Identifying early modern human ecological niche expansions and associated cultural dynamics in the South African Middle Stone Age
Language
EN
Article de revue
This item was published in
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2017, vol. 114, n° 30, p. 7869-7876
English Abstract
The archaeological record shows that typically human culturaltraits emerged at different times, in different parts of the world,and among different hominin taxa. This suggests that their emer-gence is the outcome ...Read more >
The archaeological record shows that typically human culturaltraits emerged at different times, in different parts of the world,and among different hominin taxa. This suggests that their emer-gence is the outcome of complex and non-linear evolutionarytrajectories—influenced by environmental, demographic and so-cial factors—that need to be understood and traced at regionalscales. The application of predictive algorithms using archaeo-logical and paleoenvironmental data allows one to estimate theecological niches occupied by past human populations and iden-tify niche changes through time, thus providing the possibilityof investigating relationships between cultural innovations andpossible niche shifts. By using such methods to examine twokey southern Africa archaeological cultures, the Still Bay (76–71thousand years ago; ka) and the Howiesons Poort (66–59 ka), weidentify a niche shift characterized by a significant expansion in thebreadth of the Howiesons Poort ecological niche. This expansion iscoincident with aridification occurring across Marine Isotope Stage4 (ca. 72–60 ka) and especially pronounced at 60 ka. We arguethat this niche shift was made possible by the development ofa flexible technological system, reliant on composite tools andcultural transmission strategies based more on“product copying”rather than“process copying”. These results counter the one niche-one human taxon equation. They indicate that what makes ourcultures, and probably those of other members of our lineage,unique is their flexibility and ability to produce innovations thatallow a population to shift its ecological nicheRead less <
English Keywords
Middle Stone age
Still Bay
Howiesons Poort
Ecological Niche Modeling
Paleoclimate