The Later Stone Age (LSA) is a period in
African prehistory
The history of Africa begins with the emergence of hominids, archaic humans and — around 300–250,000 years ago—anatomically modern humans ('' Homo sapiens''), in East Africa, and continues unbroken into the present as a patchwork of d ...
that follows the
Middle Stone Age
The Middle Stone Age (or MSA) was a period of African prehistory between the Early Stone Age and the Late Stone Age. It is generally considered to have begun around 280,000 years ago and ended around 50–25,000 years ago. The beginnings of pa ...
.
The Later Stone Age is associated with the advent of modern human behavior in Africa, although definitions of this concept and means of studying it are up for debate. The transition from the Middle Stone Age to the Late Stone Age is thought to have occurred first in eastern Africa between 50,000 and 39,000 years ago. It is also thought that Later Stone Age peoples and/or their technologies spread out of Africa over the next several thousand years.
The terms "Early Stone Age", "Middle Stone Age" and "Later Stone Age" in the context of African archaeology are not to be confused with the terms
Lower Paleolithic
The Lower Paleolithic (or Lower Palaeolithic) is the earliest subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. It spans the time from around 3 million years ago when the first evidence for stone tool production and use by hominins appears in ...
,
Middle Paleolithic
The Middle Paleolithic (or Middle Palaeolithic) is the second subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age as it is understood in Europe, Africa and Asia. The term Middle Stone Age is used as an equivalent or a synonym for the Middle Paleoli ...
, and
Upper Paleolithic
The Upper Paleolithic (or Upper Palaeolithic) is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago (the beginning of the Holocene), according to some theories coin ...
.
They were introduced in the 1920s, as it became clear that the existing chronological system of Upper, Middle, and Lower Paleolithic was not a suitable correlate to the prehistoric past in Africa. Some scholars, however, continue to view these two chronologies as parallel, arguing that they both represent the development of
behavioral modernity
Behavioral modernity is a suite of behavioral and cognitive traits that distinguishes current '' Homo sapiens'' from other anatomically modern humans, hominins, and primates. Most scholars agree that modern human behavior can be characterize ...
.
Origins
Originally, the Later Stone Age was defined as several stone industries and/or cultures which included other evidence of human activity, such as ostrich eggshell beads and worked bone implements, and lacked Middle Stone Age stone tools other than those recycled and reworked. LSA peoples were directly linked with biologically and behaviorally modern populations of hunter/gatherers, some being directly identified as San "Bushmen." This definition has changed since its creation with the discovery of ostrich eggshell beads and bone harpoons in contexts which predate the LSA by tens of thousands of years.
The Later Stone Age was also long distinguished from the earlier Middle Stone Age as the time in which modern human behavior developed in Africa. This definition has become more tenuous as evidence for such modern human behaviors is found in sites which predate the LSA significantly.
Transition from Middle Stone Age
The LSA follows the
Middle Stone Age
The Middle Stone Age (or MSA) was a period of African prehistory between the Early Stone Age and the Late Stone Age. It is generally considered to have begun around 280,000 years ago and ended around 50–25,000 years ago. The beginnings of pa ...
and begins about 50,000 years ago. The LSA is characterized by a wider variety in stone artifacts than in the previous MSA period. These artifacts vary with time and location, unlike
Middle Stone Age
The Middle Stone Age (or MSA) was a period of African prehistory between the Early Stone Age and the Late Stone Age. It is generally considered to have begun around 280,000 years ago and ended around 50–25,000 years ago. The beginnings of pa ...
technology which appeared to have been relatively unchanged for several hundreds of thousands of years. LSA technology is also characterized by the use of bone tools. The LSA was associated with
modern human behavior
Behavioral modernity is a suite of behavioral and cognitive traits that distinguishes current ''Homo sapiens'' from other anatomically modern humans, hominins, and primates. Most scholars agree that modern human behavior can be characterized b ...
, but this view was modified after discoveries in MSA sites such as
Blombos Cave and
Pinnacle Point
Pinnacle Point a small promontory immediately south of Mossel Bay, a town on the southern coast of South Africa. Excavations since the year 2000 of a series of caves at Pinnacle Point have revealed occupation by Middle Stone Age people between ...
.
LSA sites also greatly outnumber MSA sites in Africa, a trend that could indicate an increase in population numbers. The greater number of LSA sites could also result from bias towards better preservation of younger sites which have had fewer chances to be destroyed.
Lithic Technology
Differences in stone tool technologies are often used to distinguish between the Middle Stone Age and the Later Stone Age. The larger prepared platform flake-based stone tool industries of the Middle Stone Age, such as
Levallois were increasingly replaced with industries that focused on producing blades and bladelets on cores with simple platforms.
African stone tool technologies are divided into modes as proposed by Grahame Clark in 1969 and outlined by Lawrence Barham and Peter Mitchell as follows:
*Mode 1:
Oldowan
The Oldowan (or Mode I) was a widespread stone tool archaeological industry (style) in prehistory. These early tools were simple, usually made with one or a few flakes chipped off with another stone. Oldowan tools were used during the Lower ...
tool industries, also known as pebble tool industries
*Mode 2: Tools made through bifacial reduction produced from large flakes or cores
*Mode 3: Flake tools from prepared cores
*Mode 4: Punch-struck blades that are adapted into a variety of different tools
*Mode 5:
Microlith
A microlith is a small stone tool usually made of flint or chert and typically a centimetre or so in length and half a centimetre wide. They were made by humans from around 35,000 to 3,000 years ago, across Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. Th ...
portions of composite tools that may include wood or bone, often abruptly retouched or backed
The lithic technologies of the Later Stone Age often fall into Modes 4 and 5. They have been further broken into four stages within the LSA.
# Microlithic industries dated to between ca. 40,000 and ca. 19,000 B.P. labeled early LSA (ELSA), or as late MSA, or as MSA/LSA transitions or interfaces
# Nonmicrolithic, bladelet-poor industries with dates between ca. 40,000 B.P. and ca. 19,000 B.P.
# Microlithic industries with bladelets dated between ca. 18,000 and ca. 12,000 B.P.
# Nonmicrolithic, bladelet-poor industries dating between 12,000 and 8000 B.P.
Potential problems
The end of the Later Stone Age took place when groups adopted technologies such as metallurgy to replace the use of stone tools. This process happened at different rates across the continent, and it is worth noting that the term "LSA" is typically used by archaeologists today to refer primarily to stone tool-using hunter/gatherer populations in southern Africa. The model of the LSA "''human revolution''" is no longer favored by many archaeologists working in Africa due to the increasing evidence for development of modern human behavior earlier than 40,000-50,000 years ago.
See also
*
Upper Paleolithic
The Upper Paleolithic (or Upper Palaeolithic) is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago (the beginning of the Holocene), according to some theories coin ...
*
Middle Stone Age
The Middle Stone Age (or MSA) was a period of African prehistory between the Early Stone Age and the Late Stone Age. It is generally considered to have begun around 280,000 years ago and ended around 50–25,000 years ago. The beginnings of pa ...
*
Enkapune Ya Muto
Enkapune Ya Muto, also known as Twilight Cave, is a Late Stone Age site on the Mau Escarpment of Kenya. Beads made of perforated ostrich egg shells found at the site have been dated to 40,000 years ago. The beads found at the site represent the ...
*
Mumba Cave
Mumba Cave, located near the highly alkaline Lake Eyasi in Karatu District, Arusha Region, Tanzania. The cave is a rich archaeological site noted for deposits spanning the transition between the Middle Stone Age and Late Stone Age in Eastern Af ...
*
Mumbwa Cave
*
Nasera Rockshelter
Nasera Rockshelter is an archaeological site located in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area within Ngorongoro District of Arusha Region in northern Tanzania, and it has evidence of Middle Stone Age and Later Stone Age occupations in the Late Pleis ...
*
Panga ya Saidi
Panga ya Saidi is an archaeological cave site located in Kilifi County, southeastern Kenya, about 15 km from the Indian Ocean in the Dzitsoni limestone hills. The cave site has rich archaeological deposits dating to the Middle Stone Age, L ...
Footnotes
Further reading
*
The Stone Age of southern Tanzania
{{Prehistoric technology, state=expanded
Prehistoric Africa
Upper Paleolithic
Stone Age Africa
Archaeology of Southern Africa