Middle Stone Age
Encyclopedia
The Middle Stone Age was a period of Africa
n Prehistory
between Early Stone Age and Late Stone Age
. It is generally considered to have begun around 280,000 years ago and ended around 50-25,000 years ago. The beginnings of particular MSA stone tools have their origins as far back as 550-500,000 years ago and as such some researchers consider this to be the beginnings of the MSA . It was once considered roughly equivalent to the European Middle Paleolithic
, but recent discoveries of evidence for art and symbolic culture in the MSA have forced a reassessment of this idea. The MSA is associated with both anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) as well as archaic Homo sapiens, sometimes referred to as Homo helmei. Early physical evidence comes from the Gademotta Formation in Ethiopia, The Kapthurin Formation in Kenya and Kathu Pan in South Africa.
dates to the southern African Middle Stone Age. Some of the most striking artefacts, including engraved pieces of red ochre, were manufactured at Blombos Cave
in South Africa
70 ka. Pierced and ochred Nassarius
shell beads were also recovered from Blombos, with even earlier examples (Middle Stone Age, Aterian
) from the Taforalt Caves
. Arrows and hide working tools have been found at Sibudu Cave
as evidence of making weapons with compound heat treated gluing technology.
valley of Ethiopia and the Central Rift Valley of Kenya constituted a major center for behavioural innovation . It is likely that the large terrestrial mammal biomass of these regions supported substantial human populations with subsistence and manufacturing patterns similar to those of ethnographically known forager. Early blades have been documented as far back as 550-500,000 years in the Kapthurin Formation in Kenya and Kathu Pan in South Africa. Backed pieces from the Twin Rivers and Kalambo Falls
sites in Zambia
dated at sometime between 300 and 140,000 years indicate a suite of new behaviours and Barham believes that syntactic language was one behavioural aspect that allowed these MSA people to settle in the tropical forests of the Congo. A high level of technical competence is also indicated for the c. 280 ka blades recovered from the Kapthurin Formation, Kenya
.
s and Homo erectus
. Based on the measurement of a large number of human skulls a recent study supports a central/southern African origin for Homo sapiens as this region shows the highest intra-population diversity in phenotypic measurements. Genetic data supports this conclusion .
, while other such as McBrearty and Brooks have argued that cognitive advances can be detected in the MSA and that the origin of our species is linked with the appearance of Middle Stone Age technology at 250-300 ka.
(c. 70 - 55 ka) is indicative of modern behaviour. A family basis to foraging groups, colour symbolism and the reciprocal exchange of artefacts and the formal organization of living space are, he suggests, further evidence for modernity in the MSA.
Lyn Wadley has argued that the complexity of the skill needed to process the heat-treated compound glue (gum and red ochre) used to haft spears would seem to argue for continuity between modern human cognition and that of human
s 70,000 BP at Sibudu Cave
.
is reported from some early MSA sites, for example at Kapthurin and Twin Rivers, and is common after c. 100 ka . Barham argues that even if some of this ochre was used in a symbolic, colour related role then this abstraction could not have worked without language. Ochre, he suggests, could be one proxy for trying to find the emergence of language.
Formal bone tools are frequently associated with modern behaviour by archaeologists . Sophisticated bone harpoon
s manufactured at Katanda, West Africa at c. 90 ka and bone tools from Blombos Cave dated at c. 77 ka may then also serve as examples of material culture associated with modern language.
Many authors have speculated that at the core of this symbolic explosion, and in tandem, was the development of syntactic language that evolved through a highly specialized social learning system providing the means for semantically unbounded discourse . Syntax would have played a key role in this process and its full adoption could have been a crucial element of the symbolic behavioural package in the MSA .
and social networks that were organized upon them.
technology during the Middle Stone Age shows a pattern of innovation followed by disappearance. This occurs to technology such as the manufacture of shell bead
s, arrows and hide working tools including needles and gluing technology. This has been suggested to question the classic out of Africa scenario in which increasing complexity accumulated during the Middle Stone Age. Instead, it has been argued that such technological innovations "appear, disappear and re-appear in a way that best fits a scenario in which historical contingencies and environmental rather than cognitive changes are seen as main drivers"p. 1577..
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
n Prehistory
Prehistory
Prehistory is the span of time before recorded history. Prehistory can refer to the period of human existence before the availability of those written records with which recorded history begins. More broadly, it refers to all the time preceding human existence and the invention of writing...
between Early Stone Age and Late Stone Age
Late Stone Age
The Later Stone Age refers to a period in African prehistory. Its beginnings are roughly contemporaneous with the European Upper Paleolithic...
. It is generally considered to have begun around 280,000 years ago and ended around 50-25,000 years ago. The beginnings of particular MSA stone tools have their origins as far back as 550-500,000 years ago and as such some researchers consider this to be the beginnings of the MSA . It was once considered roughly equivalent to the European Middle Paleolithic
Middle Paleolithic
The Middle Paleolithic is the second subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age as it is understood in Europe, Africa and Asia. The term Middle Stone Age is used as an equivalent or a synonym for the Middle Paleolithic in African archeology. The Middle Paleolithic and the Middle Stone Age...
, but recent discoveries of evidence for art and symbolic culture in the MSA have forced a reassessment of this idea. The MSA is associated with both anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) as well as archaic Homo sapiens, sometimes referred to as Homo helmei. Early physical evidence comes from the Gademotta Formation in Ethiopia, The Kapthurin Formation in Kenya and Kathu Pan in South Africa.
Middle Stone Age artifacts
There is today widespread agreement among archaeologists that the world's first art and symbolic cultureSymbolic culture
Symbolic culture is a concept used by archaeologists, social anthropologists and sociologists to differentiate the cultural realm constructed and inhabited uniquely by Homo sapiens from ordinary "culture", which many other animals possess. Symbolic culture presupposes more than the ability to learn...
dates to the southern African Middle Stone Age. Some of the most striking artefacts, including engraved pieces of red ochre, were manufactured at Blombos Cave
Blombos Cave
Blombos Cave is a cave in a calcarenite limestone cliff on the Southern Cape coast in South Africa. It is an archaeological site made famous by the discovery of 75,000-year-old pieces of ochre engraved with abstract designs and beads made from Nassarius shells, and c. 80,000-year-old bone tools...
in South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
70 ka. Pierced and ochred Nassarius
Nassarius
Nassarius, common name nassa mud snails or dog whelks , is a genus of minute to medium-sized sea snails, marine gastropod molluscs in the family Nassariidae. -Etymology:...
shell beads were also recovered from Blombos, with even earlier examples (Middle Stone Age, Aterian
Aterian
The Aterian industry is a name given by archaeologists to a type of stone tool manufacturing dating to the Middle Stone Age in the region around the Atlas Mountains and the northern Sahara, it refers the site of Bir el Ater, south of Annaba.The industry was probably created by modern humans ,...
) from the Taforalt Caves
Taforalt Caves
The Taforalt Caves, or Grotte des Pigeons, are located in the Oujda Region of Morocco.-Site description:Dating to around 20,000 years BC, the caves located near Taforalt house the remains of numerous skeletons of Oranian and perhaps older origins...
. Arrows and hide working tools have been found at Sibudu Cave
Sibudu Cave
Sibudu Cave is a cave in a sandstone cliff in northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It is an important Middle Stone Age site occupied, with some gaps, from 77,000 years ago to 38,000 years ago...
as evidence of making weapons with compound heat treated gluing technology.
Early development
During the Acheulian to MSA transition the Middle AwashMiddle Awash
The Middle Awash is an archaeological site along the Awash River in Ethiopia's Afar Depression. A number of Pleistocene and late Miocene hominid remains have been found at the site, along with some of the oldest known Olduwan stone artifacts and patches of fire-baked clay, disputed evidence of the...
valley of Ethiopia and the Central Rift Valley of Kenya constituted a major center for behavioural innovation . It is likely that the large terrestrial mammal biomass of these regions supported substantial human populations with subsistence and manufacturing patterns similar to those of ethnographically known forager. Early blades have been documented as far back as 550-500,000 years in the Kapthurin Formation in Kenya and Kathu Pan in South Africa. Backed pieces from the Twin Rivers and Kalambo Falls
Kalambo Falls
Kalambo Falls on the Kalambo River is a 772ft single drop waterfall on the border of Zambia and Tanzania at the southeast end of Lake Tanganyika. The falls are some of the tallest uninterrupted falls in Africa...
sites in Zambia
Zambia
Zambia , officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. The neighbouring countries are the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north, Tanzania to the north-east, Malawi to the east, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia to the south, and Angola to the west....
dated at sometime between 300 and 140,000 years indicate a suite of new behaviours and Barham believes that syntactic language was one behavioural aspect that allowed these MSA people to settle in the tropical forests of the Congo. A high level of technical competence is also indicated for the c. 280 ka blades recovered from the Kapthurin Formation, Kenya
Kenya
Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...
.
Human change and replacement
By c. 80 – 50 ka MSA humans spread out of Africa to Asia, Australia and Europe , perhaps only in small numbers initially , but by c. 30 ka they had replaced NeanderthalNeanderthal
The Neanderthal is an extinct member of the Homo genus known from Pleistocene specimens found in Europe and parts of western and central Asia...
s and Homo erectus
Homo erectus
Homo erectus is an extinct species of hominid that lived from the end of the Pliocene epoch to the later Pleistocene, about . The species originated in Africa and spread as far as India, China and Java. There is still disagreement on the subject of the classification, ancestry, and progeny of H...
. Based on the measurement of a large number of human skulls a recent study supports a central/southern African origin for Homo sapiens as this region shows the highest intra-population diversity in phenotypic measurements. Genetic data supports this conclusion .
Behaviour and cognitive innovation
The development of modern behaviour in the MSA is likely to have been a vast and complex series of events that developed in a mosaic way.. Some have argued for discontinuity such as Richard G. KleinRichard G. Klein
Richard G. Klein is a Professor of Biology and Anthropology at Stanford University. He is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1966, and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in April 2003....
, while other such as McBrearty and Brooks have argued that cognitive advances can be detected in the MSA and that the origin of our species is linked with the appearance of Middle Stone Age technology at 250-300 ka.
Complex cognition
A series of innovations have been documented by 170-160,000 years ago at the site of Pinnacle Point 13B on the southern Cape coast of South Africa. This includes the oldest confirmed evidence for the utilisation of ochre and marine resources in the form of shellfish exploitation for food. Based on his analysis of the MSA bovid assemblage at Klasies, Milo (1998) reports MSA people were formidable hunters and that their social behaviour patterns approached those of modern humans. Deacon maintains that the management of plant food resources through deliberate burning of the veldt to encourage the growth of plants with corms or tubers in the southern Cape during the Howiesons PoortHowiesons Poort
Howiesons Poort is a lithic technology cultural period in the Middle Stone Age in Africa named after the Howieson’s Poort Shelter archeological site near Grahamstown in South Africa...
(c. 70 - 55 ka) is indicative of modern behaviour. A family basis to foraging groups, colour symbolism and the reciprocal exchange of artefacts and the formal organization of living space are, he suggests, further evidence for modernity in the MSA.
Lyn Wadley has argued that the complexity of the skill needed to process the heat-treated compound glue (gum and red ochre) used to haft spears would seem to argue for continuity between modern human cognition and that of human
Human
Humans are the only living species in the Homo genus...
s 70,000 BP at Sibudu Cave
Sibudu Cave
Sibudu Cave is a cave in a sandstone cliff in northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It is an important Middle Stone Age site occupied, with some gaps, from 77,000 years ago to 38,000 years ago...
.
Evidence for language
OchreOchre
Ochre is the term for both a golden-yellow or light yellow brown color and for a form of earth pigment which produces the color. The pigment can also be used to create a reddish tint known as "red ochre". The more rarely used terms "purple ochre" and "brown ochre" also exist for variant hues...
is reported from some early MSA sites, for example at Kapthurin and Twin Rivers, and is common after c. 100 ka . Barham argues that even if some of this ochre was used in a symbolic, colour related role then this abstraction could not have worked without language. Ochre, he suggests, could be one proxy for trying to find the emergence of language.
Formal bone tools are frequently associated with modern behaviour by archaeologists . Sophisticated bone harpoon
Harpoon
A harpoon is a long spear-like instrument used in fishing to catch fish or large marine mammals such as whales. It accomplishes this task by impaling the target animal, allowing the fishermen to use a rope or chain attached to the butt of the projectile to catch the animal...
s manufactured at Katanda, West Africa at c. 90 ka and bone tools from Blombos Cave dated at c. 77 ka may then also serve as examples of material culture associated with modern language.
Many authors have speculated that at the core of this symbolic explosion, and in tandem, was the development of syntactic language that evolved through a highly specialized social learning system providing the means for semantically unbounded discourse . Syntax would have played a key role in this process and its full adoption could have been a crucial element of the symbolic behavioural package in the MSA .
Brain change
Although the advent of anatomical physical modernity cannot confidently be linked with palaeoneurological change, it does seem probable that hominid brains evolved through the same selection processes as other body parts. Genes that promoted a capacity for symbolism may have been selected suggesting the foundations for symbolic culture may well be grounded in biology but behaviour that was mediated by symbolism may have only come later, even though this physical capacity was already in place much earlier. Skoyles and Sagan for example argues that human brain expansion by increasing the prefrontal cortex would have created a brain capable of symbolizing its previously nonsymbolic cognition, and that this process, slow to begin with, increasingly accelerated during the last 100,000 years. Symbolically mediated behaviour may have feedback upon this process by creating greater ability to manufacture symbolic artifactsArtifact (archaeology)
An artifact or artefact is "something made or given shape by man, such as a tool or a work of art, esp an object of archaeological interest"...
and social networks that were organized upon them.
Pattern of change
ArtifactArtifact (archaeology)
An artifact or artefact is "something made or given shape by man, such as a tool or a work of art, esp an object of archaeological interest"...
technology during the Middle Stone Age shows a pattern of innovation followed by disappearance. This occurs to technology such as the manufacture of shell bead
Bead
A bead is a small, decorative object that is usually pierced for threading or stringing. Beads range in size from under to over in diameter. A pair of beads made from Nassarius sea snail shells, approximately 100,000 years old, are thought to be the earliest known examples of jewellery. Beadwork...
s, arrows and hide working tools including needles and gluing technology. This has been suggested to question the classic out of Africa scenario in which increasing complexity accumulated during the Middle Stone Age. Instead, it has been argued that such technological innovations "appear, disappear and re-appear in a way that best fits a scenario in which historical contingencies and environmental rather than cognitive changes are seen as main drivers"p. 1577..
Sites
- Blombos CaveBlombos CaveBlombos Cave is a cave in a calcarenite limestone cliff on the Southern Cape coast in South Africa. It is an archaeological site made famous by the discovery of 75,000-year-old pieces of ochre engraved with abstract designs and beads made from Nassarius shells, and c. 80,000-year-old bone tools...
, South Africa - Klasies River CavesKlasies River CavesThe Klasies River Caves are a series of caves located to the east of the Klasies River mouth on the Tsitsikamma coast in the Humansdorp district of Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. The three main caves and two shelters at the base of a high cliff have revealed evidence of middle stone...
, South Africa - Sibudu CaveSibudu CaveSibudu Cave is a cave in a sandstone cliff in northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It is an important Middle Stone Age site occupied, with some gaps, from 77,000 years ago to 38,000 years ago...
, South Africa - Diepkloof Rock ShelterDiepkloof Rock ShelterDiepkloof Rock Shelter is a rock cave in Western Cape, South Africa in which has been found some of the earliest evidence of the human use of symbols, in the form of patterns engraved upon ostrich eggshell water containers. These date around 60,000 years ago.The symbolic patterns consist of lines...
, South Africa - Pinnacle Point, South Africa
- Mumba CaveMumba caveMumba Cave or Mumba Rockshelter is an archeological site located in Tanzania near Lake Eyasi, that was found to contain important Middle Stone Age and Late Stone Age artifacts. The cave was originally excavated by Ludwig Kohl-Larsen and his wife Margit in the 1930s.-External links:*...
- Mumbwa CavesMumbwa CavesThe Mumbwa Caves are an archeological site in Zambia. The site has yielded artifacts that date from the Middle Stone Age, Late Stone Age and the Iron Age.-External links:*...
See also
- Out of Africa hypothesis
- Blombos caveBlombos CaveBlombos Cave is a cave in a calcarenite limestone cliff on the Southern Cape coast in South Africa. It is an archaeological site made famous by the discovery of 75,000-year-old pieces of ochre engraved with abstract designs and beads made from Nassarius shells, and c. 80,000-year-old bone tools...
- Symbolic cultureSymbolic cultureSymbolic culture is a concept used by archaeologists, social anthropologists and sociologists to differentiate the cultural realm constructed and inhabited uniquely by Homo sapiens from ordinary "culture", which many other animals possess. Symbolic culture presupposes more than the ability to learn...
- The Human Revolution (human origins)The Human Revolution (human origins)'The Human Revolution' is a term used by archaeologists, anthropologists and other specialists in human origins; it refers to the spectacular and relatively sudden – apparently revolutionary – emergence of language, consciousness and culture in our species...
- Late Stone AgeLate Stone AgeThe Later Stone Age refers to a period in African prehistory. Its beginnings are roughly contemporaneous with the European Upper Paleolithic...