Late Pleistocene Sea Levels and the Human Exploitation of the Shore and Shelf of Southern South Africa

Abstract

Some of the earliest records of Homo sapiens sapiens come from the coastal zone of South Africa, and it is there also that the first evidence for the human exploitation of marine resources has been found. This region is bordered by a wide and mainly level continental shelf which, at the lowest sea levels of the last glacial period, formed a large coastal plain, an environment not now common in the coastal zone. During most of the last 125,000 years, however, sea level, although lower than today, was not low enough to expose the wide level parts of the shelf, and the distance from Middle Stone Age (MSA) sites on the present coast to the Late Pleistocene shore did not generally exceed an hour's walk. A description of the shelf landscape at different sea levels casts light on two key issues of the Middle Stone Age of the southern Cape Province: a) the chronology of coastal Middle Stone Age sites; and b) the relation between available marine and terrestrial resources and their exploitation. Inferred high Pleistocene sea levels have played a key role in determining the stratigraphy of coastal Middle Stone Age sites, but a comparison with the change over time of the site-to-shore distance points up the ambiguity of this parameter. There is an urgent need for more robust dating of the Pleistocene human record in this region.