Carrying capacity, population density and the later Pleistocene expression of backed artefact manufacturing traditions in Africa

Abstract

As is the case today, both climate variability and population density influenced human behavioural change in the past. The mechanisms underpinning later Pleistocene human behavioural evolution, however, remain contested. Many complex behaviours evolved in Africa, but early evidence for these behaviours varies both spatially and temporally. Scientists have not been able to explain this flickering pattern, which is present even in sites and regions clearly occupied by Homo sapiens . To explore this pattern, here the presence and frequency of evidence for backed stone artefact production are modelled against climate-driven, time-series population density estimates (Timmermann and Friedrich. 2016 Nature 538 , 92. ( doi:10.1038/nature19365 )), in all known African Late Pleistocene archaeological sites ( n = 116 sites, n = 409 assemblages, n = 893 dates). In addition, a moving-window, site density population estimate is included at the scale of southern Africa. Backed stone artefacts are argued in many archaeological contexts to have functioned in elaborate technologies like composite weapons and, in the African Pleistocene, are accepted proxies for cultural complexity. They show a broad but sporadic distribution in Africa, prior to their association with Homo sapiens dispersing into Europe 45–40 ka. Two independent population estimates explain this pattern and potentially implicate the interaction of climate change and demography in the expression of cultural complexity in African Pleistocene Homo sapiens . This article is part of the theme issue ‘Cross-disciplinary approaches to prehistoric demography’.