TY - JOUR
T1 - 78,000-year-old record of Middle and Later stone age innovation in an East African tropical forest
AU - Shipton, Ceri
AU - Roberts, Patrick
AU - Archer, Will
AU - Armitage, Simon J
AU - Bita, Caesar
AU - Blinkhorn, James
AU - Courtney-Mustaphi, Colin
AU - Crowther, Alison
AU - Curtis, Richard
AU - d'Errico, Francesco
AU - Douka, Katerina
PY - 2018
Y1 - 2018
N2 - The Middle to Later Stone Age transition in Africa has been debated as a significant shift in human technological, cultural, and cognitive evolution. However, the majority of research on this transition is currently focused on southern Africa due to a lack of long-term, stratified sites across much of the African continent. Here, we report a 78,000-year-long archeological record from Panga ya Saidi, a cave in the humid coastal forest of Kenya. Following a shift in toolkits ~67,000 years ago, novel symbolic and technological behaviors assemble in a non-unilinear manner. Against a backdrop of a persistent tropical forest-grassland ecotone, localized innovations better characterize the Late Pleistocene of this part of East Africa than alternative emphases on dramatic revolutions or migrations.
AB - The Middle to Later Stone Age transition in Africa has been debated as a significant shift in human technological, cultural, and cognitive evolution. However, the majority of research on this transition is currently focused on southern Africa due to a lack of long-term, stratified sites across much of the African continent. Here, we report a 78,000-year-long archeological record from Panga ya Saidi, a cave in the humid coastal forest of Kenya. Following a shift in toolkits ~67,000 years ago, novel symbolic and technological behaviors assemble in a non-unilinear manner. Against a backdrop of a persistent tropical forest-grassland ecotone, localized innovations better characterize the Late Pleistocene of this part of East Africa than alternative emphases on dramatic revolutions or migrations.
U2 - 10.1038/s41467-018-04057-3
DO - 10.1038/s41467-018-04057-3
M3 - Article
VL - 9
SP - 1
EP - 8
JO - Nature Communications
JF - Nature Communications
SN - 2041-1723
IS - 1832
ER -