The Dawn of Human Culture (27 page)

FIGURE 7.6

Lower jaws from the Klasies River Mouth site, South Africa (drawn by Kathryn Cruz-Uribe from casts). Note the contrast in size. Specimen No. 16424 is among the smallest adult human jaws ever recorded (Copyright Kathryn Cruz-Uribe).

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* * *

We turn now to a curious discrepancy that we identified at the beginning of the book: the people who lived in Africa between 130,000 and 50,000 years ago may have been modern or near-modern in form, but they were behaviorally similar to the Neanderthals. Like the Neanderthals, they commonly struck stone flakes or flake-blades (elongated flakes) from cores they had carefully prepared in advance; they often collected naturally occurring pigments, perhaps because they were attracted by the colors; they apparently built fires at will; they buried their dead, at least on occasion; and they routinely acquired large mammals as food. In these respects and perhaps others, they may have been advanced over their predecessors. Yet, in common with both earlier people and their Neanderthal contemporaries, they manufactured a relatively small range of recognizable stone tool types; their artifact assemblages varied remarkably little through time and space (despite notable environmental variation); they obtained stone raw material mostly from local sources (suggesting relatively small home ranges or very simple social networks); they rarely if ever utilized bone, ivory, or shell to produce formal artifacts; they buried their dead without grave goods or any other compelling evidence for ritual or ceremony; they left little or no evidence for structures or for any other formal modification of their campsites; they were relatively ineffective hunter-gatherers who lacked, for example, the ability to fish; their populations were apparently very sparse, even by historic hunter-gatherer standards; and they left no compelling evidence for art or decoration.

Archeologists usually assign the African artifact assemblages to the Middle Stone Age or MSA. However, the MSA closely resembles the 07 Body before Behavior.r.qxd 1/29/02 5:06 PM Page 231

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Mousterian Tradition (or Culture) of Europe and western Asia, and the variation of artifacts is greater within the Mousterian and the MSA than it is between them. The difference in naming mainly reflects geographic distance and separate archeological traditions. The MSA and the Mousterian both differed from the preceding Acheulean Tradition primarily in the absence of hand axes and other large bifacial tools, and they replaced the Acheulean at about the same time, between 250,000 and 200,000 years ago (Figure 7.7). Both were in turn replaced after 50,000 years ago by new culture complexes that differed from the MSA and the Mousterian much more sharply than either did from the preceding Acheulean. In Europe, the new complex was the Upper Paleolithic, which we described in the last chapter. Archeologists call the new complex in Africa the Later Stone Age or LSA.

The LSA diverged from the preceding MSA in Africa in exactly the same fundamental features that distinguish the Upper Paleolithic from the Mousterian in Europe. Thus, LSA people tended to manufacture a wider range of easily recognizable stone artifact types; their artifact assemblages varied much more through time and space; they routinely produced standardized (formal) bone artifacts and art; they dug elaborate graves that unequivocally imply a burial ritual; and they were more effective hunter-gatherers whose population densities approximated those of their historic successors in similar environments. Together, LSA and Upper Paleolithic material residues are the oldest to resemble those of historic hunter-gatherers in every detectable respect, and they are thus the oldest from which we can infer unambiguously that the people were behaviorally modern.

LSA and Upper Paleolithic artifact assemblages differed in specifics from the very beginning, and the blades and burins that are 07 Body before Behavior.r.qxd 02/08/2002 3:00 PM Page 232

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millions of

millions of

years ago

years ago

0.0-

0.0-

0.01

0.01

Age

aleolitic

dihedral burin

ivory needle

figurine

endscraper

on a blade

Later Stone

Upper P

beveled-base

&

borer

antler point

bone pendants

0.05

0.05

Age

simple, straight

simple,

double,

sidescraper

Levallois point

convex

straight

sidescraper

sidescraper

Mousterian
&

Middle Stone

Mousterian point

notch

denticulate

backed knife

0.25

0.25

acute-edged

steep-edged

flake

flake

Age

cheuleanA

hand axe

cleaver

pick

flake scraper

discoid

aleolithic

1.7

1.7

acute-edged

steep-edged

flake scraper

chopper

polyhedron

Lower P

flake

flake

Earlier Stone

&

Oldowan

discoid

core scraper

hammerstone

anvil

2.5

2.5

FIGURE 7.7

The principal artifact complexes (“cultures” or “culture-stratigraphic units”) discussed in the text. The individual artifacts are not drawn to scale.

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a hallmark of the Upper Paleolithic are much rarer in the LSA. In their place are small stone scrapers and other equally small stone bits that were intentionally dulled (“backed”) along one edge, probably to facilitate hafting in wooden or bone handles (Figure 7.8). The detailed differences between the LSA and the Upper Paleolithic contrast sharply with the equally detailed similarities between the preceding MSA and Mousterian, and they serve to underscore the significant increase in geographic variability that followed the appearance of the LSA and Upper Paleolithic. If the greater variety of artifact types, the more complex graves, and especially the art and ornamentation of the LSA and Upper Paleolithic signal the dawn of culture in the fully modern sense, then the great increase in artifactual diversity through time and space provides the oldest concrete indication for ethnographic “cultures” or identity-conscious ethnic groups.

Like the latest Mousterian, the latest MSA is difficult to date, because it lies beyond 25,000 years ago, in an interval when even a minute amount of recent, undetectable carbon contamination can make a radiocarbon-dated sample seem 20,000 to 30,000 years younger than it really is. We have already pointed out that other methods like luminescence and ESR that might be used instead commonly require unverifiable site-specific assumptions, and their accuracy is thus often questionable. The problem of dating the latest MSA is exacerbated in southern Africa, where many sites were abandoned between 60,000

and 30,000 years ago, probably because of extreme aridity in the middle of the last glacial period. For the moment, the most informative dates come from eastern Africa, where they indicate that the LSA probably began between 50,000 and 45,000 years ago. The most important site is Enkapune Ya Muto (“Twilight Cave”) in the central Rift Valley of 07 Body before Behavior.r.qxd 1/29/02 5:06 PM Page 234

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borer

“backed” elements (segments)

“thumbnail scrapers”

"fish gorges"

bone

bead

multi-ringed

bone tube

bone pendants

bone spatulate

0

5 cm

bone points

0

2 in

LSA artifacts

“backed” element

denticulate

(segment)

partially bifacial point

MSA artifacts

FIGURE 7.8

Typical MSA and LSA artifacts (top redrawn after J. Deacon, 1984,
British Archaeological
Reports
International Series 213, pp. 198, 244; bottom after T. P. Volman 1981,
The Middle
Stone Age in the Southern Cape
. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Chicago, pp. 229, 232, and 238).

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Kenya excavated by Stanley Ambrose of the University of Illinois.

Enkapune Ya Muto has provided ostrich eggshell beads that are among the oldest personal ornaments so far found, and we emphasized their modern behavioral implications in Chapter 1. Here, we stress that Enkapune Ya Muto and other east African sites place the LSA in Africa firmly before the Upper Paleolithic in Europe. The precise origins of the Upper Paleolithic remain unclear, but a small number of dates suggest it appeared in western Asia 45,000 to 43,000 years ago, perhaps only shortly after the LSA had emerged, that it was present in eastern Europe between 40,000 and 38,000 years ago, and that it reached central and western Europe last, roughly 38,000 to 37,000 years ago (Figure 7.9). This is the expected pattern if the populations that spread the Upper Paleolithic ultimately had their roots in Africa.

Labels and precise dates aside, the basic point is that LSA/Upper Paleolithic people are the first for whom we can infer the fully modern capacity for culture, or perhaps more precisely, the fully modern ability to innovate. It was surely this ability that allowed LSA/Upper Paleolithic people to disperse at the expense of their more primitive contemporaries, beginning between 50,000 and 40,000 years ago.

Upper Paleolithic innovations included solidly built houses, tailored clothing, more efficient fireplaces, and new hunting technology that not only allowed Upper Paleolithic Cro-Magnons to displace their predecessors but also to colonize the harshest, most continental parts of Eurasia where no one had lived before. By 25,000 years ago, Upper Paleolithic people had spread through central Siberia, and by 14,000

years ago, they had reached its northeastern corner. This was in the waning phase of the Last Glaciation, when sea level was still low because of water locked up in the great continental glaciers and when 07 Body before Behavior.r.qxd 1/29/02 5:06 PM Page 236

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years

years

WESTERN

EASTERN

ago

ago

x 1000

AFRICA

ASIA

EUROPE

ASIA

x 1000

10

Pressent

interglacial

10

20

20

30

Aurignacian &

core/scraper

30

Early Upper

modern

tools &

Paleolithic &

LSA &

H. sapiens

modern

modern

early modern

H. sapiens

40

H. sapiens

40

H. sapiens

Châtelperronian

???

& H.

Last Glaciation

neanderthalensis

50

50

60

60

70

70

Mousterian & H.

flake/chopper

late MSA &

80

neanderthalensis

Mousterian & H.

tools &

80

near-modern

neanderthalensis

evolved

H. sapiens

H. erectus

90

90

100

100

???

Last Interglacial

110

110

MSA &

Mousterian

Mousterian & H.

near-modern

& near-modern

neanderthalensis

120

H. sapiens

H. sapiens

120

130

130

ultimate

enP Glaciation

???

190

190

FIGURE 7.9

Approximate chronological arrangement of various cultures and human physical types in Europe, western Asia, eastern Asia, and Africa from 190,000 years ago to the historical present.

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a broad land bridge linked northeastern Siberia to Alaska. Sometime between 14,000 and 12,000 years ago, Siberian Upper Paleolithic people made the relatively short trek across. By 11,500 years ago, they had spread southwards through the Americas to become the people known to archeologists as the Paleoindians.

* * *

One important way in which LSA people differed from their predecessors was in their ability to hunt and gather more effectively. This alone could explain how they (or their Upper Paleolithic descendants) managed to spread so quickly and widely. The evidence for an LSA hunting-and-gathering advance comes mainly from the southern and western coasts of South Africa, where archeologists have been systematically excavating rich MSA and LSA sites for many decades. Some of these sites, like the Klasies River Mouth Main cave complex, Blombos Cave, and Die Kelders Cave 1, contain both MSA and LSA occupation layers. The most persuasive comparisons are between MSA layers dating from the warmer parts of the Last Interglacial period, between roughly 125,000 and 80,000

years ago, and LSA layers dating from the Present Interglacial period or Holocene, between 12,000 years ago and the historic present. This is because climatic conditions were similar during these two time intervals and any observed MSA/LSA contrasts are thus likely to reflect a human behavioral difference as opposed to an environmental one. Analyses of animal remains so far suggest four principal contrasts. We previewed these in Chapter 1, and we summarize them only briefly here.

First, Present Interglacial LSA coastal sites (Elands Bay Cave, Die Kelders Cave 1, Blombos Cave, Nelson Bay Cave, Klasies River 07 Body before Behavior.r.qxd 1/29/02 5:06 PM Page 238