Pinnacle Point Human

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The pinnacle point people are the originators of artefacts that have not been handed down from fossil sources and that were scientifically described for the first time in autumn 2007. The artifacts include more than 1,800 stone tools and more than 50 small pieces of hematite ( red ocher ), some of which appear to be mechanically worked. The finds were dated to an age of 164,000 ± 12,000 years and are considered the oldest evidence of the use of pigments by the archaic Homo sapiens . In 2012, the discovery of around 71,000 years old, fire-hardened stone blades were published.

The name Pinnacle Point people is derived from the location of the artifacts in the Pinnacle Point Caves near Mossel Bay on the southwest coast of South Africa .

Site and finds

Ongoing excavation work in one of the Pinnacle Point caves, 2011

The location ( PP13B coordinates: 34 ° 12 ′ 28.3 ″  S , 22 ° 5 ′ 22.3 ″  E ) of the around 164,000 year old artifacts is a natural cave, which is now 18 meters above mean water level on the South African coast of the Indian Ocean . Even at the time of its use by the Pinnacle Point people , the cave was only a few meters above sea level. The peculiarity of this cave, however, is that the area surrounding it has been significantly raised in the past 200,000 years so that it was not flooded by rising sea levels after the last ice age.

In 1836, retouched stone implements made of quartzite were found in the cave, most of which had been made using the Levallois technique, including numerous narrow specimens a few centimeters long ( microliths ), which are interpreted as arrowheads . The total of 57 pigment pieces have a total weight of 93.4 grams; they are mostly rich in iron oxide and range in color from reddish brown to a strong red. At least ten of these pigment pieces show signs of abrasion, and at least two of these have been left with elongated scratches by tools.

Furthermore, in the cave were shells of 15 different shell - species discovered by the Pinnacle Point people had been obtained probably from shallow tidal pools and rock; Mussel shells of the Perna perna species were found particularly frequently . This is the most distant proof - with 164,000 ± 12,000 years - that seafood could also serve as food for the representatives of the genus Homo .

Several dozen, around 71,000 years old, narrow stone blades from the Pinnacle Point 5-6 cave were suitable to be attached to presumably wooden brackets in order to use this combination as a weapon.

Meaning of the finds

The finds show that the ancestors of modern humans ( Homo sapiens ) also used seafood as food more than 150,000 years ago. Previously, experts had also believed that such foods were only used around 100,000 years later, when humans began to spread to Asia and Europe. It is possible that the consumption of seafood was an adaptation to the periods of drought that prevailed in large parts of Africa during the Ice Age 195,000 to 130,000 years ago, according to the description of the find.

The find of mechanically processed rock containing pigments is interpreted in a similar way: not only - as some scientists have deduced from the previously known sites - Homo sapiens developed handling of colors 45,000 years ago , but much earlier. However, it is unclear what purpose this handling served: Hematite was also used as a means to better connect stone arrowheads to wooden arrows. It could also be that the hematite chunks were used for painting and thus emphasized social functions.

The 71,000-year-old stone tool finds from the Pinnacle Point 5-6 cave were interpreted as spearheads that had been hardened in fire. From other sites in South Africa, only a maximum of 65,000 to 60,000 years old, similarly treated artifacts were known. From this it was deduced, on the one hand, that this hardening was developed earlier than was previously proven by findings; on the other hand, that this procedure was passed on from generation to generation in southern Africa for around 11,000 years before it was then given up there and elsewhere and only rediscovered around 40,000 years ago. The discoveries made on the southern coast of South Africa contradict the classical hypothesis, according to which modern behavior only happened 45,000 years ago in a "great, cultural leap".

Effects of the Toba eruption

73,880 ± 320  cal BP years ago a super volcano erupted in the north of the Indonesian island of Sumatra in what is now Sumatra Utara province , the remains of which are known as Lake Toba . On the Toba- eruption a so-called followed volcanic winter , a dramatic cooling of the global climate 3-5  K . As a result of these climatic and ecological changes, according to the Toba catastrophe theory , there should have been a considerable decline ( "bottleneck" ) in the worldwide population of Homo sapiens .

The Toba catastrophe theory is controversial among paleoanthropologists. One possibility to investigate the effects of the Toba eruption on the South African populations of Homo sapiens , which live around 9,000 kilometers from the volcano , was offered by the reliably reconstructable strata of the Pinnacle Point Caves and an excavation site around nine kilometers away near the municipality of Vleesbaai. According to a study published in Nature in 2018, pyroclastic sediment (cryptotephra - microscopic volcanic glass ) could be identified and dated using optically stimulated luminescence , the chemical properties of which correspond to samples of the same age from Malaysia and Lake Malawi in East Africa and therefore Toba -Eruption is attributable. When comparing the layers immediately above the Toba tracks with those immediately below the Toba tracks, the researchers found no evidence of an interruption in the use of both excavation sites. On the contrary, according to the researchers , the evidence of a colonization by Homo sapiens increased shortly after the Toba eruption: "We found no evidence that the Toba outbreak had any influence on people's daily lives."

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Curtis W. Marean et al .: Early human use of marine resources and pigment in South Africa during the Middle Pleistocene. In: Nature . Volume 449, 2007, pp. 905-908; doi: 10.1038 / nature06204
  2. ↑ a b c Kyle S. Brown et al .: An early and enduring advanced technology originating 71,000 years ago in South Africa. In: Nature. Volume 491, 2012, pp. 590-593, doi: 10.1038 / nature11660
  3. ^ Sally McBrearty, Chris Stringer : The coast in color. In: Nature. Volume 449, 2007, pp. 793-794; doi: 10.1038 / 449793a
  4. ^ Sally McBrearty, Chris Stringer: The coast in color , p. 794
  5. ^ Early approaches to modern behavior in Homo sapiens - seafood as a food source. On: nzz.ch of October 24, 2007
  6. ↑ Early Humans Handed Down Making Tool Tech. On: sciencemag.org of November 7, 2012
    Small lethal tools have big implications for early modern human complexity. On: eurekalert.org of November 7th, 2012
    Ancient and literally razor-sharp: Our mind. On: Wissenschaft.de from November 7, 2012
  7. ↑ Michael Storey et al .: Astronomically calibrated 40Ar / 39Ar age for the Toba supereruption and global synchronization of late Quaternary records. In: PNAS . Volume 109, No. 46, 2012, pp. 18684–18688, doi: 10.1073 / pnas.1208178109
  8. ↑ George Weber: Toba Volcano. On: andaman.org of September 28, 2007
  9. ^ Eugene I. Smith et al .: Humans thrived in South Africa through the Toba eruption about 74,000 years ago. In: Nature. Online advance publication of March 12, 2018, doi: 10.1038 / nature25967
  10. ↑ How ancient humans survived global 'volcanic winter' from massive eruption. On: sciencemag.org from March 12, 2018
  11. ↑ Humans 'thrived' after historic Mount Toba eruption. On: bbc.com of March 13, 2018
  12. ↑ The little Gallic village. On: wienerzeitung.at from March 12, 2018