The Stone Age period may have continued 20,000 years longer in some parts of Africa than previously thought, recent archaeological finds revealed.
New discoveries at sites in Senegal on the west coast of Africa, made by researchers at the Max Planck Institute, feed into a rethinking of the passage of human evolution.
Earlier findings suggested that humans in Africa stopped using certain tools and methods, including simple dots and scrapers, in favor of more complex and elaborate equipment, including spears and blades, about 30,000 years ago.
This distinction in equipment and the shift to a more artistic and regionally diverse approach to tools marks the transition from the Middle Stone Age to the later.
Archaeologists found that the ancient inhabitants of West Africa still used simple tools about 11,000 years ago, up to 20,000 years after being set aside elsewhere.
This belies a long-standing theory that humanity evolved in a uniform way toward our modern lifestyle and instead evolved at different speeds around the world.
New discoveries at sites in Senegal on the west coast of Africa, made by researchers at the Max Planck Institute, feed a rethink of the passage of human evolution
The Stone Age is divided into three periods: the Lower Stone Age before Homo sapiens, the Middle Stone Age where early Homo sapiens used simple tools such as spikes and scrapers, and the Stone Age. late stone, where handicrafts began to consolidate.
The findings of the Middle Stone Age occur more frequently in the African record about 300 and 30 thousand years ago, after which they largely disappear, although new research suggests that this continued in some isolated areas. much later.
The exact transition varies from region to region, but the last stage of the Late Stone Age, the Neolithic, reached the Bronze Age around 3,500 BC.
Archaeologists say their research supports the idea that, for most of human prehistory, human groups were relatively isolated from each other.
The discovery occurs when archaeologists take some of the first steps to discover the prehistoric past of West Africa, which they say have been little studied compared to the eastern and southern part of the continent.
The lead author of a new study, Dr. Eleanor Scerri, said West Africa is a veritable frontier for studies of human evolution, as almost nothing is known of its prehistory.
“Almost everything we know about human origins is extrapolated from discoveries in small parts of East and Southern Africa,” Scerri explained.
His colleague, Dr. Khady Niang, of Cheikh Anta Diop University in Senegal, added: “These findings demonstrate the importance of researching the entire African continent, if we are to achieve a management of the deep human past.”
“Before our work, the history of the rest of Africa suggested that long before 11,000 years ago, the last traces of the Middle Ages of stone had disappeared.”
The team doesn’t know exactly why the stone-age inhabitants of West Africa took longer to adopt new tools, but they speculate it could be due to geographic isolation.
Other theories suggest that it could also be due to less radical climate change which meant that the humans who lived there did not need new ways to adapt.
Archaeologists say their research supports the idea that, for most of human prehistory, human groups were relatively isolated from each other. These drawings show some of the tools that were used 11,000 years ago in West Africa and had already become obsolete elsewhere.
Dr Niang said: “All we can be sure of is that this persistence is not simply a lack of ability to invest in the development of new technologies.
“These people were smart, they knew how to select a good stone to make tools and exploit the landscape in which they lived.”
The team said their findings, along with genetic discoveries that show a great deal of diversity among humans living on the continent, fit into a newer view of human evolution than Age groups. of Stone lived and developed separately.
Dr. Niang said, “We are not sure why, but apart from the physical distance, it may be the case that some cultural boundaries also existed. Perhaps the populations that use these different material cultures also lived in ecological niches. slightly different “.
Team hike along the Gambia River, Senegal. The team does not know exactly why the stone age inhabitants of West Africa took longer to adopt new tools, but speculate that it could be due to geographical isolation
About 15,000 years ago, a significant increase in humidity and forest growth in Central and West Africa linked different areas and provided corridors for the dispersal of groups, delimiting the end of the tools of the Middle Ages. the stone.
Dr. Scerri added: “These findings do not fit into a simple unilinear model of cultural change towards‘ modernity ’.
Groups of hunter-gatherers integrated into radically different technological traditions occupied the neighboring regions of Africa for thousands of years and sometimes shared the same regions.
“Long isolated regions, on the other hand, may have been important reservoirs of cultural and genetic diversity. This may have been a decisive factor in the success of our species.”
The findings were published in the journal Scientific Reports.
WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE HISTORY OF THE STONE AGE?
The Stone Age is a period of human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone tools spanning more than 95% of human technological prehistory.
It begins with the earliest known use of stone tools by hominins, ancient ancestors of humans, during the old stone age, which began about 3.3 million years ago.
About 400,000 and 200,000 years ago, the pace of innovation in stone technology began to accelerate very slightly, a period known as the Middle Stone Age.
At the beginning of this era, hands were made with exquisite craftsmanship. This ended up giving way to smaller, more diverse toolkits, with an emphasis on scaling tools rather than larger basic tools.
The Stone Age is a period of human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone tools spanning more than 95% of human technological prehistory. This image shows Neolithic jadeite shafts from the Toulouse Museum in Languedoc
These toolkits were established for at least 285,000 years in some parts of Africa and between 250,000 and 200,000 years in Europe and parts of West Asia. These toolkits last until at least 50,000 to 28,000 years ago.
During the later Stone Age, the pace of innovations increased and the level of craftsmanship increased.
Groups of Homo sapiens experimented with various raw materials, including bones, ivory and antlers, as well as stone.
The period, between 50,000 and 39,000 years ago, is also associated with the emergence of modern human behavior in Africa.
Different groups sought their own cultural identity and adopted their own ways of doing things.
Later, Stone Age peoples and their technologies spread to Africa for the next thousands of years.