operational performance. Research limitations/implications These results suggest that by developing antecedent competencies like internal integration and training, firms may bolster their warning and recovery capabilities, and ultimately operational performance of the organization. Originality/value The findings provide hospital supply organizations and other inventory management teams with a novel approach to managing an evolving array of supply chain risks. Rather than investing in costly risk management techniques, like inventory stocks, organizations can use internal integration and training to improve their SCRM capabilities.

Lively debate surrounds the introduction of non-indigenous domestic livestock to southern Africa. Despite disagreements regarding process, the archaeological community agrees, with unusual unanimity, on the broad chronology. Indeed, the certainty with which the timing is known (admittedly within the limits of radiocarbon dating) has been celebrated, because with these underpinning data in hand, issues of process can be explored in a serious and empirically grounded manner. Recently published ancient DNA (aDNA) research in southern Africa now calls into question the reliability of many faunal identifications upon which this debate rests. These data build on earlier ecological data, suggesting that some faunal identifications at sites crucial to the debate may be unreliable. A number of morphologically identified domesticate bones were chosen for aDNA sequencing to explore the relationships among southern Africa’s early domestic stock. Unfortunately, a large proportion yielded DNA sequences indicating a wild origin. This led us to consider the potential scale of the problem and the implications for existing models regarding the introduction of herding to the subcontinent. The issue may originate largely from the optimistic identification of specimens retaining too few key morphological markers. We acknowledge that reconstructions of the past are likely to be biased by discarding potential zooarchaeological data through overly conservative identification. We argue, however, that the potential ramifications of building models on unreliable data are far greater than those of being forced to acknowledge gaps in our data and are calling for further research.

It has been proposed that a multiregional model could describe how Homo sapiens evolved in Africa beginning 300,000 years ago. Multiregionalism would require enduring morphological or behavioral differences among African regions and morphological or behavioral continuity within each. African fossils, archeology, and genetics do not comply with either requirement and are unlikely to, because climatic change periodically disrupted continuity and reshuffled populations. As an alternative to multiregionalism, I suggest that reshuffling produced novel gene constellations, including one in which the additive or cumulative effect of newly associated genes enhanced cognitive or communicative potential. Eventual fixation of such a constellation in the lineage leading to modern H. sapiens would explain the abrupt appearance of the African Later Stone Age 50-45 thousand years ago, its nearly simultaneous expansion to Eurasia in the form of the Upper Paleolithic, and the ability of fully modern Upper Paleolithic people to swamp or replace non-modern Eurasians.

New discoveries, new methods, and new theories continue to boost understanding of human evolution. Genetics has shown that contrary to what anatomy alone has long suggested, people and chimpanzees are more closely related to each other than either is to any of the other great apes. This finding has forced a change in long-standing taxonomic practice, and specialists now commonly place all of the great apes, including people, in the family Hominidae, previously reserved for people. People, living and extinct, are then separated from the other apes at the tribal level as Hominini, anglicized to hominins (1). This PNAS Special Feature showcases some recent discoveries and ideas on what makes the hominin mind unique, on the environmental backdrop to hominin evolution, on whether early hominin evolution should be characterized as a ladder or a bush, on what ancient DNA tells us about the demographic history of living humans and their closest fossil relatives—above all the Neanderthals—on the extent to which the Neanderthals differed behaviorally from modern humans, and finally on how prehistoric modern humans, following their expansion from Africa 50–40 ka, impacted other species.

Fostering customer loyalty is a key objective for online businesses. Initial transactions with new customers are less profitable than transactions with existing customers, making loyalty an importa...

The faunal sample from the Middle Stone Age (MSA) and overlying Later Stone Age (LSA) deposits of Diepkloof Rock Shelter (Western Cape Province, South Africa) includes at least 40 taxa, mostly mammals, but also tortoises, snakes, birds (especially ostrich represented by eggshell), and intertidal mollusks. The LSA sample contains only species that occurred nearby historically, including domestic sheep, which LSA people introduced to the region by 1800 years ago. In contrast, like other Western Cape MSA faunas, the Diepkloof MSA sample has more species and it is especially notable for five large extralimital grazing species. These imply a greater-than-historic role for grasses in the local vegetation, particularly in the post-Howiesons Poort (latest MSA) interval where the grazers appear most abundant. Extreme fragmentation and dark-staining impedes analysis of the MSA bones, but cut-marks, abundant burning, and numerous associated artifacts suggest that people were the main accumulators. Rare coprolites imply that carnivores could have contributed some bones, and concentrations of small mammal bones, particularly near the bottom of the MSA sequence, suggest a role for raptors. Tortoise bones are common throughout the sequence, and the MSA specimens tend to be especially large, as in other MSA assemblages. The LSA specimens are smaller, probably because LSA human populations were denser and preyed on tortoises more intensively. The most surprising aspect of the Diepkloof assemblage is its marine component. The coast is currently 14 km away and it would have been even more distant during much of the MSA when sea levels were often lower. Intertidal mollusks, particularly black mussels and granite limpets, are concentrated in the LSA and in the Late and Post-Howiesons Poort layers. Only LSA shells are complete enough for measurement, and the limpets are small as at other LSA sites. The implication is again for more intense LSA collection by relatively dense human populations. Both the LSA and MSA deposits also contain bones of shorebirds and Cape fur seals. Whale barnacles and occasional dolphin bones indicate that MSA people scavenged beached cetaceans.

Approximately 50 ka, one or more subgroups of modern humans expanded from Africa to populate the rest of the world. Significant behavioral change accompanied this expansion, and archaeologists commonly seek its roots in the African Middle Stone Age (MSA; ∼200 to ∼50 ka). Easily recognizable art objects and “jewelry” become common only in sites that postdate the MSA in Africa and Eurasia, but some MSA sites contain possible precursors, especially including abstractly incised fragments of ocher and perforated shells interpreted as beads. These proposed art objects have convinced most specialists that MSA people were behaviorally (cognitively) modern, and many argue that population growth explains the appearance of art in the MSA and its post-MSA florescence. The average size of rocky intertidal gastropod species in MSA and later coastal middens allows a test of this idea, because smaller size implies more intense collection, and more intense collection is most readily attributed to growth in the number of human collectors. Here we demonstrate that economically important Cape turban shells and limpets from MSA layers along the south and west coasts of South Africa are consistently and significantly larger than turban shells and limpets in succeeding Later Stone Age (LSA) layers that formed under equivalent environmental conditions. We conclude that whatever cognitive capacity precocious MSA artifacts imply, it was not associated with human population growth. MSA populations remained consistently small by LSA standards, and a substantial increase in population size is obvious only near the MSA/LSA transition, when it is dramatically reflected in the Out-of-Africa expansion.

Health care organizations must develop integrated health information systems to respond to the numerous government mandates driving the movement toward reimbursement models emphasizing value-based and accountable care. Success in this transition requires integrated data analytics, supported by the combination of health informatics, interoperability, business process design, and advanced decision support tools. This case study presents the development of a master’s level cross- and multidisciplinary informatics program offered through a business school. The program provides students from diverse backgrounds with the knowledge, leadership, and practical application skills of health informatics, information systems, and data analytics that bridge the interests of clinical and nonclinical professionals. This case presents the actions taken and challenges encountered in navigating intra-university politics, specifying curriculum, recruiting the requisite interdisciplinary faculty, innovating the educational format, managing students with diverse educational and professional backgrounds, and balancing multiple accreditation agencies.

The changing shape of the traditional buyer-supplier relationship between independent medical practices, or office-based physicians, and medical industry suppliers has prompted the proliferation of Internet-based purchasing applications. Healthcare informatics researchers believe that such systems hold great promise for improving the efficiency of medical organizations. We surveyed 216 medical practice adopters of electronic purchasing, to assess the post-adoption benefits following system assimilation. Results showed that Internet-based purchasing applications had a positive impact on both claims management and operational performance outcomes. Moreover, we found that compatibility, facilitating conditions, the IT infrastructure, and preference item purchasing were necessary antecedents to effective Internet-based purchasing application assimilation.

Internet start-ups and traditional firms expanding existing offerings and services through the Net have seen both success and failure. For such business model pursuits, electronic intermediation possesses the ability to cultivate new marketplaces and restructure supply chains. The economic literature identifies four distinct intermediary roles, specifically: (i) information and (ii) logistics management, (iii) transaction securitization, as well as (iv) insurance/market-making and liquidity management. Research notes that electronic intermediaries, while possessing clear advantages in their ability to manage information, face greater challenges in allowing parties to benefit from the facilitation of more complex coordination activities, namely transaction securitization in addition to insurance/market-making and liquidity management. In an effort to better understand pursuit of functional intermediary roles, our analysis of data collected on 182 electronic intermediaries explores relationships between intermediation roles and profitability. Business models relying solely upon the provision of information management are likely to realize lower levels of profitability. Alternately, the intermediary roles of logistics management as well as insurance/market-making and liquidity management realize higher levels of profitability. Moreover, when comparing commodity- and service-based intermediaries, the provision of logistics management on the part of commodity-based firms sees higher levels of profitability, with insurance and liquidity provisions associated with greater profitability for both commodity- and service-based firms. Finally, when contrasting traditional firms expanding operations in digital markets with Internet pure-plays, we find transaction securitization functions increase the likelihood of realizing greater profitability for non-Internet pure-plays.

Klein (1979, 1994) reported a contrast in ungulate species frequencies between the Middle Stone Age (MSA) layers of Klasies River Main (KRM) and the Later Stone Age (LSA) layers of nearby Nelson Bay Cave (NBC), South Africa. Early European travelers noted that the distinctive subtropical broadleaf forest surrounding both coastal sites housed exceptional numbers of buffalo (Syncerus caffer) and bushpig (Potamochoerus larvatus; Skead, 1980). They failed to mention eland, suggesting that eland were locally absent or rare, in keeping with this species’ tendency to avoid forest (Skinner and Chimimba, 2005). At both KRM and NBC the deposits formed under similar climatic conditions (Last Interglacial and the Holocene Interglacial, respectively), yet only the NBC LSA fauna anticipated the historic forest fauna in the abundance of buffalo and bushpig and the rarity of eland. The unanticipated abundance of eland in the KRM MSA fauna led Klein to suggest that the KRM people were less competent hunters. Unlike buffalo and bushpig, which commonly counterattack predators, eland tend to flee, and associated artifacts suggest that only the NBC LSA hunters had projectile weapons that would have allowed them to hunt dangerous species from a relatively safe distance. The NBC LSA people could then have obtained buffalo and bushpig more in proportion to their live abundance. Lacking projectiles, the KRM MSA people would have tended to capture more of the less threatening eland, which they could have driven over nearby cliffs. Driving could explain why the KRM eland were mainly prime-age adults, whereas the KRM buffalo were mostly very young or old individuals, as would be expected if the hunters focused on the most vulnerable buffalo or acquired them by scavenging. Conceivably, culture was irrelevant, and topography or some other strictly local factor explains the abundance of eland at KRM. However, a test for this would require additional fossiliferous MSA sites in the same forest, and KRM remains the only one. The KRM/ NBC contrast is roughly replicated between Die Kelders Cave 1 (DK1) and nearby Byneskranskop 1 (BNK1), where eland dominate buffalo and bushpig in the DK1MSA layers and buffalo and bushpig dominate eland in the BNK1 LSA layers (Klein and Cruz-Uribe, 1996). However, DK1 and BNK1 are located 400e500 km east of KRM and NBC (Fig. 1) in a scrub/thicket mosaic where buffalo and bushpig may not have outnumbered eland historically. In addition, the DK1 and BNK1 faunas accumulated under differing climatic conditions (mainly glacial and interglacial, respectively), and a paleoenvironmental difference could thus explain the faunal contrast. The DK1/BNK1 contrast underscores the need to control for environment before invoking cultural or human behavioral explanations for differences between sites. With Klein’s interpretation of the KRM/NBC contrast in mind, Faith (2008) undertook log-transformed regressions of eland and buffaloþ pig abundance on the total number of ungulates in 95 LSA samples and 27 MSA samples from Lesotho and South Africa. He concluded that “eland, buffalo, andwild pig are equally abundant in the MSA and LSA” (p. 24) and therefore that MSA and LSA people were equally adept hunters. We show below that Faith’s results are based on inappropriate use of regression, but even if we were to accept them, they do not show that MSA and LSA people were behaving in the same way. Eland, buffalo, and wild pigs could be equally abundant, on average, in MSA and LSA sites only if their live proportions (relative numbers) were usually the same nearby, or if MSA and LSA people, faced with different proportions at different times and places, managed to equalize the proportions in their sites. Faith’s result could mean, for example, that buffalo and pigs were generally rarer near LSA sites but that more effective LSA hunting overcame the environmental difference. Our point here is not to argue that MSA people were inferior hunters. That issue remains debatable. Rather, we are concerned with how to appropriately use the zooarchaeological record to * Corresponding author. E-mail address: rklein@stanford.edu (R.G. Klein).

Remains of phocid and otariid seals from published and unpublished palaeontological and archaeological occurrences on the South African coast are reviewed. New phocid material supports Hendey's earlier contention that Homiphoca capensis was a breeding resident during the Early Pliocene (5 Ma) and extends its distribution. Lobodon carcinophagus is recorded from the Middle Pleistocene (270 ka) and Late Pleistocene. Arctocephalus is recorded from the Pliocene (probably 5 Ma, but possibly only 2.7 Ma) and A. pusillus from the Middle Pleistocene (~330 ka). Late Pleistocene records for Hydrurga leptonyx, Mirounga leonina, A. pusillus and A. gazella are listed. The possibility that Homiphoca capensis and Arctocephalus (sp. nov.) co-existed during the Pliocene is discussed.

In our Perspective, we argue that the earliest Americans followed a coastal migration route. Potter et al. counter that an inland, ice-free corridor route was more likely. The genetic and archaeological evidence that Potter et al. discuss support both the timing and coastal route for the peopling of

Principal Components Analysis (PCA) of measurements on twelve metacarpal and ten metatarsal dimensions indicates that metapodials differ much more in size than in shape among the twenty-three genera of extant Sub-Saharan bovids. The only conspicuous shape variation is in metapodial length, which sometimes differs significantly among genera that are similar in all other dimensions. It follows that Discriminant Analysis (DA) intended to identify metapodials to genus will depend primarily on size, and except for the occasional like-sized genera that differ in metapodial length, DA will often confuse genera of similar size. DA of the same metapodials subjected to PCA supports this prediction. PCA further shows that bovid species that favor the same habitat often differ in metapodial size, shape, or both, and species that favor different habitats often overlap substantially in their metapodial morphometrics. DA intended to assign metapodials to habitat will thus produce different results depending on the species used to characterize each habitat type and on the number of specimens by which each species is represented. Habitat reconstruction founded in DA is therefore taxon dependent rather than taxon-free, and it cannot supplant reconstruction based on taxonomic identifications below the family level.

EGINNING in the middle 1930's and at an increasing rate in recent years reports have issued from the Soviet Union concerning the discovery of Chellean and Acheulean localities there. This paper is intended to be a critical survey of these reports. In beginning research for this paper I relied heavily on N. A. Beregovaya's Paleoliticheskie mestonakhozhdeniya SSSR (Paleolithic localities of the USSR) (1960) for pertinent bibliography. Later I supplemented Beregovaya bv examining those Soviet serial-publications which regularly contain information on the local Paleolithic (see the list of these under Abbreviations on p. 38). Every major newly discovered Paleolithic occurrence is soon reported in one or more of these serials and even relatively unimportant finds are eventually at least mentioned. I paid particular attention to numbers issued since the appearance of Beregovaya's book, and, as a consequence, several so-called Chellean and Acheulean localities which were discovered and/or described only after 1960 are considered here. Although it is unlikely that I am aware of (much less have examined) every Russian source with data pertinent to the topic of this paper, I believe I have inspected all the most important ones and certainly a sufficient number to make the conclusions presented in the final section highly probable. The remainder of this paper consists of two principal parts. The first considers reported occurrences of Chellean and Acheulean in the Soviet Union in some detail; the second presents a summary and conclusions. Before closing this introductory section, however, I would like to deal briefly with some problems of translation. Soviet prehistorians commonly use a number of terms for sediments and for artifacts which to translate without comment could be misleading. The sedimentological terms in question are glina, suglinok, supes', and pesok. In the body of this paper I have translated these as clay, loam, sandy loam, and sand, respectively (translations suggested by prominent Russian-English dictionaries). It must be noted, however, that glina and pesok do not necessarily mean deposits of purely clay-size or sand-size particles; also labeled as glina and pesok are deposits where small admixtures of coarser or finer particles (as the case may be) are present and recognizable. And suglinok and supes' are not restricted to being textural terms for soils (as loam and sandy loam generally are in the United States); rather they are used to refer to the

Twenty-one years ago, a landmark exploration of mitochondrial DNA diversity popularized the idea of a recent African origin for all living humans.1 The ancestral African population was estimated to have existed 200 ka (thousands of years ago) plus or minus a few tens of thousands of years. A corollary was that at some later date the fully modern African descendants of that population expanded to swamp or replace the Neanderthals and other nonmodern Eurasians. The basic concept soon became known as “Out of Africa,” after the Academy Award winning film (1985) that took its title, in turn, from Isak Dinesen's classic autobiography (1937). Many subsequent genetic analyses, including those of Ingman and coworkers2 and Underhill and coworkers,3 have reaffirmed the fundamental Out of Africa model. The fossil and archeological records also support it strongly. The fossil record implies that anatomically modern or near-modern humans were present in Africa by 150 ka; the fossil and archeological records together indicate that modern Africans expanded to Eurasia beginning about 50 ka.

Cooperative logistics relationships require the sharing of information, which must be enabled by the integration of disparate information systems across partners. In this article, we theorize business-to-business logistics relationships should be managed using cooperative and competitive postures. Based on data from 91 dyadic relationships using interorganizational information technology (IT), we find that performance gains accrue when parties share strategic information and customize IT; mutual trust enables IT customization and strategic-information flows and equitable relationship-specific investments positively impact IT customization, mutual trust, and performance. Among other scholarly and practical implications discussed, partners should compete on resources for IT customization and cooperate to share strategic information. Managers tend to think of relationships with firms as polar opposites and view them as entirely cooperative or entirely competitive. Our results support active balancing and understanding of both competitive and cooperative stances. Such an approach enables conditions for participation symmetry that yields greater performance gains.

Healthcare providers have recently begun deploying Internet-based patient–physician portals. These applications allow patients to both communicate with their providers and access personal m...

eBusiness enabled information systems and technology have proliferated with the diffusion and technological advances of the Internet. This research examines supply chain management relationships between service providers and clients, focusing on the performance impacts of (1) the level of customization implemented by clients using vendor provided eBusiness solutions and (2) the subsequent real time access achieved with respect to operational information maintained by vendors. The study also focuses on the impacts of the provider's information exchange behavior and both parties’ level of trust. Using dyadic data collected from a logistics services provider and 91 clients, findings show that the level of customization and real time information access has a direct positive impact on performance outcomes realized by both. Additionally, results demonstrate that provider's level of trust in the client positively influences their information exchange behavior, and in turn, information exchange behavior positively impacts client customizations.

Two competing hypotheses have long dominated specialist thinking on modern human origins. The first posits that modern people emerged in a limited area and spread from there to replace archaic people elsewhere. Proponents of this view currently favor Africa as the modern human birthplace.1–5 The second suggests that the evolution of modern humans was not geographically restricted, but invlved substantial continuity between archaic and modern populations in all major regions of the occupied world.6–7 Based solely on the fossil record, both hypotheses are equally defensible, but the spread-and-replationships scenario is far more strongly supported by burgeoning data on the genetic relationships and diversity of living humans.8–16 These data impy that there was a common ancestor for all living humans in Africa between 280,000 and 140,000 year ago, and that Neanderthals and other archaic humans who inhabited Eurasia during the same interval contributed few, if any, genes to living peiple. I argue here that the spread-and-replacement hypothesis is also more compatible with a third line of evidence: the spread-and-replacement hypothesis is also more compatible with a third line of evidence: the archeological record for human behavioral evolution.

Human fossils and the genetics of extant human populations indicate that living people derive primarily from an African population that lived within the last 200,000 years. Yet it was only ≈50,000 years ago that the descendants of this population spread to Eurasia, where they swamped or replaced the Neanderthals and other nonmodern Eurasians. Based on archaeological observations, the most plausible hypothesis for the delay is that Africans and Eurasians were behaviorally similar until 50,000 years ago, and it was only at this time that Africans developed a behavioral advantage. The archaeological findings come primarily from South Africa, where they suggest that the advantage involved much more effective use of coastal resources. Until now, the evidence has come mostly from deeply stratified caves on the south (Indian Ocean) coast. Here, we summarize results from recent excavations at Ysterfontein 1, a deeply stratified shelter in a contrasting environment on the west (Atlantic) coast. The Ysterfontein 1 samples of human food debris must be enlarged for a full comparison to samples from other relevant sites, but they already corroborate two inferences drawn from south coast sites: ( i ) coastal foragers before 50,000 years ago did not fish routinely, probably for lack of appropriate technology, and ( ii ) they collected tortoises and shellfish less intensively than later people, probably because their populations were smaller.

For decades, information technology has been posited to have a major impact on firm performance. Investigations into this line of inquiry have almost always used constructs related to individual firm performance as their dependent measures, an approach that made sense under historical economic conditions. In recent years, however, value chains are giving way to digital supply networks with electronic interactions between tiers in the flow of goods and services. Such an environment makes it imperative to develop sophisticated measures of the performance of entire networks of firms, as opposed to individual firm performance. Using game-theoretic concepts, this paper explores several dimensions of networked organizational performance as a construct, as a set of measures, and as a construct within a nomology. It describes a program of research in which some empirical validation has already been completed and other work is now underway. We first validate measures for a dyadic view of network performance, followed by an n-firm perspective.

Excavations into a coastal cliff at Ysterfontein (YFT) 1, South Africa, have revealed 2.5–3 m of stratified sands containing classic Middle Stone Age (MSA) stone artifacts, abundant mussel and limpet shells, numerous fragments of ostrich eggshell, and somewhat rarer bones from mammals, birds, tortoises, and snakes. The sands apparently filled a crevice-like, calcrete shelter, where the artifacts and animal remains accumulated partly in place and perhaps partly through slippage down the face of a dune that once stood between the site and the sea. Accelerator radiocarbon dating of ostrich eggshell places the sequence before 33,400 years ago. Artifact typology provisionally suggests that it formed after 70,000 years ago. The fauna resembles faunas from the handful of other known coastal MSA sites and contrasts with faunas from regional Later Stone Age (LSA) sites in its low diversity of coastal marine species and in the large size of its limpets and tortoises. The difference suggests that MSA people exploited local resources less intensively, probably because their populations were less dense.

Duinefontein 2 (DFT2) preserves at least two buried land surfaces within a 10-m thick dune plume on the Atlantic Coast of South Africa, about 35 km north of Cape Town. Optically stimulated luminescence dating indicates that the sands enclosing the upper surface accumulated around 270 ky ago, while the sands between the two surfaces were accumulating about 290 ky ago. Excavation so far has focused on the upper buried surface, which is now exposed over 480 m 2 . Historically, there was no body of fresh water nearby, and the surrounding vegetation was a variant of the regional fine-leafed shrub or fynbos. Pedogenic alteration of the sands and bones of water-loving mammals and amphibians indicate, however, that the bones and associated Acheulean artifacts accumulated near the edge of a large pond or marsh. In addition, the principal mammal species (buffalo, wildebeest, and kudu) imply a sharply different regional vegetation in which grass and broad-leafed bush were much more common. The artifacts are distributed across the upper buried surface in no apparent pattern, but the large mammal bones tend to occur as clusters of skulls, vertebrae, ribs, and other axial elements, often in near anatomical order. Limb bones are mostly missing, and the clusters appear to mark carcasses from which the limb bones were selectively removed. The bones rarely show marks from stone tools, but marks from carnivore teeth are common. Together with numerous hyena coprolites, the abundant tooth marks suggest that hyenas and perhaps other carnivores were largely responsible for carcass disarticulation. The human role appears to have been insignificant, which suggests that local Acheulean people obtained few large mammals, whether by hunting or scavenging. Among the small number of other Acheulean ‘carcass’ sites for which bone damage observations are available, the best-documented sites suggest the same limited human ability to acquire large mammals, but many additional sites will be necessary to determine if this was the Acheulean norm. Greatly expanded excavation of the lower buried surface at DFT2 can provide an additional, high-quality data point.

Together with human fossils from eastern and northern Africa, southern African specimens show that anatomically modern or near-modern people were present by 100,000 years ago, when only the Neandertals occupied Europe and different, equally nonmodern people lived in eastern Asia. However, the artifacts found with early modern or near-modern African fossils imply nonmodern, Neandertal-like behavior. Artifactual markers of fully modern behavior appeared in Africa between 50,000 and 40,000 years ago, and only then were modern Africans able to expand to Eurasia, where they swamped or replaced the Neandertals and other nonmodern humans. Archaeological food debris from the western and southern coasts of South Africa suggest that an enhanced ability to hunt and gather accompanied the artifactual advance after 50,000 years ago.

The Later- and Middle Stone Age levels at Blombos Cave (BBC) were excavated over four field seasons between 1992 and 1999. Here we report on the results from the Middle Stone Age (MSA) levels. The taphonomy and depositional history of the MSA levels is complex due to faulting, folding and spalling. Careful observations during excavation have assisted in understanding some of these taphonomic and site formation processes; microstratigraphic analysis, currently in progress, will add to this information. The uppermost MSA level, the Still Bay phase, contains high densities of bifacial points, the fossile directeur of the Still Bay Industry. Placing the Still Bay within the MSA culture sequence has been problematic in the past because Still Bay assemblages are rarely found in situ and previous excavations were inadequately recorded. However with the regional data discussed in the text, the Still Bay can be securely placed before the Howiesons Poort dated at 65–70 ka. Flaked stone makes up the greatest proportion of all artefacts with the highest incidence of retouch and use of fine grained, non-local materials found in the Still Bay levels. The ochre assemblage is remarkable for the mass of material compared to other MSA sites. Finds uncommon in an MSA context are two pieces of ochre from the Still Bay phase engraved with a geometric design; a fragment of deliberately engraved bone; also, 28 shaped and polished bone tools recovered mainly from a phase just below the Still Bay. Blombos Cave is the first site where well preserved faunal remains have been recovered in association with the Still Bay allowing for unique insights into human subsistence behaviour and palaeoenvironmental reconstruction. Large fish bones, marine shells, seals and dolphins attest to extensive exploitation of aquatic resources and a wide range of terrestrial animals were hunted and gathered. The few human teeth recovered are heavily worn and damaged thus the issue of morphological modernity cannot be addressed. The BBC findings are a useful adjunct to findings from other MSA coastal sites in the southern Cape, especially Klasies River (KR) and Die Kelders Cave 1 (DK1); uniquely, BBC provides insights into human behaviour during a phase of the MSA never before studied in detail.

Excavations conducted at the White Paintings Rock Shelter (WPS) have uncovered 7 m of deposits ranging in age from the historic period to at least 100,000 years at the base. Eleven stratigraphic units are described in relation to palaeoenvironmental conditions inferred from sediments and other data. These units contain seven major divisions in the cultural sequence highlighted by a lengthy record of Later and Middle Stone Age deposits. A wide variety of mammals as well as other animals were found in the upper 3 m. Numerous fish bones, wetland mammals and barbed bone points make this site especially interesting because of its desert location. The highest frequencies of fish bones are found between c . 80/90–130 cm (Upper Fish deposits) and between 210–280 cm below the surface (Lower Fish deposits). Most of the barbed bone points were recovered in the Upper Fish deposits. The Lower Fish deposits contain extinct Equus capensis and a microlithic industry as well as some bone points. A large blade industry is found beneath the Lower Fish deposits. This blade industry shows continuity with the underlying Middle Stone Age.

Human paleontology and Paleolithic archeology both focus on the most ancient phases of human prehistory, and they often draw their materials from the same sites. Yet, since the mid-19th century when both fields were founded, their practice and theory have remained largely separate. As the 21st century dawns, human paleontologists are trained mainly in human anatomy or biological anthropology, and they take their theory principally from late 20th century evolutionary biology. In contrast, Paleolithic archeologists are trained to recover and sort ancient material residues, and their interpretative frameworks stem primarily from cultural anthropology. The difference in practice means that human paleontologists are usually ill-equipped to assess controversies in Paleolithic archeology and vice versa. The difference in theory is more profound, since human paleontologists unflinchingly attribute major morphological changes or differences to natural selection, mutation, gene drift, or gene flow. Paleolithic archeologists in contrast tend to ascribe major behavioral changes to newly developed cultural strategies or to population growth, even when the changes coincide with conspicuous morphological changes. Many especially reject biological explanations for perceived behavioral differences between modern humans and their immediate precursors, and some believe that such explanations smack of racism.1 Yet those who accept the reality of human evolution must also accept that some ancient humans must have lacked the inborn capacity to participate in historic human societies. Since we lack historic analogs for such premodern people and archeology cannot substitute for an eyewitness account, we can

On this 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his monumental The Origin of Species (1859) (1), it seems fitting to summarize Darwin's views on human evolution and to show how far we have come since. Darwin famously neglected the subject in The Origin , except near the end where he noted only that “light would be thrown on the origin of man and his history” by the massive evidence he had compiled for evolution by means of natural selection. In The Descent of Man (1871) (2), he said that addressing human evolution in 1859 would “only add to the prejudices against my views.” Satisfied now that those prejudices had significantly receded, he deployed an array of comparative anatomical, embryological, and behavioral observations to argue that people had evolved in the same manner as other species. He emphasized the comparative anatomical details in Thomas Huxley's monograph Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863) (3) to substantiate the particularly close evolutionary relationship between people and the “anthropomorphous” apes. He also reiterated Huxley's prescient inference, grounded in the distribution of the especially humanlike African apes, that the last shared ancestor of people and apes lived in tropical Africa. The fossil record now confirms that Darwin and Huxley were right to place human origins in Africa, but when they were writing, fossil support for human evolution was almost absent. The most meaningful exception was the Neanderthal skullcap and associated limb bones recovered by quarry workers from a limestone cave near Dusseldorf, Germany in 1856. Unfortunately, the antiquity of the bones was unclear and there seemed to be a reasonable possibility that the skull came from a pathological modern human. Similar skulls and limb bones from other sites, excavated from layers with ancient stone tools and … 1E-mail: rklein{at}stanford.edu

Boegoeberg 1 (BOG1) is located on the Atlantic coast of South Africa, 850 km north of Cape Town. The site is a shallow rock shelter in the side of a sand-choked gully that was emptied by diamond miners. Abundant coprolites, chewed bones, and partially digested bones implicate hyenas as the bone accumulators. The location of the site, quantity of bones, and composition of the fauna imply it was a brown hyena nursery den. The abundance of Cape fur seal bones shows that the hyenas had ready access to the coast. Radiocarbon dates place the site before 37,000 14C yr ago, while the large average size of the black-backed jackals and the presence of extralimital ungulates imply cool, moist conditions, probably during the early part of the last glaciation (isotope stage 4 or stage 3 before 37,000 14C yr ago) or perhaps during one of the cooler phases (isotope substages 5d or 5b) within the last interglaciation. Comparisons of the BOG1 seal bones to those from regional Middle Stone Age (MSA) and Later Stone Age (LSA) archeological sites suggest (1) that hyena and human seal accumulations can be distinguished by a tendency for vertebrae to be much more common in a hyena accumulation and (2) that hyena and LSA accumulations can be distinguished by a tendency for hyena-accumulated seals to represent a much wider range of individual seal ages. Differences in the way hyenas and people dismember, transport, and consume seal carcasses probably explain the contrast in skeletal part representation, while differences in season of occupation explain the contrast in seal age representation. Like modern brown hyenas, the BOG1 hyenas probably occupied the coast year-round, while the LSA people focused their coastal visits on the August–October interval when nine-to-eleven-month-old seals were abundant. The MSA sample from Klasies River Mouth Cave 1 resembles BOG1 in seal age composition, suggesting that unlike LSA people, MSA people obtained seals more or less throughout the year.

In many archaeological faunas, relative to smaller ungulates, larger ones are more poorly represented by proximal limb bones (humeri, radioulnae, femora and tibiae) and better represented by bones of the feet and skull. In a recent issue of this journal, Bartram & Marean refer to the contrast as the “Klasies Pattern” for its occurrence at the Klasies River Mouth Middle Stone Age site in South Africa. However, they argue that it exists only because archaeologists often fail to identify small midshaft fragments to skeletal part and taxon. They believe that most archaeological faunas have been heavily ravaged by carnivores that selectively removed proximal limb bone epiphyses and left the associated shaft fragments behind. In support, they cite analyses by Marean and his co-workers in which proximal limb bone numbers increased significantly when shaft fragments were refitted to produce identifiable specimens. The dramatic increase in proximal limb bone numbers at Kobeh Cave, Iran is particularly compelling, but Bartram & Marean must spell out their procedure for identifying and counting shafts to ensure that others can produce comparable results and to exclude the possibility that the results are an artefact of their procedure. The refitting of small shaft fragments is extremely tedious and time-consuming, but may be justified wherever there is independent evidence for substantial carnivore ravaging. There is essentially no evidence for carnivore ravaging at Klasies River Mouth nor is there evidence that it can produce the contrast between smaller and larger ungulates that comprises the “Klasies Pattern”. We conclude that the contrast mainly reflects differences in carcass size as these influence (1) the likelihood that particular skeletal elements will be transported from a carcass to a base camp and (2) the likelihood that parts will survive in identifiable condition.

A fragmentary temporal bone and partial atlas from the Middle Stone Age (MSA) at Klasies River Mouth (KRM) are described and analyzed. The atlas (SAM-AP 6268) is comparable to Levantine “Early Modern”, Neandertal and recent human vertebrae. The temporal (SAM-AP 6269) is similar to recent African homologues except that the posteromedial wall of the glenoid fossa is composed entirely of the squamous temporal, a situation that appears to be infrequent among other Pleistocene fossils. The KRM glenoid fossa is also mediolateraly broad and anteroposteriorly short in comparison with many, but not all recent specimens. Nevertheless, the KRM temporal is decidedly modern, both morphologically and metrically, by comparison with other Pleistocene specimens. The limited evidence provided by this bone is consistent with that of other MSA cranial remains from this site in suggesting an overall, if somewhat ambiguous pattern of morphological modernity.

Rock hyrax bones from South African eagle roosts comprise mostly cranial parts. Postcranial elements are much more weakly represented and, among them, bones of the hind limb outnumber those of the forelimb. The eagle roosts also contain remarkably few very young hyraxes. Assemblages of hyrax bones from Elands Bay Cave, Nelson Bay Cave, Die Kelders, and other important South African archaeological sites contain many more limb bones (relative to cranial elements), and they are generally much richer in forelimb (versus hind limb) elements. The sum suggests that eagles did not contribute significantly to the archaeological assemblages. However, in regard to hyrax age representation, the archaeological assemblages vary. Like the eagle-roost samples, those from Middle Stone Age (MSA) sites contain very few young hyraxes, while those from Later Stone Age (LSA) sites contain many more. The difference may reflect the presence of the bow and arrow and of domestic dogs only in the LSA. In contrast to eagle-accumulated hyrax samples, hare samples from South African eagle roosts comprise mainly postcranial elements, but the hare postcranial bones similarly come mainly from the rear limb. The archaeological samples of hare bones are much richer in cranial elements and in bones of the forelimb, and this suggests again that eagles contributed few if any bones to the archaeological sites. So far, it cannot be shown that hare age representation differs between eagle roosts and archaeological sites or between MSA and LSA sites.