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Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons

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Social and Behavioral Sciences

University of Wollongong

Africa

Publication Year

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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Were Environmental Or Demographic Factors The Driving Force Behind Middle Stone Age Innovations In Southern Africa?, Zenobia Jacobs, Richard G. Roberts Jan 2009

Were Environmental Or Demographic Factors The Driving Force Behind Middle Stone Age Innovations In Southern Africa?, Zenobia Jacobs, Richard G. Roberts

Faculty of Science - Papers (Archive)

Sir—Past human responses to environmental changes have long interested archaeologists. During the last glacial cycle, southern Africa experienced marked climatic fluctuations, as recorded in ice-core records from West and East Antarctica.


A Re-Examination Of A Human Femur Found At The Blind River Site, East London, South Africa: Its Age, Morphology, And Breakage Pattern, Zenobia Jacobs, Qian Wang, David L. Roberts, P V. Tobias Jan 2008

A Re-Examination Of A Human Femur Found At The Blind River Site, East London, South Africa: Its Age, Morphology, And Breakage Pattern, Zenobia Jacobs, Qian Wang, David L. Roberts, P V. Tobias

Faculty of Science - Papers (Archive)

ABSTRACT Modern human femoral features might have appeared in the early Middle Stone Age (156 ka to 20 ka) in South Africa, as demonstrated by the recent re-examination of a human femur fossil found at the Blind River Site, East London in the 1930s, if new dating results hold. Two optically stimulated luminescence dates from the relocated original Blind River shallow marine/estuarine deposits that contained the femur gave almost identical ages of ~120 ka, corresponding to the early part of the Last Interglacial (Oxygen Isotope Stage 5). Overall, the slender headless femur is of modern human form. The distal epiphysis …