The Stone Age Prehistory of Southern Africa

For more than three decades, between 1924 and 1959, our knowledge of the australopithecine phase of human evolution came entirely from southern Africa. In addition, southern Africa has a longer tradition of stone age studies than any other part of the continent. It was in fact on southern African materials that A. J. H. Goodwin based his now classic definition of Early, Middle, and Late Stone Age culture-stratigraphic stages (29). However, in recent years, both specialists and lay persons have looked increasingly to East Africa for basic insights into human origins and subsequent evolution. The reason is that, beginning at Olduvai Gorge in 1959, East Africa has been the scene of repeated and often spectactular discoveries of australopithecine and other early hominid fossils, and also of very early traces of human behavior. Unlike southern African sites, East African ones often contain volcanic extrusives from which the absolute ages of associated fossils and archeological finds may be estimated. As much or more than the actual discoveries, this has placed East Africa centerstage, while moving southern Africa to the sidelines. Yet paleoanthropological research has continued vigorously in southern Africa, and even today the southern African australopithecine sample remains larger than that from East Africa. Equally important, beginning in the mid1960s, intensive, multidisciplinary research on the later phases of human evolution in southern Africa has led to some unique discoveries of potential global significance. Perhaps chief among these is the possibility that anatomically modern people (Homo sapiens sapiens) appeared in southern Africa earlier than anywhere else in the world. In addition, there is some unparalleled evidence for Stone Age human ecology, including evidence for evolution in