ArticleNature ecology & evolution2022
Environmental influences on human innovation and behavioural diversity in southern Africa 92-80 thousand years ago.
Article in Nature ecology & evolution, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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6 citing papers in PubMed, 35 citations in OpenAlex.
- A Middle Stone Age occupation identified at Baden-Baden in the grasslands of the Free State, South Africa.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Regional variability in the Acheulian to Middle Stone Age transition in southern Africa.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Article
- Paleolakes and socioecological implications of last glacial "greening" of the South African interior.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Article
- From Veld to Coast: Towards an Understanding of the Diverse Landscapes' Uses by Past Foragers in Southern Africa.Journal of paleolithic archaeology · 2022Article
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18 authors at 12 institutions in 8 countries.
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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.
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