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During the Upper Paleolithic, archaic humans disappeared and Homo sapiens spread over large territories. At this time, new cultural elements appeared in various areas, including tool making and food extraction. Traditionally, the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition (MP-UP) has been seen as a dramatic change caused by a sudden neural mutation that led to an improvement in cognitive abilities.
However, new evidence suggests that the cultural revolution occurred after the initial displacement, coinciding with the development of microplastic technology at the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic. The transition was a complex evolutionary process involving many aspects and changes over a long period of time.
