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1 results

  • Chapter 18 - Cultural Evolution: From Tools to Art and Genes

  • from Part IV - Evolutionary Transitions: From Primate Ancestors to Modern Humans
  • Norman Owen-Smith, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
  • Book:
    Only in Africa
    Published online:
    09 September 2021
    Print publication:
    07 October 2021, pp 301-328

  • Summary

    This chapter describes adaptive advances in cultural artefacts in the form of stone or bone tools and rock art and relates them to genetic linkages among local populations. The earliest Odowan cores and flakes gave way to bifacial Acheulian points and cleavers and later to finely crafted artefacts inaugurating the Middle Stone Age, associated with the emergence of modern humans. During the late Pleistocene further cultural advances were exhibited by inhabitants of coastal caves in the south-western Cape when the interior was largely uninhabited. The use of spear and arrow points fostered the movement out of Africa and may have contributed to extinctions among large grazers. Genomic evidence reinforces movements by language groups spreading herding and farming through Africa. Khoe-San and Hadza people retained the hunter-gatherer lifestyle into modern times. Rock art depicts the ritual significance of large mammals in their culture. African people lived alongside abundant wild herbivores until Europeans brought guns.