气候变化领域集成服务门户(CCPortal): The resilience to human foraging of intertidal resources on the south Cape coast of South Africa and the implications for pre-historic foragers

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DOI	10.1016/j.quascirev.2019.106041
	The resilience to human foraging of intertidal resources on the south Cape coast of South Africa and the implications for pre-historic foragers
	De Vynck J.C.; Difford M.; Anderson R.; Marean C.W.; Cowling R.M.; Hill K.
发表日期	2020
ISSN	0277-3791
卷号	235
英文摘要	The extent to which modern humans relied upon intertidal resources, and the impact that this food source had on their cognitive and social development, remains contentious. An outstanding question is whether such a resource could have provided a sufficiently reliable and essentially continuous supply of resources to support communities during the Middle Stone Age (MSA). The south Cape coast of South Africa contains abundant evidence dating back to 164 000 years ago (ka) to show that the intertidal zone of this area was highly productive and was intensively used by MSA humans. In this paper we present the results of an experimental approach to answering the question of whether resources could have been sufficiently resilient to support communities similar in size to those of the Middle Stone Age. For a period of 10 months, we monitored the depletion of shellfish in the two dominant types of marine habitat (aeolianite and Table Mountain Sandstone) that occur on the south Cape coast, following intensive harvesting by indigenous foragers every two weeks or every four weeks. We found no evidence of lasting depletion in either type of habitat at either foraging frequency. We also found that replenishment of the foraged areas soon occurred (within two weeks) by repopulation from deeper water rather than by a long-shore movement. The most important prey species in this process was the highly mobile gastropod mollusk Turbo sarmaticus, which made up 81.9% of calorific harvest. Overall, mobile species made up 92.2% of the calorific harvest. Another factor that contributed to the resilience of the system is the nature of the coastline of the south Cape. This is characterised by extended shallow bathymetries of hard substrata that provide “pantries” of mobile invertebrates for restocking depleted intertidal habitats. We argue that the presence of such a reliable, easily procured, and nutritionally beneficial source of food may have played an important role in the development of more complex types of social behaviour than previously existed. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd
英文关键词	Cape south coast; Human foragers; Invertebrate dynamics; Middle Stone Age; Paleogeography; Pleistocene; Resource depletion and replenishment; South Africa; Turbo sarmaticus
语种	英语
scopus关键词	Harvesting; Molluscs; Human foragers; Paleogeography; Pleistocene; Resource depletion; South Africa; Stone age; Turbo sarmaticus; Ecosystems; gastropod; intertidal environment; marine environment; Mesolithic; shellfish; social behavior; South Africa; Gastropoda; Invertebrata; Turbo sarmaticus
来源期刊	Quaternary Science Reviews
文献类型	期刊论文
条目标识符	http://gcip.llas.ac.cn/handle/2XKMVOVA/151510
作者单位	African Centre for Coastal Palaeosciences, Nelson Mandela University, Port Elizabeth, 6031, South Africa; Botany Department, Nelson Mandela University, PO Box 77000, Port Elizabeth, 6031, South Africa; Department of Biological Sciences and Marine Research Institute, University of Cape Town, South Africa; Institute of Human Origins, School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, PO Box 872402, Tempe, AZ 85287-2402, United States
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	De Vynck J.C.,Difford M.,Anderson R.,et al. The resilience to human foraging of intertidal resources on the south Cape coast of South Africa and the implications for pre-historic foragers[J],2020,235.
APA	De Vynck J.C.,Difford M.,Anderson R.,Marean C.W.,Cowling R.M.,&Hill K..(2020).The resilience to human foraging of intertidal resources on the south Cape coast of South Africa and the implications for pre-historic foragers.Quaternary Science Reviews,235.
MLA	De Vynck J.C.,et al."The resilience to human foraging of intertidal resources on the south Cape coast of South Africa and the implications for pre-historic foragers".Quaternary Science Reviews 235(2020).