Fire and grass-bedding construction 200 thousand years ago at Border Cave, South Africa

Wadley, Lyn; Esteban, Irene; Peña, Paloma de la; Wojcieszak, Marine; Stratford, Dominic; Lennox, Sandra; d’Errico, Francesco; Rosso, Daniela Eugenia; Orange, François; Backwell, Lucinda; Sievers, Christine

doi:10.1126/science.abc7239

Cited by 44 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 77 publications

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“…Bentsen’s ( 42 ) review of the various kinds of fire evidence suggests that pyrotechnology was very important in the early part of the MSA in sub-Saharan Africa, although the number of sites is small and dominated by cave sites in South Africa, reflecting the amount of fieldwork done there. At Border Cave, hearths and ash layers have been excavated from multiple levels dating from 230 ka to 1000 CE ( 43 , 44 ). Fire was used to modify the properties of stone raw material ( 45 ), for cleaning and possibly pest control ( 44 ), and to cook starchy rhizomes ( 46 ).…”

Section: The Spatiotemporal Pattern Of Fire Usementioning

confidence: 99%

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Middle Pleistocene fire use: The first signal of widespread cultural diffusion in human evolution

MacDonald

Scherjon

Veen

et al. 2021

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Control of fire is one of the most important technological innovations within the evolution of humankind. The archaeological signal of fire use becomes very visible from around 400,000 y ago onward. Interestingly, this occurs at a geologically similar time over major parts of the Old World, in Africa, as well as in western Eurasia, and in different subpopulations of the wider hominin metapopulation. We interpret this spatiotemporal pattern as the result of cultural diffusion, and as representing the earliest clear-cut case of widespread cultural change resulting from diffusion in human evolution. This fire-use pattern is followed slightly later by a similar spatiotemporal distribution of Levallois technology, at the beginning of the African Middle Stone Age and the western Eurasian Middle Paleolithic. These archaeological data, as well as studies of ancient genomes, lead us to hypothesize that at the latest by 400,000 y ago, hominin subpopulations encountered one another often enough and were sufficiently tolerant toward one another to transmit ideas and techniques over large regions within relatively short time periods. Furthermore, it is likely that the large-scale social networks necessary to transmit complicated skills were also in place. Most importantly, this suggests a form of cultural behavior significantly more similar to that of extant Homo sapiens than to our great ape relatives.

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Section: The Spatiotemporal Pattern Of Fire Usementioning

confidence: 99%

“…At Border Cave, hearths and ash layers have been excavated from multiple levels dating from 230 ka to 1000 CE ( 43 , 44 ). Fire was used to modify the properties of stone raw material ( 45 ), for cleaning and possibly pest control ( 44 ), and to cook starchy rhizomes ( 46 ).…”

Section: The Spatiotemporal Pattern Of Fire Usementioning

confidence: 99%

Middle Pleistocene fire use: The first signal of widespread cultural diffusion in human evolution

MacDonald

Scherjon

Veen

et al. 2021

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…Moreover, their work highlights how we overlooked what most likely was the majority of the hominin tool kit, thus missing the opportunity to understand behaviors that may depict a more complex scenario of our technological evolution. Perishable materials usually do not endure for as long as lithics do (but see Pante et al 2020;Wadley et al 2020). After all, we cannot find the older than the Oldowan until we survey deposits older than 2.6 Ma, and to find organic tools, we must search for themboth in the present and in the past.…”

Section: No Country For Old Archaeologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Archaeology of the Perishable

Pascual‐Garrido¹,

Almeida-Warren²

2021

Current Anthropology

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Selection and transport of materials for tools is ubiquitous throughout our species' evolutionary history. Yet our understanding of early human material culture is heavily skewed toward lithic technology. This poses challenges when reconstructing our technical origins, as organic raw materials, especially plants, likely played a significant role despite their absence from the record until 300 kya. Studies of plant-tool use by living apes can serve as a proxy to reconstruct such aspects of human behavior. Employing archaeological methods, we investigated raw material procurement for termite-fishing tools by three chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) populations in Tanzania: Gombe, Issa, and Mahale. All communities exploited plant sources from the immediate vicinity of termite mounds, as well as farther away, and reused them. However, at Issa, more parts were sourced per plant, with the number of removals decreasing as distance from the mound increased. These disparities are likely caused by environmental differences. Issa apes might try to minimize transport costs in what is a comparably more open and drier habitat with fewer suitable sources available near mounds. Despite similar raw material types being available, Issa and Mahale chimpanzees exclusively used bark for tool manufacture, while at Gombe, various materials were employed; these differences may reflect cultural variants. Our study highlights how environmental and cultural factors shape chimpanzee technology and identifies similarities to raw material selection processes inferred for Oldowan tool users. The archaeology of the perishable, even if at its infancy, is providing a new framework for reconstructing archaeologically invisible aspects of early human behavior and our own technological origins.

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“…Recent discoveries from flagship sites in South Africa such as Sibudu Cave, 113 , 114 Blombos Cave, 27 , 115 the Pinnacle Point sites, 32 , 36 , 116 Klasies River Mouth, 117 and Diepkloof Rockshelter 28 , 118 attest to the MSA origins of the kinds of complex technological, symbolic, and social behaviors that characterize H. sapiens . 18 , 119 , 120 The geographic location of these sites at or near the coast has led to the dominant narrative of H. sapiens origins being intrinsically tied to the coast and marine resources, 40 , 121 , 122 , 123 , 124 with little or no contribution from the Kalahari Basin.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Homo sapiensorigins and evolution in the Kalahari Basin, southern Africa

Wilkins

2021

Evolutionary Anthropology

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The Kalahari Basin, southern Africa preserves a rich archeological record of human origins and evolution spanning the Early, Middle and Late Pleistocene. Since the 1930s, several stratified and dated archeological sites have been identified and investigated, together with numerous open‐air localities that provide landscape‐scale perspectives. However, next to recent discoveries from nearby coastal regions, the Kalahari Basin has remained peripheral to debates about the origins of Homo sapiens. Though the interior region of southern Africa is generally considered to be less suitable for hunter‐gatherer occupation than coastal and near‐coastal regions, especially during glacial periods, the archeological record documents human presence in the Kalahari Basin from the Early Pleistocene onwards, and the region is not abandoned during glacial phases. Furthermore, many significant behavioral innovations have an early origin in the Kalahari Basin, which adds support to poly‐centric, pan‐African models for the emergence of our species.

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Fire and grass-bedding construction 200 thousand years ago at Border Cave, South Africa

Cited by 44 publications

References 77 publications

Middle Pleistocene fire use: The first signal of widespread cultural diffusion in human evolution

Middle Pleistocene fire use: The first signal of widespread cultural diffusion in human evolution

Archaeology of the Perishable

Homo sapiensorigins and evolution in the Kalahari Basin, southern Africa

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