Coastal foraging and heat-treated tools at Pinnacle Point

Date

c. 164,000 years ago

Category

Science, technology & invention

Region

Southern Africa (South Africa)

Era

Prehistory

Significance

Excavations led by Curtis Marean at the Pinnacle Point caves near Mossel Bay on South Africa's southern coast document some of the earliest systematic human use of marine resources.

By around 164,000 years ago — during a cold, dry glacial phase when inland environments were harsh — people at Cave 13B were regularly harvesting shellfish such as brown mussels, exploiting the rich Cape coastline as a reliable food source. The same deposits yield two further markers of behavioural sophistication: the use of red ochre as pigment, suggesting symbolic activity, and the deliberate heat treatment of silcrete, in which stone was buried near fire to alter its flaking properties before being knapped into small bladelet tools. Heat treatment is a multi-step, planned 'pyrotechnology' that demonstrates an understanding of how fire transforms raw materials. Together these finds suggest that coastal refugia in southern Africa may have sustained early modern human populations through periods of climatic stress, and that key components of modern behaviour appeared well before the later Out-of-Africa dispersals.

Related science, technology & invention events

• Earliest evidence for bow-and-arrow technology, Sibudu Cave
  c. 64,000 years ago
• The Florisbad skull: an early Homo sapiens of southern Africa
  c. 259,000 years ago
• The Still Bay and Howiesons Poort technological traditions
  c. 77,000–59,000 years ago
• Australopithecus afarensis ('Lucy' and relatives)
  c. 3.9–2.9 million years ago
• Discovery of the Denisovans and archaic-modern interbreeding
  c. 100,000 – 40,000 years ago (interbreeding); identified 2010
• Domestication of maize from teosinte in Mesoamerica
  c. 7000 BCE (c. 9,000 years ago)

Also relevant

• Sahelanthropus tchadensis – earliest known hominin candidate
  c. 7–6 million years ago
• Sima de los Huesos: the earliest Neanderthal-lineage population (Atapuerca)
  c. 430,000 years ago
• The Acheulean handaxe tradition emerges in East Africa
  c. 1.76 million years ago

Further reading

A Little History of Science

The wider story

A Little History of Science

William Bynum

Warm, jargon-free tour of discovery from Babylonian stargazers to the genome.

Get it on Amazon →

As an Amazon Associate, Human Saga earns from qualifying purchases.