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

Shipton, Ceri; Roberts, Patrick; Archer, Will; Armitage, Simon J.; Bita, Caesar; Blinkhorn, James; Courtney-Mustaphi, Colin; Crowther, Alison; Curtis, Richard; d' Errico, Francesco; Douka, Katerina; Faulkner, Patrick; Groucutt, Huw S.; Helm, Richard; Herries, Andy I. R.; Jembe, Severinus; Kourampas, Nikos; Lee-Thorp, Julia; Marchant, Rob; Mercader, Julio; Pitarch Marti, Africa; Prendergast, Mary E.; Rowson, Ben; Tengeza, Amini; Tibesasa, Ruth; White, Tom S.; Petraglia, Michael D.; Boivin, Nicole

doi:10.1038/s41467-018-04057-3

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

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-04057-3
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Shipton, C., Roberts, P., Archer, W., Armitage, S. J., Bita, C., Blinkhorn, J., et al. (2018). 78,000-year-old record of Middle and Later Stone Age innovation in an East African tropical forest. Nature Communications, 9: 1832. doi:10.1038/s41467-018-04057-3.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0003-FD98-5

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 similar to ~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.