Cultural Diffusion Was the Main Driving Mechanism of the Neolithic Transition in Southern Africa

Abstract

It is well known that the Neolithic transition spread across Europe at a speed of about 1 km/yr. This result has been previously interpreted as a range expansion of the Neolithic driven mainly by demic diffusion (whereas cultural diffusion played a secondary role). However, a long-standing problem is whether this value (1 km/yr) and its interpretation (mainly demic diffusion) are characteristic only of Europe or universal (i.e. intrinsic features of Neolithic transitions all over the world). So far Neolithic spread rates outside Europe have been barely measured, and Neolithic spread rates substantially faster than 1 km/yr have not been previously reported. Here we show that the transition from hunting and gathering into herding in southern Africa spread at a rate of about 2.4 km/yr, i.e. about twice faster than the European Neolithic transition. Thus the value 1 km/yr is not a universal feature of Neolithic transitions in the world. Resorting to a recent demic-cultural wave-of-advance model, we also find that the main mechanism at work in the southern African Neolithic spread was cultural diffusion (whereas demic diffusion played a secondary role). This is in sharp contrast to the European Neolithic. Our results further suggest that Neolithic spread rates could be mainly driven by cultural diffusion in cases where the final state of this transition is herding/pastoralism (such as in southern Africa) rather than farming and stockbreeding (as in Europe).

Fine-Scale Human Population Structure in Southern Africa Reflects Ecogeographic Boundaries

“…This is an unusual case of cultural transmission (Jerardino et al 2014). Other prehistoric economic transitions have been shown to be largely driven by demic diffusion Fort 2012;Lazaridis et al 2014;Skoglund et al 2014;Malmström et al 2015).…”

“…Archaeological data have been convened to argue for a demic migration of the Khoe from eastern African into southern Africa, but others have also argued that pastoralism represents cultural diffusion without significant population movement (Boonzaier 1996;MacDonald 2000;Robbins et al 2005;Sadr 2008Sadr , 2015Dunne et al 2012;Pleurdeau et al 2012;Jerardino et al 2014). Lactase persistence alleles are present in KhoeSan groups, especially frequent in the Nama (20%), and clearly derive from eastern African pastoralist populations (Breton et al 2014;Macholdt et al 2014).…”

Those marvellous millennia: the Middle Stone Age of Southern Africa

“…The collection pattern that Marean (2014) calls 'coastal adaptation', involving deliberately Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa 193 scheduled visits to exploit the coast more systematically, appears at~110 kya. Donax serra, the white mussel that lives on sandy beaches, did not become popular until about 90 kya (Jerardino and Marean 2010;Jerardino et al 2014), but its collection seems significant because Jerardino claims that harvesting white mussels implies considerable Table 4. Scientific and common names, ungulate size class (USC), environment and diet of some ungulates mentioned in the text and (Parkington 2003;Parkington et al 2004;Kyriacou et al 2014, in press).…”

Early Upper Paleolithic colonization across Europe: Time and mode of the Gravettian diffusion

“…To measure the advance speed rate (see S1 Table) we followed the statistical procedures outlined by Fort and colleagues in their recent studies of other human prehistoric expansions [8, 14–16]. We did not, however, use neither of the two calculation methods for distance used by those authors: the great circle approach [14], based on the models developed by Fort [12, 16–18] and the variant of the shortest path approach [14]. We used, instead, a new method based on the GIS-based Least-Cost Path assessment that includes topographic and landscape data to estimate the best route between two points.…”