Pinnacle Point is a small promontory immediately south of

Mossel Bay Mossel Bay () is a harbour town of about 170,000 people on the Garden Route of South Africa. It is an important tourism and farming region of the Western Cape Province. Mossel Bay lies 400 kilometres east of the country's seat of parliament, Ca ...

, a town on the southern coast of South Africa. Excavations since the year 2000 of a series of caves at Pinnacle Point, first recognized and documented in 1997 by South African professional archaeologists, Jonathan Kaplan and Peter Nilssen, have revealed occupation by

Middle Stone Age The Middle Stone Age (or MSA) was a period of African prehistory between the Early Stone Age and the Late Stone Age. It is generally considered to have begun around 280,000 years ago and ended around 50–25,000 years ago. The beginnings of ...

people between 170,000 and 40,000 years ago. The focus of excavations has been at Cave 13B (PP13B), where the earliest evidence for the systematic exploitation of marine resources (shellfish) and symbolic behaviour has been documented, and at Pinnacle Point Cave 5–6 (PP5–6), where the oldest evidence for the heat treatment of rock to make stone tools has been documented. The only human remains have been recovered from younger deposits at PP13B which are years old. In 2024, the Pinnacle Point Site Complex became a part of the

World Heritage Site World Heritage Sites are landmarks and areas with legal protection under an treaty, international treaty administered by UNESCO for having cultural, historical, or scientific significance. The sites are judged to contain "cultural and natural ...

of Pleistocene Occupation Sites of South Africa.

History of the research

After the initial recognition and documentation of the sites by Kaplan and Nilssen in 1997, Nilssen from Iziko South African Museum introduced the sites to Curtis Marean in 1999 after which they co-directed excavations for several years. The discoveries at Pinnacle Point have been made by an international team, headed by palaeoanthropologist Curtis Marean from the Institute of Human Origins of the

Arizona State University Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public university, public research university in Tempe, Arizona, United States. Founded in 1885 as Territorial Normal School by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, the university is o ...

as well as researchers from South Africa ( UCT and Iziko South African Museum), Australia (Archaeology Program, La Trobe University, UoW), Israel, and France. After debating for decades, paleoanthropologists now agree there is enough genetic and fossil evidence to suggest that ''

Homo sapiens Humans (''Homo sapiens'') or modern humans are the most common and widespread species of primate, and the last surviving species of the genus ''Homo''. They are Hominidae, great apes characterized by their Prehistory of nakedness and clothing ...

'' evolved in Africa years ago. At that time, the world was in an

ice age An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages, and g ...

, and Africa was dry and arid. As archaeological sites dating to that time period are rare in Africa, palaeontologist Curtis Marean analysed

geologic formation A geological formation, or simply formation, is a body of rock having a consistent set of physical characteristics ( lithology) that distinguishes it from adjacent bodies of rock, and which occupies a particular position in the layers of rock exp ...

s, sea currents, and

climate Climate is the long-term weather pattern in a region, typically averaged over 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. Some of the meteoro ...

data to pinpoint likely archaeological sites; one such was Pinnacle Point.

Pinnacle Point 13B and its implications for modern behaviour

At PP13B, the evidence for symbolic behaviour comes in the form of scraped and ground

ochre Ochre ( ; , ), iron ochre, or ocher in American English, is a natural clay earth pigment, a mixture of ferric oxide and varying amounts of clay and sand. It ranges in colour from yellow to deep orange or brown. It is also the name of the colou ...

(usually referred to as limonite bearing powders) that may have been used to form a

pigment A pigment is a powder used to add or alter color or change visual appearance. Pigments are completely or nearly solubility, insoluble and reactivity (chemistry), chemically unreactive in water or another medium; in contrast, dyes are colored sub ...

for body painting. This is similar to more complex ochre utilisation known from

Blombos Cave Blombos Cave is an archaeological site located in Blombos Private Nature Reserve, about 300 km east of Cape Town on the Southern Cape coastline, South Africa. The cave contains Middle Stone Age (MSA) deposits currently dated at between c. ...

slightly farther to the west at roughly 70,000 years ago. These discoveries contradict the classical hypothesis that the modern behaviour emerged only 40,000 years ago and was reached through a "large cultural leap". The harsh climate and reduced food resources may have been why people moved to the shore at Pinnacle Point, where they could eat marine creatures like shellfish, whale, and seal. Also at PP13B are an anomalous quantity of dicotyledonous tree leaf phytoliths in sediments that are roughly 90,000 years old. Though alteration of phytoliths introduce uncertainty to these findings, the quantity of tree phytoliths relative to grass phytoliths has been suggested to indicate a history of wood burning in hearths.

Provincial heritage site

On 14 December 2012, the provincial heritage resources authority

Heritage Western Cape Heritage Western Cape (HWC) is a provincial heritage resources authority established by the Minister of Cultural Affairs and Sport of the government of the Western Cape province in South Africa. It is a public entity set up under the terms of ...

declared Pinnacle Point a provincial heritage site in the terms of Section 27 of the National Heritage Resources Act. This provides the site with the highest form of protection under South African heritage law. In 2015, the South African government submitted a proposal to add the cave to the list of

s and it has been placed on the UNESCO list of tentative sites as a potential future 'serial nomination' together with

Sibudu Cave Sibudu Cave is a rock shelter in a sandstone cliff in northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It is an important Middle Stone Age site occupied, with some gaps, from years ago to years ago. Evidence of some of the earliest examples of modern h ...

Klasies River Caves The Klasies River Caves are a series of caves located east of the Klasies River Mouth on the Tsitsikamma Mountains, Tsitsikamma coast in the Humansdorp district of Eastern Cape, Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. The Klasies River Main (KRM) s ...

, Border Cave, and

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 aro ...

. Three of the sites gained the World Heritage Status in 2024.

References

External links

* {{Authority control Paleoanthropological sites Archaeological sites in South Africa South African heritage resources South African heritage sites Caves of South Africa Archaeological sites of Southern Africa Middle Stone Age World Heritage Sites in South Africa

History of the research

Pinnacle Point 13B and its implications for modern behaviour

Provincial heritage site

See also

References

External links