Ongoing debates about the emergence of modern human behavior, however defined, regularly incorporate observations from the later part of the southern African Middle Stone Age and emphasize the early appearance of artifacts thought to reflect symbolic practice. Here we report a large sample of 270 fragments of intentionally marked ostrich eggshell from the Howiesons Poort at Diepkloof Rock Shelter, Western Cape, South Africa. Dating from ≈60,000 years ago, these pieces attest to an engraving tradition that is the earliest reliable evidence of what is a widespread modern practice. These abstract linear depictions were made on functional items (eggshell containers), which were curated and involved in daily hunter-gatherer life. The standardized production of repetitive patterns, including a hatched band motif, suggests a system of symbolic representation in which collective identities and individual expressions are clearly communicated, suggesting social, cultural, and cognitive underpinnings that overlap with those of modern people.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2010/02/17/0913047107.full.pdf

A Howiesons Poort tradition of engraving ostrich eggshell containers dated to 60,000 years ago at Diepkloof Rock Shelter, South Africa

Middle Stone Age bone tools from the Howiesons Poort layers, Sibudu Cave, South Africa

The context, form and significance of the MSA engraved ostrich eggshell collection from Diepkloof Rock Shelter, Western Cape, South Africa

Integration of new biological information (stable isotope analyses of archaeological human skeletons) with the archaeological sequence of southernmost Africa and with wider sociocultural studies of hunters and gatherers shows that between 4,500 and 2,000 BP coastal huntergatherers buried on the Robberg Peninsula and adjacent Plettenberg Bay ate large quantities of hightrophiclevel marine protein. This contrasts with more mixed diets reflected in skeletons from Matjes River Rock Shelter, only 14 km along the shore. Assuming that the burials represent the populations that inhabited the sites, such clear economic separation could have come about only if these were two separate groups of people who lived in clearly demarcated, mutually exclusive territories. Such a settlement pattern directly contradicts ethnographic studies of southern African huntergatherers, all derived from inland areas. Later Stone Age material culture, including the assemblages from these sites, shows many similarities to that of twenti...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/504163

Diet Mobility, and Settlement Pattern Among Holocene Hunter-Gatherers in Southernmost Africa

Located between Danielskuil and Kuruman in the Northern Cape 
province of South Africa is Wonderwerk Cave, where excavations 
from 1978 to 1996 revealed a ~6-m depth of deposits made up of 
nine Major Units (MUs), of which some have been dated by radiocarbon, 
the U-series method and palaeomagnetism. The lithic 
succession in those sediments was found to be Later Stone Age in 
MU1 at 1.0-12.5 kyr ago, Middle Stone Age in MU2 at ~70 to 
>220 kyr ago, Fauresmith in MUs 3-4 at ~270-c. 500 kyr ago, and 
very sparse biface assemblages before then to >0.78 Myr BP. Associated 
behaviours are represented by collected exotic river pebbles 
and quartz crystals in MUs 2-4, incised lines on portable stones in 
MUs 1-4, a grass bedding area in MU4, red pigment pieces in 
MUs 1-7, and traces of the use of fire in MUs 1-9. These findings, as 
a whole, are taken to support a scenario that sees the upland savannas 
at the southern end of Africa as a focal region of biocultural evolution 
over a period extending back to before the onset of the Middle 
Pleistocene.

On a timescale for the past million years of human history in central South Africa

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