78,000-year-old record of Middle and Later Stone Age innovation in an East African tropical forest

• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-04057-3
• Publication Date: 2018-05-03T09:30:23Z
• Authors: Ceri Shipton; Patrick Roberts; Will Archer; Simon J. Armitage; Caesar Bita; James Blinkhorn; Colin Courtney-Mu...; Alison Crowther; Richard Curtis; Francesco d’ Errico; Katerina Douka; Patrick Faulkner; Huw S. Groucutt; Richard Helm; Andy I. R Herries; Severinus Jembe; Nikos Kourampas; Julia Lee-Thorp; Rob Marchant; Julio Mercader; Africa Pitarch Marti; Mary E. Prendergast; Ben Rowson; Amini Tengeza; Ruth Tibesasa; Tom S. White; Michael D. Petraglia; Nicole Boivin
• Keywords: 0301 basic medicine; Atmospheric Science; 390; Cave; General Physics and Astronomy; Social Sciences; Stone Tool Technology; Coastal forest; Later Stone Age; Late Pleistocene; Tropical forest; Radiocarbon Dating and Agricultural Origins; Ecotone; 3100 Physics and Astronomy; Arkeologi; 0303 health sciences; Geography; Ecology; Human beings -- Africa, East -- Migrations -- History; Q; Palaeoecology; 1600 Chemistry; Grassland; FOS: Sociology; Earth and Planetary Sciences; Pleistocene; Shrub; Middle to Later Stone Age transition; Climate Change and Paleoclimatology; Archaeology; Physical Sciences; 1300 Biochemistry; Mesolithic period; Science; Tools, Prehistoric; Genetics and Molecular Biology; Archeological record; Article; 03 medical and health sciences; Paleoanthropology; Panga ya Saidi; Biology; Middle Stone Age; Stone age -- Africa, East; East African tropical forest; Human Evolution and Behavioral Modernity; Paleontology; General Chemistry; Human evolution -- Africa; 15. Life on land; Kenya; Cave dwellers -- Africa, East -- History; Anthropology; FOS: Biological sciences; General Biochemistry; Stone implements -- Africa, East; Antiquities, Prehistoric -- Africa, East; Archaeological record

AbstractThe 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.