Palaeoenvironments of Human Behavioural Evolution in Africa

Introduction

The emergence of Homo sapiens' behavioural complexity represents a fundamental milestone in the evolution of humankind. Still, the causes of this critical transformation remain debated. For the African Middle Stone Age (MSA, ~300,000 - 40,000 years), a key question is whether and how climate variability contributed to the increasing behavioural complexity in modern humans.

Challenges in Current Research

However, behavioural-environmental hypotheses remain untestable because the existing palaeoclimatic datasets are spatially, stratigraphically, and causally disconnected from the archaeological record.

Project Overview

PIONEER will overcome this impediment by developing a new analytical framework that allows testing of previously untestable hypotheses and thereby advances our understanding of human behavioural evolution. To achieve this, cutting-edge analytical methods (leaf wax isotope analyses) and computational approaches (climate- and agent-based modelling (ABM)) will be combined with African archaeology.

Methodology

Fundamental to my approach are high-resolution climate records from within the archaeology-bearing sediments, thus directly connecting environmental and archaeological records. PIONEER will test behavioural-environmental hypotheses by interlinking several activities:

1. Establish unprecedented high-resolution datasets of past vegetation and palaeohydrology changes from five key cave sites, inhabited by early Homo sapiens, located along the South African coast.
2. Create a high-resolution spatial representation of the environments experienced by our ancestors from novel climate simulations.
3. Explore likelihoods for different behavioural-environmental scenarios via ABM.

Broader Implications

Although PIONEER focuses on the South African MSA, my approach is applicable to most archaeological timeframes and locations. Consequently, PIONEER will transform future studies of climate-human interactions, clarifying key aspects of early human behaviour.