Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T00:40:31.088Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Prehistoric Origins of African Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

J. Desmond Clark
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The paper traces the beginnings of human culture in Africa, its evolution and spread, and shows the feedback relationship that exists between biological evolution and culture. It is demonstrated how environment is the most important factor in producing variability at the food-gathering level, and the present-day regional differences in culture are shown to have been in existence for some 40,000 years. The history of the introduction and spread of domestication is summarized, and evidence is adduced to indicate that the diffusion of Iron Age economy in southern Africa was due as much to adaptation as to immigration, thus demonstrating a real and traceable continuity up to the present day.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , July 1964 , pp. 161 - 183
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1964

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Posnansky, M., ‘Some archaeological aspects of the ethno-history of Uganda’, in Mortelmans, G. (editor), Actes du 1Ve Congrès Panafricain de Préhistoire (Leopoldville, 1959). Tervuren (1962), 375–80.Google Scholar

2 Fagan, B. M., ‘The Iron Age sequence in the Southern Province of Northern Rhodesia’. Journal of African History (1963), IV, 2, 157–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Stokes, E. T. (editor), ‘Historians in tropical Africa’, in Proceedings of the Leverhulme Intercollegiate History Conference (Salisbury, 1960). Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia (1962).Google Scholar

4 Leakey, L. S. B., Olduvai Gorge (Cambridge, 1951).Google ScholarLeakey, L. S. B., Evernden, J. F. and Curtis, G. H., ‘The age of Bed I, Olduvai Gorge, Tanganyika’, Nature (1961), CXCI, 478.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Hay, R. L., ‘Stratigraphy of Beds I through IV, Olduvai Gorge, Tanganvika’, Science (1963), CXXXIX, 829–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Leakey, L. S. B., ‘A new fossil skull from Olduvai’, Nature (1959), CLXXXIV, 491–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar‘Recent discoveries at Olduvai Gorge’, Nature (1960), CLXXXVIII, 1050–1.Google Scholar‘New finds at Olduvai Gorge’, Nature (1961), CLXXXIX, 649–50.Google Scholar

7 Clark, J. D., ‘Sites yielding Hominid remains in Bed I, Olduvai Gorge’, Nature (1961), CLXXXIX, 903–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 L. S. B. Leakey, Ibid. (6a).

9 Leakey, L. S. B., ‘Adventures in the search for man’, National Geographic Magazine, Jan. 1963, 132–52.Google Scholar

10 Washburn, S. L., ‘Tools and human evolution’, Scientific American (1960), CCIII, 3, 1–15.Google Scholar

11 Napier, J. R. and Weiner, J. S., ‘Olduvai Gorge and human origins’, Antiquity (1962), XXXVI, 41–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Dart, R. A., ‘The infancy of Australopithecines’, Robert Broom Commemorative Volume (Johannesburg, 1948), 143–52.Google Scholar

13 Dart, R. A., ‘The Osteodontokeratic culture of Australopithecus prometheus’, Memoir No. 10 (1957), Transvaal Museum, Pretoria.Google Scholar

14 Stekelis, M., ‘Recent discoveries in the Jordan valley’, South African Journal of Science (1963), LIX, 3, 77–80.Google Scholar

15 Leakey, L. S. B., ‘Recent discoveries at Olduvai Gorge, Tanganyika’, Nature (1958), CLXXXI, 1099–103.CrossRefGoogle ScholarCole, S., The Prehistory of East Africa (Macmillan, New York, 1963).Google Scholar

16 Robinson, J. T. and Mason, R. J., ‘Australopithecines and artifacts at Sterkfontein’, South African Archaeological Bulletin (1962), XVII, 66, 87–125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Kleindienst, M. R., ‘Variability within the Late Acheulian assemblage in East Africa’, South African Archaeological Bulletin (1961), XVI, 62, 35–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar‘Components of the East African Acheulian assemblage: an analytical approach’, in Mortelmans, G. (editor), Actes du IVe Congrès Panafricain de Préhistoire (Leopoidville, 1959), Tervuren (1962), 81–112.Google Scholar

18 van Zinderen Bakker, E. M., ‘Early man and his environments in southern Africa: Palaeobotanical studies”, South African Journal of Science (1963), LIX, 7, 332–40.Google Scholar

19 A much earlier blade industry occurs in the lower levels of the Haua Fteah cave, and is probably of an age with similar industries from the Levantine coast, where they are named Amudian and intercalate with a final stage of regional Acheulian known as Jabroudian. It is not known at present whether these early blade industries represent the ancestral form from which the Upper Palaeolithic of the Near East is derived, since they are followed in both regions by the Levallois-Mousterian.Google Scholar

20 E. S. Deevey, et al. (editors), Radiocarbon (1963), V, 37, 170–2.Google Scholar

21 de Heinzelin, J., ‘Ishango’, Scientific American (1962), CCVI, 6, 105–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Clark, J. D., ‘The spread of food production in sub-Sahrtran Africa’, Journal of African History (1962), III, 2, 211–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar