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15 - Africa from 48,000 to 9500BCE

from Part II - The Paleolithic and the beginnings of human history

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2015

David Christian
Affiliation:
Macquarie University, Sydney
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Summary

Farther east, often in the mountainous interior areas of South Africa, Middle Stone Age populations also maintained their ways of subsistence and their technology as late as the inception of the last Glacial Maximum, around 22,000 BCE. To the northeast, in the Caledon Valley of the Free State Province, the Middle Stone Age industry at Rose Cottage Cave prevailed until at least 26,000 BCE. West Africa from Nigeria to Mali and Senegal remained a place solely of Middle Stone Age industries not just as late as 22,000 BCE, but down through the Last Glacial Maximum. Immediately north of East Africa lay another region of key significance for African history in the Last Glacial Maximum. The earliest speech territories of three major language families of Africa clustered in those areas: Nilo-Saharan between the Nile and the western edges of the Ethiopian highlands; Afrasian in the highlands; and Niger-Kordofanian in modern-day South Sudan, probably in areas immediately west of the Nile.
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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

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References

Further reading

Allen, Nicholas J., Callan, Hilary, Dunbar, Robin, and James, Wendy (eds.), Early Human Kinship: From Sex to Social Reproduction, Oxford: Blackwell, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bar-Yosef, Ofer, “The dispersal of modern humans in Eurasia: A cultural interpretation,” in Mellars, Paul, Boyle, Katie, Bar-Yosef, Ofer, and Stringer, Chris (eds.), Rethinking the Human Revolution: New Behavioural and Biological Perspectives on the Origin and Dispersal of Modern Humans, Cambridge: McDonald Institute, 2007, pp. 207–18.Google Scholar
Bar-Yosef, Ofer, “Pleistocene connexions between Africa and Southwest Asia: An archaeological perspective,” The African Archaeological Review 5 (1987), 2938.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blundell, Geoffrey (ed.), Seeing and Knowing: Understanding Rock Art with and without Ethnography, Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Butzer, Karl W., “Late Quaternary problems of the Egyptian Nile: Stratigraphy, environments, prehistory,” Paléorient 23 (1997), 151–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cornelissen, Els, “Human response to changing environments in Central Africa between 40,000 and 12,000 BP,” Journal of World Prehistory 16 (2002), 197235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ehret, Christopher, History and the Testimony of Language, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Lewis-Williams, J. David, A Cosmos in Stone: Interpreting Religion and Society through Rock Art, Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Midant-Reynes, Béatrix, The Prehistory of Egypt from the First Egyptians to the First Pharaohs, Oxford: Blackwell, 2000.Google Scholar
Phillipson, David W., African Archaeology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Benjamin, Zambia's Ancient Rock Art: The Paintings of Kasama, Livingstone, Zambia: National Heritage Conservation Commission, 1997.Google Scholar
Willoughby, Pamela R., The Evolution of Modern Humans in Africa: A Comprehensive Guide, Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2007.Google Scholar

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