Research by SapienCe

Digging the past of South Africa

Symbols are such a common part of modern life that we don’t often think about how important they are. If we see a red traffic light, we stop the car. When and why did humans start communicating with each other using symbols like this? How did the adoption and use of symbols affect prehistoric societies?

Homo sapiens has existed for at least 300 000 years, but there is no evidence indicating "modern" behaviour at that time. Instead, current archaeological evidence suggests that changes in human thought, behaviour and technology occurred more recently, between 120 000 and 50 000 years ago.

A deeper understanding

Much of the evidence for these changes comes from archaeological sites on the southern Cape coast of South Africa. For example, 100 000 years ago large shells were being used to mix powdered rock and other ingredients to produce vivid red paints. By 70 000 years ago, people were using the same red rock, this time in the form of a crayon, to make abstract drawings on stone. At the same time, our ancestors started to wear personal ornamentation, such as shell beads, and to produce intricate stone and bone tools. These represent profound changes in the ways in which our ancestors interacted with each other and their environment. Were these changes the result of changes in the human brain, or the need to adapt to rapidly changing environmental conditions? 

Ground-breaking insight

SapienCE archaeologists investigate these questions by building up an ever deeper understanding of the lives of our ancestors. Detailed analysis of bones, shells, tools and sediments tells us what our ancestors ate, how they hunted and what environment they lived in. Experimental archaeology allows us to understand the archaeology that we excavate. For example, was a hearth used once, suggesting that the cave was a campsite, or hundreds of times, suggesting that it was a home? By drawing together all of these lines of evidence, SapienCE is providing ground-breaking insight into the evolution of our species’ behaviour.

Research areas

Q1: Excavations - Surveying and excavations of archaeological sites

Q2: Material culture - Symbols and innovation

Q3: Faunal analysis - Valuable leftovers

Q5: Chronology - The age of deposits

Q6: Geoarchaeology - Micromorphology and 3D reconstruction

Read about the research areas here

Related researchers

• Christopher Stuart Henshilwood, Professor, Director of SapienCE
• Karen Loise van Niekerk, Researcher, Principal Investigator, SapienCE
• Simon Armitage, Professor II
• Christopher Miller, Professor II
• Sarah Jacoba Deborah Wurz, Professor II, Archaeology
• Ole Fredrik Unhammer, PhD Candidate
• Jovana Milic, PhD Candidate
• Elizabeth Catherine Velliky, Postdoctoral Fellow
• Francesco d'Errico, Professor
• Turid Hillestad Nel, Postdoctoral Fellow (former member)
• Magnus Mathisen Haaland, Postdoctoral Fellow, archaeology (former member)

Human Cognition in African Middle Stone Age

Our mental capacities have allowed us to thrive, to investigate and invent, and even to transform our environment like no other animal species since the origin of life on Earth. But exactly when, how, and why did our ancestors begin to “think” differently?

Cognition itself leaves no direct traces in the archaeological record. Consequently we rely on inferring the abilities required for and involved in producing the artefacts and behaviours unearthed by archaeologists. We also draw on a variety of disciplines, ranging from anthropology to neuroscience, to interpret those findings.

Human Evolution 

Our species has spread to all corners of the planet, we have domesticated hundreds of animals and plants, invented complex systems of communication and devices to travel by land, sea, and air, and even explored other planets. Present-day human cognition is a product of evolution, and it has changed substantially over time. In the 6 million years since the human line separated from its closest primate relatives, the chimpanzees, ancestral human species learned to make stone tools, began to hunt in groups, and became social and cooperative. Some, like the Neanderthals, even learned to control fire, to make complex tools, and likely to communicate through language.

Human Activities

The first members of our own species, Homo sapiens, appeared in Africa only some 300 000 years ago, but over the course of our relatively short history, we have accumulated an almost infinite array of cultures and behaviours that go way beyond what those other human species were capable of.

Take the excavation site at Blombos Cave in South Africa as an example. Today, it offers a snapshot of the lives of humans who lived in Africa during a period archaeologists call the Middle Stone Age (MSA), between 70 000 and 100 000 years ago. The inhabitants of Blombos left behind what now constitutes the earliest evidence for activities that we consider typical of H. sapiens, such as the exploitation of diverse resources, the production of colour pigments, the use of personal ornaments, the creation of systems of graphic communication, and art. Yet, what made all of this possible?

Human Cognitive Milstones

To answer this question, we aim to go beyond simplistic explanations that attribute all achievements to a single factor such as language, sociality, hunting, or technology. Human cognition is not only about how we think, but also about how we perceive and act on the world, and it is influenced by culture, language, and environment. By combining insights across a range of disciplines, our research group hope to gain a more in-depth understanding of the contexts and forces that have shaped—and are still shaping— human cognition, and that gave rise to the cognitive milestones of our species during the MSA.

Research areas

Q2: Material culture - Symbols and innovation

Q7: Cognition - Symbolic mind and social organisation

Read about the research areas here

Related researchers

• Andrea Bender, Professor, Department of Psychosocial Science
• Larissa Mendoza Straffon, Researcher, Department of Psychosocial Science
• Kenneth Hugdahl, Emeritus, Department of Biological and Medical Psychology
• Torill Christine Lindstrøm, Emeritus, Department of Psychosocial Science

Is climate the answer?

We seek to recreate the unknown environments of our ancestors. How did climate affect the behavioural evolution of early Homo sapiens in southern Africa? Did modern human behaviour originate in part due to an ability to survive and adapt to variable climatic circumstances?

The environment, and the opportunities it provides for human livelihood, is to a large degree defined by the climate that determines the availability of water, the temperature, vegetation cover, and food for animals living in the sea and on land. Global climate was highly variable over the period documented by the archaeological material at Blombos Cave, Klasies River main site and Klipdrift Shelter between 100 000 – 50 000 years ago.

Climatic context for innovations

The climatic changes must have created both challenges, and opportunities for the most adaptable people to adjust to changing environments and succeed. However, our understanding of how global climatic changes affected regional and local-scale climate patterns and palaeoenvironments is limited. Particularly when looking at a period marked with human innovations, use of symbols and adapting stone tool production. Are there any indications that climatic changes could have been a catalyst for these anthropogenic alterations?

Building the proxies

Our approach to answering these essential questions is based on a combination of paleo proxies, which tell us about past climatic and environmental variables such as terrestrial temperature, vegetation, precipitation and rainfall seasonality, sea surface temperature, wind patterns, river runoffs and the terrestrial and marine landscape. The information we gain from proxies such as speleothems, marine sediment cores, shellfish and small mammal fauna enables us to piece together a detailed environmental backdrop for human livelihood.

Simulating the past

Based on the same technology that provides climate projections for the future, we are able to recreate climatic scenarios, landscape and vegetation changes on a prehistoric time scale. Thus producing models of how the climate was during the periods that are associated with human innovation and creation of symbolic artefacts on the southern coast of South Africa. The simulations will, together with the paleo proxies, provide a composite picture of the local and regional climate and the environment in southern Africa from 100 000 to 50 000 years ago.

Research areas

Q3: Faunal analysis - Valuable leftovers

Q4: Climate - Reconstructing the climate of the past

Read about the research areas here

Related researchers

• Eystein Jansen, Professor, Department of Earth Science
• Anna Nele Meckler, Professor, Department of Earth Science
• Jenny Marianne Maccali, Researcher, Department of Earth Science
• Jovana Milic, PhD Candidate, Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion
• Turid Hillestad Nel, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion (former member)