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[QUOTE]Originally posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova: [QB] [b]Crucial human technological innovations first took place during the MSA in Africa. before the Out of Africa expansion into Eurasia [/b] [i]Recently discovered bone implements from Middle Stone Age (MSA) deposits at Sibudu Cave, South Africa, confirm the existence of a bone tool industry for the Howiesons Poort (HP) technocomplex. Previously, an isolated bone point from Klasies River provided inconclusive evidence. This paper describes three bone tools: two points and the end of a polished spatula-shaped piece, from unequivocal HP layers at Sibudu Cave (with ages greater than ?61 ka). Comparative microscopic and morphometric analysis of the Sibudu specimens together with bone tools from southern African Middle and Later Stone Age (LSA) deposits, an Iron Age occupation, nineteenth century Bushman hunter-gatherer toolkits, and bone tools used experimentally in a variety of tasks, reveals that the Sibudu polished piece has use-wear reminiscent of that on bones experimentally used to work animal hides. A slender point is consistent with a pin or needle-like implement, while a larger point, reminiscent of the single specimen from Peers Cave, parallels large un-poisoned bone arrow points from LSA, Iron Age and historical Bushman sites. Additional support for the Sibudu point having served as an arrow tip comes from backed lithics in the HP compatible with this use, and the recovery of older, larger bone and lithic points from Blombos Cave, interpreted as spear heads. If the bone point from the HP layers at Sibudu Cave is substantiated by future discoveries, this will push back the origin of bow and bone arrow technology by at least 20,000 years, and corroborate arguments in favour of the hypothesis that crucial technological innovations took place during the MSA in Africa. [/i] --Backwella, d'Erricob, and Wadleyd (2008) Middle Stone Age bone tools from the Howiesons Poort layers, Sibudu Cave, South Africa. Journal of Archaeological Science. Volume 35, Issue 6, June 2008, Pages 1566–1580 [/b] [IMG]http://media.smithsonianmag.com/images/Evolution-of-the-human-mind-shell-beads-engravings-projectiles-2.jpg[/IMG] [b]Ancient Stone tone assemblages in North Africa suggest closer links with the African Middle Stone Age industries rather than to the Middle Paleolithic of western Eurasia. [/b] quote: [i]North Africa is quickly emerging as one of the more important regions yielding information on the origins of modern Homo sapiens. Associated with significant fossil hominin remains are two stone tool industries, the Aterian and Mousterian, which have been differentiated, respectively, primarily on the basis of the presence and absence of tanged, or stemmed, stone tools. Largely because of historical reasons, these two industries have been attributed to the western Eurasian Middle Paleolithic rather than the African Middle Stone Age. In this paper, drawing on our recent excavation of Contrebandiers Cave and other published data, we show that, aside from the presence or absence of tanged pieces, there are no other distinctions between these two industries in terms of either lithic attributes or chronology. Together, these results demonstrate that these two ‘industries’ are instead variants of the same entity. Moreover, several additional characteristics of these assemblages, such as distinctive stone implements and the manufacture and use of bone tools and possible shell ornaments, suggest a closer affinity to other Late Pleistocene African Middle Stone Age industries rather than to the Middle Paleolithic of western Eurasia. [/i] --On the industrial attributions of the Aterian and Mousterian of the Maghreb, Harold L. Dibble et al. Journal of Human Evolution, 2013 Elsevier. [IMG]http://i64.fastpic.ru/big/2014/0928/18/e22a323f8262aa97a95b0f9dee0f5118.jpg[/IMG] [b]Some Environmental disasters hindered early African population growth and agriculture[/b] “Dating from more than 15,000 years ago, the evidence from the Nile valley is arguably the earliest comprehensive instance of an organized food-producing system known anywhere on Earth. Given time, this pioneering system might have developed into the stupendous civilization that ruled ancient Egypt for two and a half millennia from about 5,000 years ago. But it could never be. Disaster struck the Nile Valley as its population reached a peak, and by 10,000 years ago occupation density had plunged to a level only slightly above that known for the time of the Wadi Kubbaniya site. The cause of the calamity originated more than 2,000 kilometers to the south, in central Africa at the headwaters of the Nile, where climatic amelioration which followed the last glacial maximum had brought a very marked increase in rainfall.. Around 13,000 years ago, heavy and persistent whih had already flooded even the desiccated Kalahari basin with a number of large lakes moved steadily northward.. The effects downstream were catastrophic. From a sluggish river flowing through shallow braided channels, the Nile was transformed over a period of five hundred years (12,000 to 11,5000 years ago) into what has been called the 'wild' Nile. Extremely high floods were only the beginning of the problem.. With the Nile now flowing through a single deep channel, the extent of the floodplain was severely reduced. The quantities of available plant foods declined.. The levels to which the human population had soared could not be sustained,.. Conservative assessments conclude that regular annual rain began to fall on the region from about 11,000 years ago; additional rain in the valley can hardly be viewed as compensation for the devastating floods its inhabitants had suffered.." --Africa: A Biography of the Continent, by John Reader, 1999, pp. 155-156 [b]The "revolution" took place in Africa per scholar John Reader, not "Eurasia" [/b] "The Katanda sites are at least 75,000 and possibly as much as 90,000 years old, an age which demands revision of some entrenched Eurocentric views on human cultural development. Hitherto it had been widely believed that although modern humans had evolved in Africa and first migrated from the continent around 100,000 years ago, the manufacture of specialized tools and the development of sophisticated cultural practices such as complex economic strategies, large scale social networks, personal adornment, and an expanded use of symbols in art and daily life arose in Europe, central Asia, Siberia and the Near East between 40,000 and 30,000 years ago. The Katanda evidence contradicts this view, pushing back the invention of specialized tools at least 35,000 years and making Africa the origin not only of anatomically modern humans but also of modern human behaviour." --John Reader, 1999, Africa: A Biography Of The Continent, p139 [/QB][/QUOTE]
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