Archaeological sites on the far southern shores of South Africa hold the world’s richest records for the behavioral and cultural origins of our species. Scientists have discovered at this location the earliest evidence for symbolic behavior, complex pyro-technology, projectile weapons, and the first use of foods from the sea. The scientists working on these sites have always faced a dilemma in understanding the context of these evolutionary milestones – much of the landscape used by these ancient people is now submerged undersea as sea level has risen since the last ice age, and thus poorly known to us.
That has now changed with the publication of 22 articles in our special issue in Quaternary Science Reviews titled “The Palaeo-Agulhas Plain: A lost world and extinct ecosystem”. About ten years ago, we began building a transdisciplinary international team to tackle the problem of building an ecology of this ancient landscape. The special issue illustrates all of this science. For a super-awesome summary of this work see this great article in the AGU journal Eos by Dr Kerstin Braun
Our results help us understand why the archaeological records from these South African sites consistently reveal early and complex levels of human behavior and culture. The Palaeo-Agulhas Plain, when exposed, was a “Serengeti of the South” positioned next to some of the richest coastlines in the world. This unique confluence of food from the land and sea cultivated the complex cultures revealed by the archaeology, and provided safe harbor for humans during the glacial cycles that revealed that plain and made much of the rest of the world unwelcoming to human life.