Stone tools, burnt eggshells and other artifacts discovered in the Kalahari have experts in question from the belief that civilization ever arose from coastal regions.
The articles date back to more than 100,000 years ago, when the South African desert received enough rain to sustain human inhabitants.
Researchers also found about two dozen small pieces of calcite, which are believed to be the oldest known crystals used by humans, suggesting that the spiritual ritual was part of humanity for a long time.
They were able to date their discoveries by dating luminescence, which measures sunlight that accumulates in minerals for thousands of years.
Since the objects are contemporary with the oldest artifacts from southern African coastal sites, experts say the first humans in the Kalahari were as innovative as their neighbors by the sea.
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Fragments of calcite crystal, probably used in rituals, were found among the artifacts found in the northern refuge of Ga-Mohana Hill, south of the Kalahari.
Video courtesy of Griffith University
An international team of researchers located the items in a rock shelter on Ga-Mohana Hill, located on an expansive savannah in the southern Kalahari basin.
His excavation uncovered hundreds of stone tools, as well as animal bones with signs of carnage, and 42 fragments of burnt ostrich eggshells believed to have been used as vessels of water.
They also discovered 22 white calcite crystals, all palm-sized or smaller, believed to have a ritual purpose.
In southern Africa, archaeological evidence of early Homo sapiens has been discovered mainly at coastal sites.
The distribution of artifacts in the rock refuge dates back 105,000 years, as old as any coastal site. Their discovery has experts questioning the ever-present belief that civilization arose on the coast
This led researchers to assume that there we originated as a species, said Jayne Wilkins, a paleoarchaeologist at the Australian Research Center for Human Evolution at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia.
Ga-Mohana Hill is more than 370 miles off the coast, but its analysis, published March 31 in the journal Nature, dates the artifacts to about 105,000 years ago.
Distribution of ostrich eggshells among archaeological sites in southern Africa dating from 50,000 to 200,000 years ago
This makes them contemporary with some of the oldest items found on the South African coast.
“Our findings from this refuge show that overly simplified models for the origins of our species are no longer acceptable,” Wilkins said.
“Evidence suggests that many regions of the African continent participated, with the Kalahari being only one.”
Because there are so few archaeological sites dating so far back, it is unclear whether developments in human activity occurred in one region and were brought to another or emerged independently in different locations.
The findings are remarkable, he explains, because “there have been very few dating and well-preserved archaeological sites in the interior of southern Africa that can tell us the origins of Homo sapiens.”
By the time the eggshells were reported to have been used, the southern Kalahari received enough rainfall to provide year-round water sources for human inhabitants, Science News reports.
Wilkins’ team checked the chronology of the stone tools (pictured) and other items on the American mountain Ga-Mohana Hill Rockshelter by luminescence dating, which measures the natural light that accumulates in small grains. of quartz and feldspar
Wilkins’ team checked the chronology of the items in Ga-Mohana Hill’s North Rockshelter using a technique called luminescence dating, which measures natural light signals that accumulate in small grains of quartz and feldspar.
“You can think of each grain as a miniaturized clock, from which we can read this natural light or luminescence signal, which gives us the age of the layers of archaeological sediments,” said co-author Michael Meyer, a geologist at the University. of Innsbruck, in Austria. .
The process dated the deposit about 105,000 years ago.
“This suggests that the first humans in the Kalahari were no less innovative than those on the coast,” Wilkins said.
Investigators found the probable source of the calcite crystals about 1.5 kilometers away from the northern Ga-Mohana refuge
Artifacts found in coastal excavations date back to 125,000 to 70,000 years ago, including a 100,000-year-old “art studio” on the south coast of South Africa that houses charcoal, moles and shells full of pigment. ocher.
While the crystals do not change, the team’s analysis indicates they did not end up in the sediment naturally, but were deliberately collected objects, probably linked to spiritual and ritual beliefs, Wilkins said.
They located the probable source of calcite about 1.5 kilometers away from the northern Ga-Mohana refuge.
Prior to their research, the oldest crystals used by humans date back some 80,000 years and were found in another South African refuge.
An archaeological excavation at Ga-Mohana Hill North Rockshelter, where early evidence of complex behaviors of homo sapiens was recovered. Today local hunter-gatherers continue to use the refuge for ritual activities.
Local hunter-gatherers continue to use Ga-Mohana Hill for ritual activities today, revealing a continuity that researchers describe as “remarkable.”
“Many who visit Ga-Mohana Hill today to practice ritual see it as part of a network of sites linked to the Great Water Snake (Nnoga ya metsi), a whimsical, shape-shifting being,” he wrote. Wilkins and The Conversation.
“Places like Ga-Mohana Hill and its associated stories remain some of the most enduring intangible cultural artifacts of the past, linking modern indigenous South Africans to earlier communities.”
The name “Kalahari” comes from “kgalagadi”, a word in the South African language Tswana meaning “a place without water”.
Although technically not a true desert (it receives too much rainfall to qualify), there are large expanses without permanent surface water.