scholarly journals The Stone Age Archaeology of West Africa

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleanor Scerri
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Middle Stone Age ◽  
West African ◽  
Middle Pleistocene ◽  
Wild Food ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Population Movements ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Ecological Zones

In the early 21st century, understanding West Africa’s Stone Age past has increasingly transcended its colonial legacy to become central to research on human origins. Part of this process has included shedding the methodologies and nomenclatures of narrative approaches to focus on more quantified, scientific descriptions of artifact variability and context. Together with a growing number of chronometric age estimates and environmental information, understanding the West African Stone Age is contributing evolutionary and demographic insights relevant to the entire continent. Undated Acheulean artifacts are abundant across the region, attesting to the presence of archaic Homo. The emerging chronometric record of the Middle Stone Age (MSA) indicates that core and flake technologies have been present in West Africa since at least the Middle Pleistocene (~780–126 thousand years ago or ka) and that they persisted until the Terminal Pleistocene/Holocene boundary (~12ka)—the youngest examples of such technology anywhere in Africa. Although the presence of MSA populations in forests remains an open question, technological differences may correlate with various ecological zones. Later Stone Age (LSA) populations evidence significant technological diversification, including both microlithic and macrolithic traditions. The limited biological evidence also demonstrates that at least some of these populations manifested a unique mixture of modern and archaic morphological features, drawing West Africa into debates about possible admixture events between late-surviving archaic populations and Homo sapiens. As in other regions of Africa, it is possible that population movements throughout the Stone Age were influenced by ecological bridges and barriers. West Africa evidences a number of refugia and ecological bottlenecks that may have played such a role in human prehistory in the region. By the end of the Stone Age, West African groups became increasingly sedentary, engaging in the construction of durable monuments and intensifying wild food exploitation.

scholarly journals Gold Miners on the Trail of the Earliest Humans in Eastern Saharan Africa. Investigating the Acheulean and Middle Stone Age in Sudanese Nubia

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Mirosław Masojć ◽  
Ahmed Nassr ◽  
Ju Yong Kim ◽  
Maciej Ehlert ◽  
Grzegorz Michalec ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Human Activity ◽  
Gold Mining ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Eastern Desert ◽  
Middle Stone Age ◽  
Homo Erectus ◽  
Middle Pleistocene ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Preliminary Results ◽  
Gold Miners

Abstract This research note presents evidence for the oldest Middle Pleistocene Eastern Saharan human activity from the area referred to as the Eastern Desert Atbara River (EDAR), Sudan, which is currently threatened by gold mining. Preliminary results of multifaceted analyses indicate the activity of Homo sapiens during MIS 5 as well as Homo erectus during MIS 7–11 or earlier.

The Early Middle Stone Age in South Africa

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Wurz
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Cutting Tools ◽  
Complex Problem ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Middle Stone Age ◽  
Middle Pleistocene ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Fossil Evidence ◽  
Core Technology

The Early Middle Stone Age (EMSA) from South Africa occurred, broadly, between 300,000 and 130,000 years ago. This is a crucial phase in the history of Homo sapiens, as genetic and fossil evidence increasingly indicate that the roots of Homo sapiens reach back to this time. The fossil evidence from South Africa from this period is sparse, but the c. 260,000-year-old Homo helmei partial skull from Florisbad is especially significant in understanding modern human origins. A detailed chronological and regional framework for the EMSA is still in progress, but on the available evidence, the earliest EMSA occupations seem to be centered in the interior and northern regions. Transitional entities such as the Fauresmith and Sangoan and the first EMSA without large cutting tools, from Florisbad, are found in these areas. In the EMSA, biface technology as well as bipolar, discoidal, blade, and Levallois technologies were used to manufacture a wide variety of blanks, some of which were retouched into an array of tool types. Before lithic types such as hand-axes and bifacial points can be used as diagnostic criteria to define, for example, the Fauresmith and Pietersburg, further extended technological analyses are needed to determine their production sequences and context. Prepared core or Levallois technology occur frequently, but not always, in the EMSA. Prepared core technology entails careful planning to shape stone nodules geometrically prior to knapping the preformed blanks. EMSA hunters used Levallois and other pointed flakes as armatures in hafted thrusting spears. Levallois and composite tool technology reflect complex problem solving and hierarchical organizational cognitive capabilities. These competencies are also evident in early pigment processing. The clear footprint of the EMSA on the South African landscape indicates that several human groups populated this region during the Middle Pleistocene. It is highly likely that such groups were linked across Africa and that they collectively developed into Homo sapiens.

Archaeology of West Africa

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie Swanepoel
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Early Period ◽  
State Level ◽  
Geographic Region ◽  
Middle Stone Age ◽  
West African ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Forest Zone ◽  
The North ◽  
Pass Through

West Africa is a vast geographic region that in archaeological terms is usually circumscribed by the Tropic of Cancer in the north, Cameroon in the east, and the Atlantic Ocean in the west and south. It encompasses a great deal of variation and diversity on environmental, linguistic, cultural, and political fronts. One of its defining features is the parallel environmental zones that run east to west so that as the traveler moves south to north, they pass through coastal, forest, savanna (wooded and grassland), and Sahelian zones until they reach the Sahara in the north. The region’s modern-day political borders created by European colonialist competition cut through existing ethnolinguistic groups and erstwhile kingdoms and states. Politically, during the last 2,000 years West African societies ranged in scale from decentralized agricultural societies to mobile pastoralists to state-level societies and empires. As is to be expected, West African archaeology reflects this complexity. It is for this reason that, rather than reducing it to an “ages and stages” formulation, most West African(ist) archaeologists speak about the material record as a “mosaic” which varied over time and space. In comparison to the rest of the continent, very little is known about the very early period of human history, with scant evidence for settlement during the Early and Middle Stone Age periods. The region’s past is better known from about midway through the Holocene (Later Stone Age), 6,000 bce. This is also coincident with wide-ranging transformations in the lifestyles of hunter-gatherers in the region, as this is when the transition to food production occurs, first with pastoralism and later with crop cultivation. Iron technology was introduced in the 1st millennium bce, and the rise of complex societies with their accompanying institutions occurred in the 1st millennium ce. Any discussion of the literature will be partial, but this is exacerbated by the patchy archaeological coverage of the region. This is for a number of reasons: the size of the area to be covered, the variable history of archaeological research in different parts, the difficulty of working in some ecological settings such as the forest zone, conflict-ridden zones that make it unsafe to conduct research, and difficulties in African scholars accessing resources and funding. Despite this, considerable progress in our knowledge of the region has been made.

Long-distance stone transport and pigment use in the earliest Middle Stone Age

Science ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 360 (6384) ◽  
pp. 90-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison S. Brooks ◽  
John E. Yellen ◽  
Richard Potts ◽  
Anna K. Behrensmeyer ◽  
Alan L. Deino ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Middle Stone Age ◽  
Stone Tool ◽  
Middle Pleistocene ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Red Pigment ◽  
Associated Fauna ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Tool Materials ◽  
Uranium Series

Previous research suggests that the complex symbolic, technological, and socioeconomic behaviors that typifyHomo sapienshad roots in the middle Pleistocene <200,000 years ago, but data bearing on human behavioral origins are limited. We present a series of excavated Middle Stone Age sites from the Olorgesailie basin, southern Kenya, dating from ≥295,000 to ~320,000 years ago by argon-40/argon-39 and uranium-series methods. Hominins at these sites made prepared cores and points, exploited iron-rich rocks to obtain red pigment, and procured stone tool materials from ≥25- to 50-kilometer distances. Associated fauna suggests a broad resource strategy that included large and small prey. These practices imply notable changes in how individuals and groups related to the landscape and to one another and provide documentation relevant to human social and cognitive evolution.

On the issues related to the discoid cores

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 174-178
Author(s):  
Youcheng Chen ◽  
Tongli Qu
Keyword(s):  
Middle Stone Age ◽  
Middle Pleistocene ◽  
Middle Paleolithic ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
The West ◽  
Upper Pleistocene ◽  
Old World ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractThe discoid core and the Levallois core are important symbols of the Middle Paleolithic Age in the west of the Old World. The two types of artifacts show not only technical relationships but also differences. The discoid core can be classified into two sub-types, namely the unifacial and the bifacial classes. In China, discoid cores may have appeared in the upper Middle Pleistocene, and prevailed in the lower and middle Upper Pleistocene, which corresponded to the middle Paleolithic Age in Europe and to the Middle Stone Age in Africa. The discovery and study of discoid cores provide significant insight into the culture of the Middle Paleolithic Age in China.

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