Population boom might not have set off “human revolution”

Food from the Stone Age has raised doubts about the causes of the human revolution.

Breville

About 50,000 years ago, modern humans left Africa and began occupying the rest of the world. The common thought is that a sudden growth in population caused the so-called “human revolution,” which gave birth to language, art, and culture as we know it today. Now, based on something that’s not obviously related to human culture—the size of shellfish fossils—researchers have challenged that model.

Artifacts from two sites in South Africa, Still Bay and Howieson’s Poort, have convinced archaeologists that the period between 85,000 to 65,000 years ago was when the “human revolution” began. Humans from that time made jewelry from perforated shells and used objects as symbols. They made better tools than they had ever before. Some of these tools, made from ostrich eggshells, were even capable of slicing fruit.

It has been thought that this period also saw a sudden explosion in population growth. Now, Richard Klein from Stanford University and Teresa Steele from the University of California at Davis argue that archaeologists and anthropologists have got it wrong. In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they say there is evidence to suggest that population did not actually explode during this period.