Comments on “Human-climate interaction during the Early Upper Paleolithic: testing the hypothesis of an adaptive shift between the Proto-Aurignacian and the Early Aurignacian” by William E. Banks, Francesco d’Errico, João Zilhão

In this brief comment, we intend to reply to issues arising from the recently published article by Banks et al. (2013a). Banks et al.’s paper focuses on the human-climate interaction during the Proto- Aurignacian and the Early Aurignacian and on the technological and tempo-spatial relationship between these two technocomplexes. In addition, they briefly examine the European transitional complexes, and revisit the current debate regarding the authorship of the Châtelperronian and the Uluzzian. In our opinion, Banks et al. (2013a) are selective in their use of stratigraphic (and radiometric) data, and their practice of unjustifiably discarding ‘inconvenient’ data, as Banks et al. (2011) explicitly do, is puzzling.