Did a difficult environment influence the evolution of human creativity and innovation?

Between the time early modern humans first emerged in Africa and the time they spread across the globe, they developed complex behavior that allowed them and us to adapt and thrive in new environments.

These behaviorstoolmaking and thinking, as well as planning, evolved during the Middle Stone Age (315,00040,000 year ago). However, our current understanding about where, why, and how these behaviors originated is based on limited archaeological evidence. The most famous sites on the lush southern Cape Coast, such Blombos Cave, are where we can see evidence of the Middle Stone Age in South Africa. New research shows that people living in the desert regions north of Cape Town lived different lives and were sometimes more creative.

In an article published in the journal Nature Ecology & EvolutionAlex Mackay from University of Wollongong in Australia and Teresa Steele, professor of Anthropology at University of California Davis, report that around 80,000 to 92,000 years old, people lived in the Knersvlakte Region of southern Namaqualand. These people, who were now in South Africa, were innovative in many ways.

• Unique ways to produce stone tools by heating silcrete rock to fracture with impurities
• Transporting molluskshells a long distance from the coast
• Technology created from ostrich eggshells. This is their first use as a medium to create technology.

These innovations, discovered at Varsche Rivier003 in the south, are not found in other locations within 65 miles (100km) of the site. This demonstrates a lack connection between contemporaneous populations.

Steele suggested that adaptations during periods of isolation might be what motivates innovation. Steele pointed out that after a climatic shift, some thousand years later, the occupants at Varsche Rivier003 and the sites to their south started making the same stone tools industries, which demonstrates a shift toward greater geographic connections.

Climate shifts drive cultural change

Steele and her team began excavations in 2009 at the location of an ancient rock shelter within the arid Knersvlakte. The site is approximately 27 miles (44km) east of South Africa’s Atlantic Coast and 185 miles (390 km) north Cape Town.

The site’s artifacts date back to a climate shift that occurred around 92,000 years ago. This was when the region was more welcoming to humans and had milder winds and higher summer rainfall. After a few thousand year, the climate returned to its current form, with most of the 7 inches (175mm) of annual rainfall occurring in winter.

Steele stated that the Knersvlakte was still a marginal environment even during the climate shift. “It was a tough place for hunter-gatherer-herders to make a living, even recently. Even with a little more moisture, the landscape wasn’t lush. It is remarkable that people living 80,000 years ago could live there, which speaks volumes about human adaptability,” she stated.

The researchers stated that more research is needed to reconstruct the past climate change in the region and to shed more light about how the environment shaped innovation, and culture.