%0 Journal Article
%A Mackay, Alex
%A Armitage, Simon J.
%A Niespolo, Elizabeth M.
%A Sharp, Warren D.
%A Stahlschmidt, Mareike Cordula
%A Blackwood, Alexander F.
%A Boyd, Kelsey C.
%A Chase, Brian M.
%A Lagle, Susan E.
%A Kaplan, Chester F.
%A Low, Marika A.
%A Martisius, Naomi L.
%A McNeill, Patricia J.
%A Moffat, Ian
%A O’Driscoll, Corey A.
%A Rudd, Rachel
%A Orton, Jayson
%A Steele, Teresa E.
%+ Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Max Planck Society
%T Environmental influences on human innovation and behavioural diversity in southern Africa 92–80 thousand years ago :
%G eng
%U https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-000A-1EFB-B
%R 10.1038/s41559-022-01667-5
%7 2022-02-28
%D 2022
%* Review method: peer-reviewed
%X Africa’s Middle Stone Age preserves sporadic evidence for novel behaviours among early modern humans, prompting a range
of questions about the influence of social and environmental factors on patterns of human behavioural evolution. Here we
document a suite of novel adaptations dating approximately 92–80 thousand years before the present at the archaeological
site Varsche Rivier 003 (VR003), located in southern Africa’s arid Succulent Karoo biome. Distinctive innovations include the
production of ostrich eggshell artefacts, long-distance transportation of marine molluscs and systematic use of heat shatter
in stone tool production, none of which occur in coeval assemblages at sites in more humid, well-studied regions immediately
to the south. The appearance of these novelties at VR003 corresponds with a period of reduced regional wind strength and
enhanced summer rainfall, and all of them disappear with increasing winter rainfall dominance after 80 thousand years before
the present, following which a pattern of technological similarity emerges at sites throughout the broader region. The results
indicate complex and environmentally contingent processes of innovation and cultural transmission in southern Africa during
the Middle Stone Age.
%K Archaeology, Cultural evolution, Palaeoecology
%J Nature Ecology & Evolution
%V 6
%& 361
%P 361 - 369
%@ 2397-334X