The Middle to Later Stone Age transition in Africa has been debated as a significant shift in human technological, cultural, and cognitive evolution. However, the majority of research on this transition is currently focused on southern Africa due to a lack of long-term, stratified sites across much of the African continent. Here, we report a 78,000-year-long archeological record from Panga ya Saidi, a cave in the humid coastal forest of Kenya. Following a shift in toolkits ~67,000 years ago, novel symbolic and technological behaviors assemble in a non-unilinear manner. Against a backdrop of a persistent tropical forest-grassland ecotone, localized innovations better characterize the Late Pleistocene of this part of East Africa than alternative emphases on dramatic revolutions or migrations.

Ochre is a common feature at Middle Stone Age (MSA) sites and has often been interpreted as a proxy for the origin of modern behaviour. However, few ochre processing tools, ochre containers, and ochre-stained artefacts from MSA contexts have been studied in detail within a theoretical framework aimed at inferring the technical steps involved in the acquisition, production and use of these artefacts. Here we analyse 21 ochre processing tools, i.e. upper and lower grindstones, and two ochre-stained artefacts from the MSA layers of Porc-Epic Cave, Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, dated to ca. 40 cal kyr BP. These tools, and a large proportion of the 4213 ochre fragments found at the site, were concentrated in an area devoted to ochre processing. Lower grindstones are made of a variety of raw materials, some of which are not locally available. Traces of use indicate that different techniques were employed to process ochre. Optical microscopy, XRD, μ-Raman spectroscopy, and SEM-EDS analyses of residues preserved on worn areas of artefacts show that different types of ferruginous rocks were processed in order to produce ochre powder of different coarseness and shades. A round stone bearing no traces of having been used to process ochre is half covered with residues as if it had been dipped in a liquid ochered medium to paint the object or to use it as a stamp to apply pigment to a soft material. We argue that the ochre reduction sequences identified at Porc-Epic Cave reflect a high degree of behavioural complexity, and represent ochre use, which was probably devoted to a variety of functions.

African Middle Stone Age (MSA) populations used pigments, manufactured and wore personal ornaments, made abstract engravings, and produced fully shaped bone tools well before the so-called cognitive shift at 50,000 years ago (ka), formerly considered a key driver in the development of advanced human cultures. However, ongoing research across Africa reveals variability in the emergence of cultural innovations in the MSA and their subsequent development through the Later Stone Age (LSA). When present, it appears that cultural innovations manifest regional variability, suggestive of distinct cultural traditions. In eastern Africa, several Late Pleistocene sites have produced evidence for novel activities, but the chronologies of key behavioural innovations remain unclear. The 3 m deep, well-dated, Panga Ya Saidi sequence in eastern Kenya, encompassing 19 layers covering a time span of 78 ka beginning in late MIS 5, is the only known African site recording the interplay between cultural and ecological diversity in a coastal forested environment. Excavations have yielded worked and incised bones, ostrich egg shell beads, marine shell beads, worked and engraved ochre pieces, fragments of coral, and a belemnite fossil. Here we provide a detailed analysis of this material. We demonstrate that behavioural modernity on the eastern African coast is evident by 67 ka, and exhibits remarkable diversity and innovation through the LSA and Iron Age. We suggest the cultural trajectories evident at Panga ya Saidi were shaped by both regional traditions and cultural/demic diffusion.

The origin and evolution of hominin mortuary practices are topics of intense interest and debate. Human burials dated to the Middle Stone Age (MSA) are exceedingly rare in Africa and unknown in East Africa. Here, we describe the partial skeleton of a c. 2.5-3.0 year-old child dating to 78.3 ± 4.1 ka, recovered in the MSA layers of Panga ya Saidi (PYS), a cave site in the tropical upland coast of Kenya. Recent excavations revealed a pit feature containing a child in a flexed position. Geochemical, granulometric and micromorphological analyses of the burial pit content and encasing archaeological layers indicate that the feature was deliberatly excavated. Taphonomical evidence such as the strict articulation or good anatomical association of the skeletal elements and histological evidence of putrefaction support the in-place decomposition of a fresh body. Absent to minimal displacement of the 4 unstable joints during decomposition points to an interment in a filled space (grave earth) making the PYS finding the oldest human burial in Africa. The morphological assessment of the partial skeleton is consistent with its assignment to H. sapiens, although the preservation of some primitive features in the dentition supports increasing evidence for non-gradual accretion of modern traits during the emergence of our species. The PYS burial sheds new light on how MSA populations interacted with the dead.Increasing scrutiny is being placed on the interplay between biological and cultural factors in the evolution of our lineage and the emergence of our species in Africa 1-3 .Mortuary practices are a significant component of our evolution and growing evidence supports an ancient origin for complex behaviours surrounding death 4-6 . Formal burials, defined as the interment of a dead body in an excavated grave, may have been preceded by more elusive practices and only performed by the latest representatives of the genus Homo. Testing this scenario is made difficult, particularly in Africa, by the scarcity of sites with clear and well-dated evidence for the treatment of dead bodies.Panga ya Saidi (PYS) has emerged as one of the key Middle Stone Age (MSA) and Later Stone Age (LSA) sites of Africa given its excellent preservation of environmental proxies 7,8 , its distinctive sequence of technological innovations and symbolic traits 8,9 , and its preservation of biomolecular information 10,11 . The excavated cave sequence is ~3 metres deep and encompasses 19 layers (Fig. 1). A series of stratigraphically ordered radiocarbon and luminescence ages, when included in a Bayesian model, indicate human occupation from ~78 ka to 500 years ago 8 , representing most of the last five marine isotope stages.

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Personal ornaments have become a key cultural proxy to investigate cognitive evolution, modern human dispersal and population dynamics. Here we reassess personal ornaments found at Zhoukoudian Upper Cave and compare them with those from other Late Paleolithic Northern Chinese sites. We reappraise the information provided by Pei Wen Chung on Upper Cave personal ornaments lost during WWII and analyze casts of 17 of them, along with two unpublished objects displayed at the Zhoukoudian Site Museum and three original perforated teeth rediscovered at the Zhoukoudian Site Museum. We apply archeozoological, technological and use-wear analyses to document variation in ornamental practices and their change throughout the site stratigraphy. Badger, fox, red deer, sika deer, marten and tiger teeth as well as carp bone, bird bone, Anadara shell, limestone beads and perforated pebble appear to have been the preferred objects used as ornaments by Upper Cave visitors. Multivariate analysis of technological data highlights a correspondence between cultural layers and perforation techniques, with radial incising being typical of layer L2 and bidirectional incising of L4. The three rediscovered badger canines display features suggesting they were sewed on clothing rather than suspended from necklaces or bracelets. Elemental (SEM-EDS) and mineralogical (µ-Raman) analyses of red residues adhering to the rediscovered teeth indicate these objects were originally coated with ochre and identify variations that match differences in technology. The two ornaments exhibited at the Zhoukoudian Site Museum are ancient teeth that were recently perforated and should be excluded from the Upper Cave assemblage. A seriation of Late Paleolithic ornaments found at Northern Chinese sites identifies a clear-cut difference in preferred ornament types between western and eastern sites, interpreted as reflecting two longlasting traditions in garment symbolic codes.

Cueva de Ardales in Málaga, Spain, is one of the richest and best-preserved Paleolithic painted caves of southwestern Europe, containing over a thousand graphic representations. Here, we study the red pigment in panel II.A.3 of “Sala de las Estrellas,” dated by U-Th to the Middle Paleolithic, to determine its composition, verify its anthropogenic nature, infer the associated behaviors, and discuss their implications. Using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, micro-Raman spectroscopy, and X-ray diffraction, we analyzed a set of samples from the panel and compared them to natural coloring materials collected from the floor and walls of the cave. The conspicuously different texture and composition of the geological samples indicates that the pigments used in the paintings do not come from the outcrops of colorant material known in the cave. We confirm that the paintings are not the result of natural processes and show that the composition of the paint is consistent with the artistic activity being recurrent. Our results strengthen the hypothesis that Neanderthals symbolically used these paintings and the large stalagmitic dome harboring them over an extended time span.