A new study has found that distant Stone Age communities in South Africa were more connected than previously thought. How do we know this?
Middle Stone Age tool from Blombos Cave
The scatterlings of Africa
It's difficult imagining what it must have been like living in the Stone Age. Everything is instant today; we are in almost constant connection with any number of people in a host of different ways. In those days, people lived in small isolated communities rarely, one would have thought, connecting with other communities.
The Middle Stone Age lasted a very long time—from 350 000 years ago to 25 000 years ago in Africa. Unlike today when we move rapidly from one Age to the next, things moved slowly. The technology of the time, largely the making of stone tools, changed very gradually, but steadily. The total human population was as small as 100 000 to 300 000 individuals. Small population groups were scattered across vast geographical areas. So the question is, did these scattered communities develop their tools independently and differently from each other?
Howiesons Poort industries
The answer, rather surprisingly, is that, no—some communities were much more connected than we thought. Archaeologists have found that communities hundreds of kilometres apart were widely connected and shared ideas around tool design.
A team of researchers, under the leadership of Professor Christopher Henshilwood from Wits University, Johannesburg and the University of Bergen’s SapienCE Centre for Early Sapiens Behaviour, examined thousands of stone tools that were excavated from seven layers that represent a time period of between 66 000 years ago and 59 000 years ago, to establish the differences in stone tool design over time. Their paper was published in PlosOne on 9 November 2018.
Stone tools from the Howiesons Poort technological period credit: Wits University
That particular period saw two phases of technological and behavioural innovation—tentatively linked to the initial exodus out of Africa of modern human populations. This was mainly centred on the southern coast of South Africa. The technological period is named Howiesons Poort, after the Howieson’s Poort Shelter archaeological site near Grahamstown in South Africa.
Hard networking
300 km separates Klipdrift Shelter from Diepkloof Rockshelter. That's a bit of a drive, but in the Middle Stone Age, few people travelled such a distance in their lifetime. Yet it seems that ideas spread quickly from one site to another, with tool designs at the two locations mirroring each other during that 7 000 year period.
credit: Wits University
Bear in mind that the Howiesons Poort style of tools, featuring small blades and backed tools, first appeared in the archaeological records at Diepkloof Shelter around 100 000 years ago. Howiesons Poort was only found at other sites in Southern Africa around 66 000 years ago, an immensely slow cultural diffusion.
“While regional specificities in the tools from the various sites exist, the similarities of Klipdrift Shelter with the site of Diepkloof Rock Shelter are astonishing,” says Dr Katja Douze, a researcher at the laboratory of Archaeology and Populations in Africa.
Klipdrift Shelter credit: Wits University
Klipdrift Shelter is one of the few sites that contains a long archaeological sequence providing data on cultural changes over the Howiesons Poort period. This data showed this close interaction between distant communities.
“There was an almost perfect match between the tools from the Klipdrift and Diepkloof shelters. This shows us that there was regular interaction between these two communities”, says Douze. “This is unique for the Middle Stone Age.”
I think this makes perfect historical sense. Technological innovation tends to happen in areas where people can feed off each other for ideas, both as a cooperative and a competitive interaction. Under almost impossible conditions, networking caused the technology to flourish.
References:
Wits University: Experts find stone tools connected communities
IFLSIENCE: Same Tool Designs Reveal Connection Of Distant Communities In Middle Stone Age
Wikipedia: World population estimates
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