Modern human behaviour underlying cultural innovations such as language and art might have begun in southern Africa thousands of years earlier than assumed.

Credit: F. D'ERRICO/L. BACKWELL

Evidence for symbolic behaviour, such as shell beads, appeared at least 80,000 years ago in southern Africa. This behaviour then seemingly disappeared and did not return until roughly 20,000 years ago — when humans with cultural links to modern San hunter-gatherers began to produce engraved bones and other complex artefacts.

However, Francesco d'Errico at the University of Bordeaux in France, Paola Villa at the University of Colorado in Boulder and their teams suggest that antecedents to San culture in fact appeared much earlier. Radiocarbon dating of seashell and ostrich eggshell beads (pictured), complex resins and an ochre-stained point previously excavated from Border Cave in South Africa suggests that the artefacts are up to 44,000 years old. Around this time, humans living near Border Cave also began to produce double-faced stone blades and flint arrow points — consistent with the emergence of modern symbolic behaviour, the authors say.

Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1204213109 (2012); Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1202629109 (2012)