Environmental influences on human innovation and behavioural diversity in southern Africa 92-80 thousand years ago

Alex Mackay (Corresponding author), Simon J Armitage, Elizabeth M Niespolo, Warren D Sharp, Mareike C Stahlschmidt, Alexander F Blackwood, Kelsey C Boyd, Brian M Chase, Susan E Lagle, Chester F Kaplan, Marika A Low, Naomi L Martisius, Patricia J McNeill, Ian Moffat, Corey A O'Driscoll, Rachel Rudd, Jayson Orton, Teresa E Steele (Corresponding author)

Publications: Contribution to journalArticlePeer Reviewed

Abstract

Africa's Middle Stone Age preserves sporadic evidence for novel behaviours among early modern humans, prompting a range of questions about the influence of social and environmental factors on patterns of human behavioural evolution. Here we document a suite of novel adaptations dating approximately 92-80 thousand years before the present at the archaeological site Varsche Rivier 003 (VR003), located in southern Africa's arid Succulent Karoo biome. Distinctive innovations include the production of ostrich eggshell artefacts, long-distance transportation of marine molluscs and systematic use of heat shatter in stone tool production, none of which occur in coeval assemblages at sites in more humid, well-studied regions immediately to the south. The appearance of these novelties at VR003 corresponds with a period of reduced regional wind strength and enhanced summer rainfall, and all of them disappear with increasing winter rainfall dominance after 80 thousand years before the present, following which a pattern of technological similarity emerges at sites throughout the broader region. The results indicate complex and environmentally contingent processes of innovation and cultural transmission in southern Africa during the Middle Stone Age.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)361-369
Number of pages9
JournalNature Ecology & Evolution
Volume6
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Apr 2022
Externally publishedYes

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

  • 106018 Human biology

Keywords

  • Adaptation, Physiological
  • Africa, Southern
  • Animals
  • Archaeology/methods
  • Egg Shell
  • Hominidae
  • Humans

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