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Howieson's Poort
Howiesons Poort (also called HP) is a lithic technology cultural period in the Middle Stone Age in Africa named after the Howieson's Poort Shelter archeological site near Grahamstown in South Africa. It seems to have lasted around 5,000 years between roughly 65,800 BP and 59,500 BP (Jacobs 2008). Humans of this period as in the earlier Stillbay cultural period showed signs of having used symbolism and having engaged in the cultural exchange of gifts. Howiesons Poort culture is characterized by tools that seemingly anticipate many of the characteristics, 'Running ahead of time', of those found in the Upper Palaeolithic period that started 25,000 years later around 40,000 BP. Howiesons Poort culture has been described as "both 'modern' and 'non-modern'". Date Modern research using optically stimulated luminescence dating has pushed back the date of its remains and it is now estimated to have started 64.8 ka and ended 59.5 ka with a duration of 5.3 ka. This date matches the oxyg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lithic Technology
In archaeology, lithic technology includes a broad array of techniques used to produce usable tools from various types of stone. The earliest stone tools were recovered from modern Ethiopia and were dated to between two-million and three-million years old. The archaeological record of lithic technology is divided into three major time periods: the Paleolithic (Old Stone Age), Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age), and Neolithic (New Stone Age). Not all cultures in all parts of the world exhibit the same pattern of lithic technological development, and stone tool technology continues to be used to this day, but these three time periods represent the span of the archaeological record when lithic technology was paramount. By analysing modern stone tool usage within an ethnoarchaeological context, insight into the breadth of factors influencing lithic technologies in general may be studied. See: Stone tool. For example, for the Gamo of Southern Ethiopia, political, environmental, and social f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Microlith
A microlith is a small stone tool usually made of flint or chert and typically a centimetre or so in length and half a centimetre wide. They were made by humans from around 35,000 to 3,000 years ago, across Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. The microliths were used in spear points and arrowheads. Microliths are produced from either a small blade ( microblade) or a larger blade-like piece of flint by abrupt or truncated retouching, which leaves a very typical piece of waste, called a microburin. The microliths themselves are sufficiently worked so as to be distinguishable from workshop waste or accidents. Two families of microliths are usually defined: laminar and geometric. An assemblage of microliths can be used to date an archeological site. Laminar microliths are slightly larger, and are associated with the end of the Upper Paleolithic and the beginning of the Epipaleolithic era; geometric microliths are characteristic of the Mesolithic and the Neolithic. Geometric microlit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boomplaas Cave
Boomplaas Cave is located in the Cango Valley in the foothills of the Swartberg mountain range, north of Oudtshoorn, Eden District Municipality in the Western Cape Province, South Africa. It has a deep stratified archaeological sequence of human presence, occupation and hunter-gatherer/herder acculturation that might date back as far as 80,000 years. The site's documentation contributed to the reconstruction of palaeo-environments in the context of changes in climate within periods of the Late Pleistocene (11,700 - 129,000 years BP) and the Holocene (since 12,000 years BP). The cave has served multiple functions during its occupation, such as a kraal (enclosure) for animals, a place for the storage of oil rich fruits and as a hunting camp. Circular stone hearths and calcified dung remains of domesticated sheep as well as stone adzes and pottery art (painted stones) were excavated indicating that humans lived at the site and kept animals. Excavation The excavation conducted b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nelson Bay Cave
Nelson Bay Cave also known as Wagenaar's Cave is a Stone Age archaeological site located in the Robberg Nature Reserve on the Robberg Peninsula and facing Nelson's Bay near Plettenberg Bay in South Africa, and showing evidence of human occupation as far back as 125,000 years ago. The south-facing cave, which is rectangular in shape and roughly wide by deep, is in quartz-sandstone and quartzites while its mouth is 19–21 metres above mean sea level. In the same area are two other Stone Age caves, Hoffman's/Robberg Cave and Matjes River rock shelter which lies about 14 kilometres north at Keurboomstrand. Robberg shows notches, caves and other erosional features caused mainly by wave-cutting at various times in its past, but also due to lithological variation, bedding and characteristics of the bedrock. The cave developed in a breccia often found at the contact between Silurian Table Mountain Series quartzite and Cretaceous Uitenhage Series quartzitic sandstone. Excavations we ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diepkloof Rock Shelter
Diepkloof Rock Shelter is a rock shelter in Western Cape, South Africa in which has been found some of the earliest evidence of the human use of symbols, in the form of patterns engraved upon ostrich eggshell water containers. These date around 60,000 years ago. The symbolic patterns consist of lines crossed at right angles or oblique angles by hatching. It has been suggested that "by the repetition of this motif, early humans were trying to communicate something. Perhaps they were trying to express the identity of the individual or the group."Amos, J. (2010)Etched ostrich eggs illustrate human sophistication.BBC News Site description The cave is about from the shoreline of the Atlantic Ocean in a semi-arid area, near Elands Bay about north of Cape Town. It occurs in quartzitic sandstone in a butte that overlooks in an east direction above the Verlorenvlei River. It contains one of "most complete and continuous later Middle Stone Age sequences in southern Africa" stretc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fish Hoek, Cape Town
Fish Hoek ( af, Vishoek, meaning either Fish Corner or Fish Glen) is a coastal town at the eastern end of the Fish Hoek Valley on the False Bay side of the Cape Peninsula in the Western Cape, South Africa. Previously a separate municipality, Fish Hoek is now part of the City of Cape Town. As a coastal suburb of Cape Town, Fish Hoek is popular as a residence for commuters, retired people and holidaymakers alike. The traditional industries of ' trek' fishing and angling coexist with the leisure pursuits of surfing, although nearby Kommetjie is usually favoured, sailing and sunbathing. There is an active lifeguard community who utilise the beach and bay for training. History Fish Hoek, ''Vissers Baay'' or ''Visch Hoek'' appears on the earliest maps of the Cape. Diplomat Edmund Roberts visited Fish Hoek in 1833. He described it as a "poor village" with a whaling industry. The first grant of Crown land in Fish Hoek was granted to Andries Bruins in 1818. The land was sold several ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Klasies River Caves
The Klasies River Caves are a series of caves located to the east of the Klasies River mouth on the Tsitsikamma coast in the Humansdorp district of Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. The three main caves and two shelters at the base of a high cliff have revealed evidence of middle stone age-associated human habitation from approximately 125,000 years ago. The thick deposits were accumulated from 125,000 years ago. Around 75,000 years ago, during cave remodelling, the stratigraphic sediments were moved out into external middens. In 2015, the South African government submitted a proposal to add the caves to the list of World Heritage Sites. From 1960, Ronald Singer, Ray Inskeep, John Wymer, Hilary Deacon, Richard Klein and others suggested the excavation yielded the earliest known evidence of behaviourally modern humans. Further analysis suggested that the specimens fall "outside the range of modern variation". Morphology Analysis of 14 proximal ulnar dimensions compare ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Science (journal)
''Science'', also widely referred to as ''Science Magazine'', is the peer-reviewed academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and one of the world's top academic journals. It was first published in 1880, is currently circulated weekly and has a subscriber base of around 130,000. Because institutional subscriptions and online access serve a larger audience, its estimated readership is over 400,000 people. ''Science'' is based in Washington, D.C., United States, with a second office in Cambridge, UK. Contents The major focus of the journal is publishing important original scientific research and research reviews, but ''Science'' also publishes science-related news, opinions on science policy and other matters of interest to scientists and others who are concerned with the wide implications of science and technology. Unlike most scientific journals, which focus on a specific field, ''Science'' and its rival ''Nature'' cover the full ra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zenobia Jacobs
Zenobia Jacobs is a South African-born archaeologist and earth scientist specialising in geochronology. She is a professor at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Education and career Jacobs graduated from the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa, in 1998, studying archaeology and geography, and received her PhD from Aberystwyth University, Wales, in 2004. She joined the University of Wollongong as a research fellow in 2006 and is currently a professor in the Centre for Archaeological Science and the School of Earth of Environmental Sciences. She is also an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow and chief investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage. She was awarded the International Union for Quaternary Research's Sir Nick Shackleton Medal in 2009. Jacobs' research traces the evolutionary history of humans using single-grain optically stimulated luminescence dating. Her work on the Denisovans and Neanderthals has he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lyn Wadley
Lyn Wadley is an honorary professor of archaeology, and also affiliated jointly with the Archaeology Department and the Institute for Evolution at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Education Wadley received her master's degree from the University of Cape Town in 1977, and her PhD from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1986. Career Wadley taught in the School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies and the Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand from 1982 to 2004. Wadley began her career researching social and ecological issues in the Later Stone Age in South Africa. This included the first considerations of gender in the archaeological record of Southern Africa, as articulated by Mazel "this has firmly placed the study of gender on the South African archaeological map". She directed excavations at multiple Holocene sites in Magaliesberg and then began working on older, Pleistocene sites. Professor Wadley ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wilton Culture
The Wilton culture is the name given by archaeologists to an archaeological culture which was common to parts of south and east Africa around six thousand years ago, during the Stone Age period. The culture is characterized by a greater number of tool types, distinguishing it from its predecessors. It was first described by John Hewitt after he excavated with the collaboration of C. W. Wilmot a cave on the farm Wilton.Hewitt J. (1921). On several implements and ornaments from Strandloper sites in the Eastern Province. S. Afr. J. Sci. 18: 454-467 Locations Occupation sites include that at Kalambo Falls and the valley of Twyfelfontein. Additionally, a partially preserved camp dating to 2300 BC was found in Gwisho, near the Kafue River. Characteristics Its tools are broadly analogous to the European mesolithic Microliths, which are a common artifact type. Later examples of the culture however indicate usage of iron Iron () is a chemical element with symbol Fe (from la, ferr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quartz
Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica ( silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical formula of SiO2. Quartz is the second most abundant mineral in Earth's continental crust, behind feldspar. Quartz exists in two forms, the normal α-quartz and the high-temperature β-quartz, both of which are chiral. The transformation from α-quartz to β-quartz takes place abruptly at . Since the transformation is accompanied by a significant change in volume, it can easily induce microfracturing of ceramics or rocks passing through this temperature threshold. There are many different varieties of quartz, several of which are classified as gemstones. Since antiquity, varieties of quartz have been the most commonly used minerals in the making of jewelry and hardstone carvings, especially in Eurasia. Quartz is the mineral definin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
