Humans of the Kalahari Desert Region Formed Social Networks

Ostrich eggshell beads were exchanged between ancient hunter-gatherers living in distant, ecologically diverse regions of southern Africa, including deserts and high mountains. (Image courtesy of Brian A. Stewart, Yuchao Zhao, and the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology/John Klausmeyer) via Smithssonian.com

By Megan Gannon. First published at Smithsonianmag.com.

Foragers today who live in southern Africa's Kalahari Desert know that a drought or war can threaten their community's survival. To mitigate these risks, they enter into partnerships with kin in other territories, both near and far, so that if they have a bad year, they can head to another area to gather water and food.

"It's a really good adaptation to a desert environment like the Kalahari, which has huge spatial and temporal variability in resource distribution," says Brian Stewart, an archaeologist at the University of Michigan. "It can be very rainy in one season and in the next absolutely dry, or it can be very rainy in your area and then 10 kilometers away, it's just nothing." According to new archaeological research led by Stewart, this kind of partnership—which acts as a kind of insurance against one side of the partnership having a down year—has been happening for at least 30,000 years old.

In the study, which was published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Stewart and his colleagues examined ostrich eggshell beads found during archaeological excavations at two high elevation rock-shelters in Lesotho, a country enclaved within South Africa. Since the 1970s and 1980s, archaeologists have been finding finished beads made from ostrich eggshells at prehistoric campsites in the area, Stewart says, even though ostriches are notably absent from the region. Based on this fact, and on anthropologists' comparisons with the systems used by modern hunter-gatherers, scientists assumed the ostrich beads to be part of the foragers’ long-distance insurance partnerships. That is, people from many miles away brought the beads and traded them to cement the social ties needed to ensure cooperation when one group of people endured tough times.

"Because of how effective this system is at shoring up risk, it's been used by a lot of archaeologists as a blanket explanation for why people exchange stuff," Stewart says. But, he adds, this idea hadn't really been tested for the archaeological record.

To figure out where the beads from Lesotho were created, Stewart and his colleagues examined their strontium isotope levels. Earth’s crust is abundant with a slightly radioactive isotope of rubidium that, over time, decays into strontium. As a result, different rock formations have different strontium signatures, and local animals can acquire those unique signatures via food and water. In this way, researchers can figure out where a 30,000-year-old ostrich came from.

"Now with globalization and our food moving all over the place—we can eat avocados in December in Boston, for instance—our strontium signatures are all messed up," Stewart says. "In the past, they would have been more pure to where we're actually from."

The study showed that the majority of the beads from the Lesotho rock shelters were carved from the eggshells of ostriches that lived at least 60 miles (100 km) away. A few even came from about 190 miles (300 km) away, including the oldest bead, which was about 33,000 years old. "The really surprising thing was just how far they were coming in from, and how long that long distance behavior was going on," Stewart says.

Archaeologists have documented, in the Kalahari and elsewhere, the deep history of long-distance movements of utilitarian items such as stone tools and ochre pigment, which can be used as a sunscreen or a way to preserve hides. In East Africa, researchers have recorded instances of obsidian tools being carried more than 100 miles (160 km) as early as 200,000 years ago.

"When you have stone or ochre, you don't really know that this exchange is representing social ties," says Polly Wiessner, the anthropologist who first documented the exchange partnerships among the Ju/’hoãnsi people in the Kalahari Desert in the 1970s. "However, these beads are symbolic. This is one of our only sources for such early times to understand social relations."

Wiessner suspects that the closer-range ties—the ones around 60 miles—that Stewart and his colleagues found indeed represent people who pooled risk and shared resources. However, she says, it’s possible that the few examples of beads that came from further away could have been acquired through trade networks.

"Often at the edge of risk-sharing systems, feeder routes extend to bring in goods from other areas by trade or barter and so the recipient does not know people at the source," says Wiessner, who wasn't involved in Stewart’s study but reviewed it for the journal. "It doesn't mean people had face-to-face contact from that far away."

Wiessner points out that people living 30,000 years ago were anatomically modern humans, so she would expect them to have large social networks. Similarly, Lyn Wadley, an archaeologist with the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, says, "I think that gift exchange is likely to have a much earlier origin." Wadley, who has studied the social organization of Stone Age hunter-gatherers but wasn't involved in the new study, also found the results convincing.

The new study suggests that the exchange network would have spanned at least eight bioregions, from arid scrubland to subtropical coastal forests. Stewart and his colleagues speculate that the system may have arisen during a period of climate instability, when access to a diversity of resources would have been crucial.

"This is just another piece in the puzzle of the incredible flexibility of our species," Stewart says. "We are able to innovate technologies that just make us so good at adapting very quickly to different environmental scenarios."

Who Were the Mysterious Neolithic People That Enabled the Rise of Ancient Egypt?

Neolithic skull. Author provided.

By Joel D. Irish, Professor and Subject Leader, Anthropology and Archaeology, Liverpool John Moores University; Czekaj- Zastawny Agnieszka, Associate Professor, Polish Academy of Sciences; and Jacek Kabacinski, Research fellow at the Institute of Archaeology, Polish Academy of Sciences. First published on The Conversation.

To many, ancient Egypt is synonymous with the pharaohs and pyramids of the Dynastic period starting about 3,100BC. Yet long before that, about 9,300-4,000BC, enigmatic Neolithic peoples flourished. Indeed, it was the lifestyles and cultural innovations of these peoples that provided the very foundation for the advanced civilisations to come.

But who were they? As it turns out, they haven’t actually been studied much, at least relative to their successors. But our excavations of six burial sites – with some of the analyses recently published – have now provided important insights into their mysterious ways of life.

One reason why we know so little about Neolithic Egypt is that the sites are often inaccessible, lying beneath the Nile’s former flood plain or in outlying deserts.

Excavation site. Author provided

With permission from Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) we – members of the Combined Prehistoric Expedition – explore Neolithic sites in Egypt’s western desert. The sites we are currently excavating lie along the former shores of an extinct seasonal lake near a place called Gebel Ramlah.

Though not lush, the Neolithic was wetter than today, which allowed these ancient herders to populate what is now the middle of nowhere. We focus on the Final Neolithic (4,600-4,000BC), which was built on the success of the Late Neolithic (5,500-4,650BC) with domesticated cattle and goats, wild plant processing and cattle burials. These people also made apparent megaliths, shrines and even calendar circles – which look a bit like a mini Stonehenge.

During the final part of the Neolithic period, people started burying the dead  in formal cemeteries. Skeletons provide critical information because they are from once living people who interacted with the cultural and physical environments. Health, relationships, diet and even psychological experiences can leave telltale signs on teeth and bone.

In 2001-2003 we excavated three cemeteries from this era – the first in the western desert – where we uncovered and studied 68 skeletons. The graves were full of artefacts, with ornamental pottery, sea shells, stone and ostrich eggshell jewellery. We also discovered carved mica (a silicate mineral) and animal remains, as well as elaborate cosmetic tools for women and stone weapons for men.

We learned that these people enjoyed low childhood mortality, tall stature and long life. Men averaged 170cm, while women were about 160cm. Most men and women lived beyond 40 years, with some into their 50s – a long time in those days.

Grave artefacts from 2001-2003 excavations. Author provided.

Strangely, in 2009-2016, we dug two more cemeteries that were very different. After analysing another 130 skeletons, we discovered that few artefacts accompanied them, and that they suffered from higher childhood mortality as well as shorter lives and stature. We’re talking several centimetres shorter and perhaps ten years younger for adults of both sexes.

Astonishingly, the largest of these two cemeteries had a separate burial area for children under three years of age, but mostly infants including late-term foetuses. Three women buried with infants were also found, so perhaps they died in childbirth. In fact, this is the world’s earliest known infant cemetery.

Interpreting the findings

So what can this tell us about these peoples, let alone their descendants? As it turns out, a lot. We can use the findings to make interpretationsabout gender, life-stage, well-being, status and other things.

For example, why were there such differences between the two grave sites? They could have been separate populations, but it is unlikely based on overall physical similarities. So perhaps they imply variation by status – with one graveyard being for the elite and the other for workers. This is the earliest such evidence in Egypt.

The sites also shed light on the family structures of the time. The overall sex ratio across all cemeteries is three women to each man, which may indicate polygamy. However, the total number of burials and a lack of reference to individual houses suggests these were extended family cemeteries.

We also believe that attainment of “personhood” – the age children are socialised into being “people” – was from three years, given their inclusion in adult cemeteries.

There is also clear evidence of respect for previously buried people by later mourners reusing the graves to bury their dead. When coming across old skeletons, they often carefully repositioned the bones of these ancestors. In some interesting cases, they even made attempts to “reconstruct” the skeletons by replacing teeth that had fallen out back into the skeleton – and not always correctly (see lead image).

These behavioural indicators, together with the seemingly innovative technological and ceremonial architecture mentioned earlier, such as the calendar circles and shrines, imply a level of sophistication well beyond that of simple herders. Taken together, the findings provide a glimpse of things yet to come in Ancient Egypt.

Conservation of sites

Well preserved vs. wind‐eroded remains at Gebel Ramlah. Author provided.

A key component of our work involves conservation of Egyptian (and world) heritage. We found no evidence of grave looting, unlike for sites in the Nile Valley. The last people to touch Neolithic material at Gebel Ramlah lived during that time. However, wind-related erosion has reached a point where once-buried remains lie on or near the surface.

In fact, the pace of destruction has increased significantly since 2001. Once exposed, the context of these sites can be lost and organic material can get sandblasted to bits. This means that if we hadn’t discovered these remains when we did, they would have soon been lost forever. But sadly this likely means that other sites from the time are literally disappearing.

For that reason, we and the SCA have decided that, when we have studied our material, all will be reburied on site to, hopefully, survive for thousands more years.

Related: Remains of 9,000-year-old Neolithic Settlement Unearthed Outside Jerusalem CNN

Africa's Past Revealed in Journeys of Ostrich Eggshell Beads

First published at The Conversation by Elizabeth Sawchuk Postdoctoral Fellow and Research Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Stony Brook University (The State University of New York) and Jennifer Midori Miller, Postdoctoral Researcher, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

You can tell a lot about a person by the things they wear, and this has likely been true throughout human history. The earliest kind of decoration was probably ochre, which we know humans have used for at least 200,000 years.

By 75,000 years ago, people begin wearing beads. Since that time, ornaments and other symbols have been central to the way we express our identities and signal our relationships. In fact, this is probably one of the things that makes us human.

Ornament production really took off about 50,000 years ago, when we see the earliest standardised jewellery in the form of small disc beads made from ostrich eggshells. In Africa, ostrich eggshell beads are one of the most common type of archaeological artifacts, particularly from sites dated to the last 10,000 years. They are also found in smaller numbers throughout Asia where 12,000-year-old ostrich eggshell beads have been discovered in China.

Since ostrich eggshell bead jewellery is still produced today, this is one of the longest running cultural traditions in the world.

Photo by Tom Podmore on Unsplash. Modern-Day ostrich strolling along cape point, cape peninsula, cape town, south africa.

But what can these beads tell us about the ancient peoples who made and wore them?

In a recently published paper, we analysed 1,200 ostrich eggshell beads from 22 sites in southern Africa and eight sites in eastern Africa. Although beads are found at many African archaeological sites, they tend to be overlooked in research. Many of the bead measurements for this study were taken from decades-old, unstudied collections and are being reported for the first time. We believe that this research demonstrates the importance of studying existing museum collections and approaching old questions in new ways.

Our aim was to see how ostrich eggshell bead size has changed over the past 10,000 years. Bead size has become an informal way to estimate the age of archaeological sites in southern Africa. Yet beads overall have received relatively little attention compared to other types of artefacts and there is much we still don’t know. Our study increases the number of published bead measurements from less than 100 to over 1000, allowing us to study patterns on a larger scale and gain new perspectives on the African past.

Our findings provide important insights into how ancient peoples responded to change. Topics like migration and the economy dominate today’s new cycle. Yet ancient peoples also faced issues like climate change, cultural contact, and economic shifts. The things that people made and used, like ostrich eggshell beads, can help us understand the impacts of these changes on their lives.

Photo by Team Mfina on Unsplash https://unsplash.com/photos/n_MZ5snB8qk

Herders versus hunter-gatherers

Three decades ago, the archaeologist Leon Jacobson noticed a pattern in ostrich eggshell beads from Namibia. Those associated with hunter-gatherer sites tended to be smaller than those associated with herder sites. Since we know that herding entered southern Africa around 2000 years ago, Jacobson suggested that sites with beads larger than about 7.5mm might be younger than that.

Other studies confirmed the same pattern within the western part of southern Africa. Some researchers also argued that bead size might help distinguish which sites were used by herders versus hunter-gatherers. But this remains contested.

Until now, the idea that ostrich eggshell beads changed with the introduction of herding had only been tested in the southern part of Africa, and with a limited number of sites. We therefore decided to test this with a much larger dataset, and in other places like eastern Africa where herding also spread some 3000 years earlier.

Regional variations

At the southern African sites, we also found that larger beads appeared after 2,000 years ago. However, contrary to previous studies, our data show that these larger beads did not replace long-standing bead traditions. In fact, the vast majority of ostrich eggshell beads continued to be quite small. On the other hand, beads from the eastern African sites were highly variable in size and showed no change when herding entered that region around 5,000 years ago.

Ostrich eggshell beads in eastern and southern Africa seem to tell a different story about herding’s spread. Cattle, sheep and goats are not native to either of these regions and must have been introduced by contact with peoples living farther north.

In both places, groups also made ostrich eggshell beads before and after herding spread.

In eastern Africa, the lack of change in bead size could suggest that local hunter-gatherers adopted livestock, or that incoming herders possessed similar traditions and/or quickly adopted local styles.

In southern Africa, the appearance of larger beads around 2000 years ago suggests the introduction of livestock stimulated a change in bead traditions, or that new styles were introduced at the same time as sheep.

Yet in both places, local bead traditions remained dominant. Curiously, the larger beads in southern Africa fall within the range of eastern African beads, hinting at contact between these regions as suggested by other archaeological evidence and ancient DNA.

Our research findings suggest that the spread of herding into new areas did not lead to the replacement of local peoples and practices. Rather, people responded in more nuanced ways and maintained certain cultural traditions.

This research not only helps us understand the African past, but is important for considering how we as humans use culture to cope with the changes in our world.

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Female Skull In Israel's Manot Cave Links Humans & Neanderthals 55,000 Years Ago

Israeli researchers published a critical article this week, arguing that a 55,000 years-old, female skull found in the Manot Cave of Israel’s Western Galilee is a critical links in understanding the evolution of the human species.  Scientists believe that the skull offers definitive proof that anatomically modern humans coexisted with Neanderthals in the same geographical area.

It’s widely accepted science that human origins date back about 200,000 years to Africa. However, there has not been agreement about which migration model of early Homo sapiens led to the population of our planet, accompanyied by the extinction of Neanderthals.

“The morphology of the skull indicates that it is that of a modern human of African origin, bearing characteristics of early European Upper Palaeolithic populations. This suggests that the Levantine populations were ancestral to earlier European populations,” said Prof. (Israel) Hershkovitz (of Tel Aviv University).  “This study also provides important clues regarding the likely inbreeding between anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals.”

The Manot Cave, where the skull was unearthed, was discovered accidentally in 2008 when a bulldozer struck the cave roof, revealing a time capsule tens of thousands of years old. “This is a goldmine,” said Prof. Hershkovitz. “Most other caves are ‘disturbed caves,’ but this is untouched, frozen in time — truly an amazing find. Among other artefacts found there, the skull, which we dated to 55,000 years ago using uranium thorium methods, was astonishing. It provides insight into the beginnings of the dispersal of modern humans all over the world.”

According to Prof. Hershkovitz, the skull disproves two major narratives: that all modern human populations are linked to migrations out of Africa 100,000 years ago, and that early European Upper Paleolithic populations interbred with local European Neanderthals. Instead the skull indicates that modern humans met and interbred with Neanderthals in Israel, only to later pass on their genes to the rest of the world. Considering Europe was in the last Ice Age period, its harsh climate rendered it generally inhospitable, so humans from the Levant moved first to Asia, and only later (45,000 ago) to Europe.

Discover Magazine writes that Neanderthal remains dating back 50,000-65,000 years have been found near Manot Cave. The new skull called Manot 1 is the first recorded evidence that modern humans were living in the same place at the same time.

In a series of coincidences that are peppered throughout my life, scientists have threaded another needle in the highly-probable story that human life originated in the region of Lake Turkana bordering Kenya and Ethiopia before migrating into a region known today as The Levant.

In a very real sense, today’s religious wars are going on in the very region that is the cradle of human civilization. My own relationship with The Levant area is most focused on studying the evolution of the goddesses and the rise of monotheism.

Kenya, Lake Turkana and the Omo Valley people of Ethiopia are a much stronger connection — one revealed through my inexplicable connections with the young photographer Dan Eldon.