People of the south are old hands at thriving in a drought

Adapting to drought is really old news in the Western Cape‚ scientists have found.

Humans who lived in the region between 59‚500 and 65‚800 years ago developed “cultural innovations” to survive what a team from France‚ Norway and South Africa called “a prolonged period of pronounced aridification”.

In contrast with the 2017 innovation that involves flushing the toilet with water caught in a bucket while showering‚ the people from the so-called Howiesons Poort period were involved in more of a life-and-death struggle.

“The most distinct of the many cultural innovations in the HP culture were the invention of the bow and arrow‚ different methods of heating raw materials (stone) before knapping to produce arrow heads‚ engraving ostrich eggshells with elaborate patterns‚ intensive use of hearths and relatively intense hunting and gathering practices‚” said Christopher Henshilwood‚ of the Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand.

These innovations allowed the people of the Howiesons Poort era — named after an archaeological site near Grahamstown — to “significantly enlarge the range of environments they occupied”‚ compared with the people of the Still Bay tradition who preceded them.

Using paleoclimatic data and simulations‚ researchers documenting “the oldest known case of an eco-cultural niche expansion” found that the HP tradition developed during a period of pronounced aridity.

Writing in the Journal of Human Evolution‚ Henshilwood said the results showed that despite the drought‚ Howiesons Poort populations exploited territories and ecosystems that were unknown to Still Bay people.

“It seems from the little evidence that we have that the population of Homo sapiens in southern Africa was considerably larger during the Howiesons Poort period‚” he said.

“There are many more HP sites than Still Bay sites in southern Africa and their location is widespread across southern Africa.”

- The Times