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Precocious Human Behaviour in South African Prehistory
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| 2. Precocious Human Behaviour in South African Prehistory
By John Parkington and Cedric Poggenpoel For some time now, the results of southern African archaeological excavations and analyses have been significant in the study of modern human origins. To understand why this is so, we need first to unpack the idea of ‘modern humans’ and the debate on ‘origins’. The framework for both has been set by the well-researched prehistory of ice-age Europe, where Neandertalers were replaced abruptly by ‘moderns’ some 40 000 years ago. Modern skeletons are defined as gracile and largely undistinguishable from ours today. The Neandertalers were certainly not modern in this sense, being robust and morphologically quite distinctive. These cousins of ours, though buried their dead had cranial capacities as large as, if somewhat differently configured than our own. What has struck European archaeologists, however, is the abundance of decorated bone and ivory, perforated objects and graphic representations that have been found with modern people, compared with a dearth, if not a complete absence, of such with the Neandertalers. Because these skeletal and artefactual changes happen so fast in Europe, one research direction has been to trace the origins of decorated objects and modern skeletal morphology outside Europe. This is the search for ‘modern human origins’. In sub-Saharan Africa there are no Neandertalers. Whereas the European fossil human record illustrates an increasingly Neandertal direction from about 300 000 years ago to 50 000 years ago, that of southern Africa in those times - scrappy though it is - illustrates an undeniable trend toward the modern form. Many anthropologists believe this shows that the modern form originated in Africa and spread to Europe and elsewhere. But what about the origins of the artefactual remains that are taken to reflect ‘modern behaviour’? What seems to underpin the manufacture of decorated and ornamental objects and of graphic designs and forms is an ability to think (and talk?) symbolically, to develop a set of material forms that are conventionally used to represent otherwise intangible concepts, among them personal identity and ownership. Of course this is extremely difficult to recognise, since we have no extrinsic way of knowing when or how a repeated form reflects an intangible concept. The millions of hand-axes from Africa are patterned artefacts from as much as a million years ago, which might reflect such symbolic behaviour. Research has focused on artefact-making in bone, shell and ochre. Recent excavations at sites in southern Africa have produced evidence that symbolic systems must undoubtedly have been in place here 80 000 years ago, well before the equivalent manifestation in Europe. |
 Two small chunks of ochre with cross-hatched markings on them offer clues on modern humans. |
| At Blombos Cave, for example, a coastal site in the southern Cape
Province, Chris Henshilwood has reported a number of interesting
discoveries stratified below a windblown sand level well, dated to
about 75 000 years. There are several carefully made bone points, not
that dissimilar from ones that have been found in much more recent
contexts all over the world. From these levels, too, he has found at
least two small chunks of ochre that have cross-hatched markings on
them. Most recently he announced the finding of a large number of, in his view, intentionally pierced marine shells that may have been parts of necklaces. The stone tools associated with all of these finds could be described as precocious, in that they manifest advanced flaking techniques that become widespread and common later in the prehistoric record. At Diepkloof Cave in the Western Cape Province, about 17 kilometres from the present shoreline, we, along with French colleagues Jean-Philippe Rigaud and Pierre-Jean Texier, have also been investigating levels that are between 60 000 and 80 000 years old, with exciting and interesting results. The stone tools differ from those of Blombos in form and may be a little younger, but they also reflect sophisticated manufacturing techniques that appear for the first time in these levels. The long stone blades, struck from the cores with soft organic hammers such as bone, and patterned geometricallyshaped finished pieces imply very skillful and innovative stone-working behaviours. Along with these artefacts there are large numbers of bevelled pieces of ochre that were arguably a source of pigment. Of particular significance, however, are more than 100 intentionally marked fragments of ostrich eggshell. Ostrich eggshell fragments are fairly common throughout the deposits at Diepkloof, but ones with structured sets of incised lines are limited to a particular part of the stratigraphy dated beyond 55 000 years and probably not as old as 70 000 years. These age estimates are based on a series of radiocarbon and luminescence dates that are still accumulating. What is important about this large collection of intentionally marked fragments is the combination of variety and patterning that is manifested. |
 The cross-hatched marked chunks have been discovered at the Blombos Cave in the southern Cape Province below a windblown sand level by Chris Henshilwood. |
| Some pieces are characterised by sets of parallel and acutely
angled lines with interesting variations in the depth and breadth of
the incisions. On other pieces, there are parallel lines infilled with
hatching. Most remarkable, however, are a few pieces that show strongly
defined grid patterns of intersecting lines. This variety of repeated
design must mean that the makers were responding to a systematic and
agreed set of conventions in producing their work. There was a socially
constructed framework outside the brains of the participants that
guided their artefact marking (and making) behaviour. At least two of these intentionally marked ostrich eggshell fragments show the worn profiles typical of the mouths of ostrich eggshell water containers. This seems to imply that at least some of the intentional marking was applied to whole eggs and ones intended to have a substantial use in life as both storage and transport devices. We are attracted to the idea that the intentional marking served the purpose of identifying and distinguishing between objects that, when plain, are remarkably similar to one another. Ownership and identity may be the kinds of intangibles that needed to become manifest in the patterns of incised lines on the egg surfaces. Similarly marked ostrich eggshell fragments, as well as other presumed water flask mouths, have come from the excavations at Apollo XI Cave in southern Namibia, and similar precocious stone tools come from several sites in southern Africa, including the current excavations of Lyn Wadley at Sibudu in KwaZulu Natal. Although human skeletal remains from these sites are few and fragmentary, they look modern, as do the similarly aged remains from Klasies River, Border Cave, Die Kelders and Sea Harvest. It seems entirely likely that well before 40 000 years ago, and perhaps as much as 100 000 years ago, southern Africans were crossing or had crossed the boundaries of behavioural and skeletal modernity. This gives South African prehistorians a unique research advantage and an opportunity to develop internationally significant research programmes. |
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