Most significant innovations and cultural changes that were traditionally associated with the Upper Paleolithic of Europe actually had their beginnings more than 20,000 years earlier in the Middle Stone Age of Africa (Marean, 2010; Shea and Sisk, 2010). Most research on these important developments in African prehistory dates only to the past couple of decades, and each passing year brings fresh insights that are rapidly changing the scientific understanding of the origins of modern human behavior and its dispersal out of Africa after 50,000 ya (Willoughby, 2009). With these new discoveries, the Middle Stone Age/ Middle Paleolithic increasingly looks less like a “transition” to Late Stone Age/Upper Paleolithic modernity and more like “change with considerable continuity” with the past (Straus, in press).
Projectile weaponry such as the spear-thrower and dart and the bow and arrow began in Africa during the Middle Stone age between 100,000 and 50,000 ya, probably in relation to the economic need to broaden the early human diet (Brooks et al., 2006; Shea, 2006; Shea and Sisk, 2010, p. 116). Lombard and Phillipson (2010) argue that the size, shape, and use wear on stone artifacts from Sibudu Cave support the inference that bow and arrow technology was already in use by South African hunter gatherers as early as 64,000 ya.
Bone projectile points, which are believed to date as early as 90,000–79,000 ya, have been reported from the Katanda site in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and at Blombos Cave along the South African coast; in both regions, they may have been part of fishing gear (Brooks et al., 2006). At Pinnacle Point Cave 13B, not far from Blombos, archaeologists have found a variety of material evidence that “complex cognition” (the basis of modern human behavior) may have occurred in South Africa as long ago as 164,000–75,000 ya (Marean, 2010). The researchers report the discovery of red ocher that was ground to powder and perhaps used for personal adornment (Watts, 2010) as well as clear evidence of systematic exploitation of shellfish and use of very small stone blades (microliths, thumbnail-sized stone flakes hafted to make knives and saws, for example). The Pinnacle Point discoveries are remarkably early: The use of microliths is almost 100,000 years earlier than anywhere else, while the exploitation of marine resources as well as the use of ocher come 40,000 years prior to systematic evidence from any other site.
Early accomplishments in rock art, as early as in Europe, are also seen in southern Africa (Namibia) at the Apollo 11 Rock Shelter site, where painted slabs have been dated to between 28,000 and 26,000 ya (Freundlich et al., 1980; Vogelsang, 1998). At Blombos Cave, engraved ocher fragments are dated between 100,000 and 75,000 ya (Henshilwood et al., 2009). At Diepkloof Rock Shelter in South Africa, archaeologists have found 270 fragments of ostrich eggshell containers in contexts dated to about 66,000 ya. As Texier and colleagues (2010, p. 6183) explain, these egghsells “show repetitive patterns, made in accordance with a mental design shared by a group. Such a practice represents the earliest evidence of the existence of a graphic tradition among prehistoric hunter-gatherer populations.” What these scattered examples of recent African finds demonstrate is that symbolic behavior and representation did not emerge about 50,000 ya, shortly before the dispersal of “modern” humans out of Africa, but tens of thousands of years before. They also show that we have much to learn about the emergence of modern human behavior in Africa. The only thing on which we can count is that our understanding of fundamental aspects of the beginnings of the Upper Paleolithic is about to change.