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

Citation

Shipton C, Roberts P, Archer W, Armitage SJ, Bita C, Blinkhorn J, Courtney-Mustaphi C, Crowther A, Curtis R, d'Errico F, Douka K, Faulkner P, Groucutt HS, Helm R & Kourampas N (2018) 78,000-year-old record of Middle and Later stone age innovation in an East African tropical forest. Nature Communications, 9 (1), Art. No.: 1832. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-04057-3

Abstract
The 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.

Keywords
Archaeology; Palaeoecology

Notes
Additional co-authors: Andy I. R Herries, Severinus Jembe, 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

Journal
Nature Communications: Volume 9, Issue 1

• Shipton-etal-NatureComm-2018