Homo sapiensorigins and evolution in the Kalahari Basin, southern Africa

Abstract

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.

Lacustrine geoarchaeology in the central Kalahari: Implications for Middle Stone Age behaviour and adaptation in dryland conditions

“…Rather than simply driving dispersal, dry and variable conditions may have facilitated adaptation, examined in an eastern African context by Grove (2016), where xerophytic dry environments are regarded as core landscapes for the MSA (Timbrell et al, 2022). In southern Africa, by contrast, dry conditions have been conceived to be an obstacle to innovation, and even to occupation, but this view is changing (Wilkins, 2020). Schoville et al (2022) argue, using evidence from the southern Kalahari margins, that behavioural plasticity, in the form of flexible foraging strategies, was a characteristic of MSA adaptation in the context of variable water availability and water stress.…”

“…Put simply, much of southern Africa's interior, especially the extensive Kalahari, has been regarded as a marginal area, perhaps uninhabited for long periods (Walker, 1998). As a result, the 'dominant narrative of H. sapiens origins being intrinsically tied to the coast and marine resources, with little or no contribution from the Kalahari Basin' (Wilkins, 2020:2) has emerged.…”

“…This has now changed. First, the region does have a richer archaeological record than widely appreciated (Wilkins, 2020;Coulson et al, 2022), though most excavated sites are from marginal locations relative to the interior basin as a whole. Second, genomic investigations have pointed to a similar 350 -200 kyr timeframe for modern human divergence in southern as in eastern Africa (Tishkoff et al, 2009;Henn et al, 2011;Chan et al, 2015;Schlebusch et al, 2021).…”

Tufas indicate prolonged periods of water availability linked to human occupation in the southern Kalahari

“…The Kalahari Basin, in the interior of southern Africa, is a semi-arid region that has experienced significant climatic fluctuations with abundant records of both palaeoenvironment and archaeology. As such, this region provides a unique opportunity to further explore early human-environment interactions [ 15 ]. For example, in the southern Kalahari, multiple lines of evidence point to very different, much wetter periods during much of the Pleistocene [ 16 ].…”

“…Previous studies reveal significant complexities even at the intra-regional scale, however, due in part to the different types of proxies with variable resolutions and the variety of forcing factors at play [ 16 ]. They also reveal a complex relationship between palaeoenvironmental conditions and evidence for human occupation [ 15 , 28 ]. To more fully assess the response of Homo sapiens to changes in climate and environments, more well-dated records of past environments from different proxies, preferably closely associated with archaeological records of human behaviour, are required.…”