The foraging potential of the Holocene Cape south coast of South Africa without the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain

QUATERNARY SCIENCE REVIEWS

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Article

Wren, Colin D.¹  Botha, Susan²  De Vynck, Jan²  Janssen, Marco A.³  Hill, Kim⁴  Shook, Eric⁵  Harris, Jacob A.⁴  Wood, Brian M.⁶  Venter, Jan^2,8  Cowling, Richard²  Franklin, Janet⁷  Fisher, Erich C.^2,4  Marean, Curtis W.^2,4 

[1] Univ Colorado Colorado Springs, Dept Anthropol, 134 Centennial Hall,1420 Austin Bluffs Pkwy, Colorado Springs, CO 80918 USA

[2] Nelson Mandela Univ, African Ctr Coastal Palaeosci, POB 77000, ZA-6031 Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape, South Africa

[3] Arizona State Univ, Sch Sustainabil, POB 875502, Tempe, AZ 85287 USA

[4] Arizona State Univ, Sch Human Evolut & Social Change, Inst Human Origins, POB 872402, Tempe, AZ 85287 USA

[5] Dept Geog Environm & Soc, 414 Social Sci Bldg,267 19th Ave S, Minneapolis, MN 55455 USA

[6] Univ Calif Los Angeles, Dept Anthropol, 375 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA 90095 USA

[7] Univ Calif Riverside, Dept Bot & Plant Sci, 900 Univ Ave, Riverside, CA 92521 USA

[8] Nelson Mandela Univ, Sch Nat Resource Management, George Campus,Madiba Dr, ZA-6530 George, South Africa

关键词: Holocene;    Paleogeography;    Southern Africa;    Data treatment;    Data analysis;    Agent-based modeling;   

DOI  :  10.1016/j.quascirev.2019.06.012

来源: Elsevier

【 摘 要 】

The Palaeo-Agulhas Plain formed an important habitat exploited by Pleistocene hunter-gatherer populations during periods of lower sea level. This productive, grassy habitat would have supported numerous large-bodied ungulates accessible to a population of skilled hunters with the right hunting technology. It also provided a potentially rich location for plant food collection, and along its shores a coastline that moved with the rise and fall of sea levels. The rich archaeological and paleontological records of Pleistocene sites along the modern Cape south coast of South Africa, which would have overlooked the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain during Pleistocene times of lower sea level, provides a paleoarchive of this extinct ecosystem. In this paper, we present a first order illustration of the palaeoscape modeling approach advocated by Marean et al. (2015). We use a resourcescape model created from modern studies of habitat productivity without the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain. This is equivalent to predominant Holocene conditions before recent landscape modifications for farming. We then run an agent-based model of the human foraging system to investigate several research questions. Our agent-based approach uses the theoretical framework of optimal foraging theory to model human foraging decisions designed to optimize the net caloric gains within a complex landscape of spatially and temporally variable resources. We find that during the high sea-levels of MIS 5e (+5-6 m asl) and the Holocene, the absence of the Plain left a relatively poor food base supporting a much smaller population relying heavily on edible plant resources from the current Cape flora. Despite high species diversity of plants with edible storage organs, and marine invertebrates, encounter rates with highly profitable resources were low. We demonstrate that without the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain, human populations must have been small and low-density, and exploited plant, mammal, and marine resources with relatively low caloric returns. The exposure and contraction of the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain was likely the single biggest driver of behavioural change during periods of climate change through the Pleistocene and into the transition to the Holocene. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

【 授权许可】

Free