Middle Stone Age was believed to have begun 280,000 BC and ended 50,000 BC in Africa, when it transitioned to Late Stone Age. However, some Middle Stone Age groups remained in West Africa as late as 9,000 BC - shortly before they were replaced by Late Stone Age pottery makers.
Replacement of Middle Stone Age cultures by Late Stone Age cultures in West Africa associated with spread of forests in 13,000 BC. Groups with very different genetics & technology levels lived close to each other in different ecologies. nature.com/articles/s4159…
Overlap of Late Stone Age and Middle Stone Age technology in South Africa 40,000-20,000 BC. Author chalks it up to access to materials rather than migration & tech diffusion researchgate.net/profile/Peter_…
Should not be assumed that Middle Stone Age sites are necessarily human
Casa Grande is a walled ruin in Arizona’s Sonora Desert near the Gila River. It was built around 1350 AD by the Hohokam culture, & and abandoned less than 100 years later. Hohokam were part of the Oasisamerican cultures.
Dozens of Hohokam settlements were built along the Gila River. Extensive irrigation canals were dug to water their crops. They planted corn, beans, squash, tobacco, cotton, & agave. Wild desert plants like palo verde, mesquite, saguaro, prickly pear, & ironwood were also eaten.
Shells from Sea of Cortez & mirrors from tropical Mexico show the Hohokam engaged in trade (perhaps a reason for tobacco & cotton farming?). Also they had ballcourts like those of Mesoamerica (hard to see in the picture).
Chadics had agriculture by the time they fragmented - proto-Chadic has words for “sorghum” & “porridge”. pnas.org/content/pnas/e…
Chadics like Fulani & Hausa have same mutation for adult milk-drinking as Europeans. 3 other mutations in Africa that allow adult milk-drinking: one common in Kenya & Tanzania, another in northeast Africa, & last from Middle East.
Thread with excerpts from “Global Crisis: War, Climate Change, & Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century” by Geoffrey Parker
Natural & human archives of the past. Former is what can be determined from ice cores of glaciers, pollen layers & levels in swamps, sizes of rings inside certain trees, & groundwater deposit in caves. Latter is instrumental data, numerical records, archaeological evidence, etc.
As bloody as the world wars were, they weren’t particularly bad by historical standards. The 17th century was uniquely bad for 2nd millennium AD, with Little Ice Age & glut of specie leading to state collapses & population decline across Eurasia.
Falls of Rome & Tang in 1st millennium were worse, but at least they were recorded. Records of the even worse Bronze Age Collapse around 1200 BC barely survived for some areas, & for other regions all we have are archaeological indications that they regressed to the stone age.
Further back in the 3rd millennium BC, an even worse series of catastrophes occurred - the Indo-European invasions - ending the Megalith Builder Civilization with their urban settlements & leaving much of Europe depopulated for 600 years.
Thread with excerpts from “The Great Cauldron: A History of Southeastern Europe” by Marie-Janine Calic
Translation from original German by Elizabeth Janik. Original title was “Südosteuropa”.
Disputes over the origins of the Romanians & Albanians - did they form in their current areas in ancient or classical times, or are they the result of medieval migrations?