“Of Sheep and Men”: Earliest Direct Evidence of Caprine Domestication in Southern Africa at Leopard Cave (Erongo, Namibia)

Abstract

The origins of herding practices in southern Africa remain controversial. The first appearance of domesticated caprines in the subcontinent is thought to be c. 2000 years BP; however, the origin of this cultural development is still widely debated. Recent genetic analyses support the long-standing hypothesis of herder migration from the north, while other researchers have argued for a cultural diffusion hypothesis where the spread of herding practices took place without necessarily implicating simultaneous and large population movements. Here we document the Later Stone Age (LSA) site of Leopard Cave (Erongo, Namibia), which contains confirmed caprine remains, from which we infer that domesticates were present in the southern African region as early as the end of the first millennium BC. These remains predate the first evidence of domesticates previously recorded for the subcontinent. This discovery sheds new light on the emergence of herding practices in southern Africa, and also on the possible southward routes used by caprines along the western Atlantic coast.

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

“…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).…”

“…Earlier hypotheses proposed that the Khoespeaking pastoralists derived from a population originating outside of southern Africa. However, more recent genetic work supports a model of autochthonous Khoe ancestry influenced by either demic or cultural diffusion of pastoralism from East Africa 2500 years ago (Pleurdeau et al 2012;Pickrell et al 2014). For example, the presence of lactase persistence alleles in southern Africa indicates contact between East African herders and populations in south-central Africa, with subsequent migration into Namibia (Breton et al 2014).…”

Environments and trypanosomiasis risks for early herders in the later Holocene of the Lake Victoria basin, Kenya

“…Adoption of food production and increasing mobility in northeastern Africa allowed prehistoric people to manage resource availability amid a drastically changing climate (1) and transformed local populations of people and animals. Saharan herders and hunters spread southward to the Sahel, reaching eastern Africa by 4.5 kya, and eventually reaching southern Africa with sheep and cattle around 2 kya (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8). The southern African data have been much debated, but recent genetic studies support at least limited movement of early herders from eastern to southern Africa (5,7).…”

Why the Donkey Did Not Go South: Disease as a Constraint on the Spread of Equus asinus into Southern Africa

“…Nevertheless, it shows that donkeys were present in the region in the first millennium BC, in both the Loita Plains of southwestern Kenya and on the southern side of Lake Eyasi in northern Tanzania. The latter area marks the most southerly known extension of Pastoral Neolithic settlement and it is thus to it, or areas nearby, that we need to look for the origin of those groups that introduced cattle, sheep, ancestral forms of the Khoe language family and, perhaps, pottery, to Africa south of the Zambezi in the last few centuries BC (based on dates from Leopard Cave, Namibia, Spoegrivier, South Africa and Toteng, Botswana; Sealy and Yates 1994;Robbins et al 2008;Pleurdeau et al 2012). Gifford-Gonzalez (2000 has demonstrated that a number of serious infectious diseases, including trypanosomiasis, probably handicapped the southward spread of domestic livestock, especially cattle, into East Africa and between East Africa and southern Africa.…”