Title |
78,000-year-old record of Middle and Later Stone Age innovation in an East African tropical forest
|
---|---|
Published in |
Nature Communications, May 2018
|
DOI | 10.1038/s41467-018-04057-3 |
Pubmed ID | |
Authors |
Ceri Shipton, Patrick Roberts, Will Archer, Simon J. Armitage, Caesar Bita, James Blinkhorn, Colin Courtney-Mustaphi, 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 |
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. |
X Demographics
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
United Kingdom | 25 | 10% |
United States | 24 | 10% |
Australia | 20 | 8% |
Japan | 13 | 5% |
Spain | 11 | 5% |
France | 11 | 5% |
Germany | 4 | 2% |
Netherlands | 4 | 2% |
South Africa | 4 | 2% |
Other | 26 | 11% |
Unknown | 101 | 42% |
Demographic breakdown
Type | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Members of the public | 185 | 76% |
Scientists | 45 | 19% |
Science communicators (journalists, bloggers, editors) | 10 | 4% |
Practitioners (doctors, other healthcare professionals) | 2 | <1% |
Unknown | 1 | <1% |
Mendeley readers
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Unknown | 123 | 100% |
Demographic breakdown
Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Researcher | 25 | 20% |
Student > Ph. D. Student | 20 | 16% |
Student > Master | 14 | 11% |
Professor | 5 | 4% |
Professor > Associate Professor | 5 | 4% |
Other | 19 | 15% |
Unknown | 35 | 28% |
Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Arts and Humanities | 28 | 23% |
Social Sciences | 18 | 15% |
Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 9 | 7% |
Earth and Planetary Sciences | 9 | 7% |
Chemistry | 5 | 4% |
Other | 12 | 10% |
Unknown | 42 | 34% |