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Why did humans migrate out of Africa? This question has long puzzled archaeologists. Were they driven by unknown pressures, drawn by opportunities, or was it something else entirely? Best-selling author and researcher Clive Gamble explores how curiosity may have fueled the human expansion out of Africa and how the development of the concept of 'containers' was crucial for technological innovations, such as boats.

Key People

Clive Gamble

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Sea levels have risen and fallen repeatedly over the last 2 million years. During low sea levels, large tracts of land were exposed along coastlines around the world, creating new habitats for plants, animals, and people to inhabit and new routes for people to move around the world. Now, many of these places are underwater, but evidence of these ancient landscapes, and the people who occupied them, still exists. In this episode we chat with Geoff Bailey and Hayley Cawthra about the challenges of working in coastal environments and reconstructing their submerged stories.

Key People

Geoff Bailey

Hayley Cawthra

Additional resources

2021. Bailey G, Cawthra HC. The significance of sea-level change and ancient submerged landscapes in human dispersal and development: A geoarchaeological perspective. Oceanologia

2020 Cawthra, Hayley C., et al. "Migration of Pleistocene shorelines across the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain: Evidence from dated sub-bottom profiles and archaeological shellfish assemblages." Quaternary Science Reviews 235: 106107.

2022. Hill J, et al. Sea-level change, palaeotidal modelling and hominin dispersals: The case of the southern Red Sea. Quaternary Science Reviews

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Around 170,000 years ago people living in sea caves on South Africa’s south coast were repeatedly collecting and eating shellfish from the nearby coastline. It marked an important behavioral shift from the occasional collection of aquatic resources to systematic relying on aquatic resources for survival. In this episode, travel to the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Pinnacle Point in South Africa to talk with Curtis Marean, one of the foremost experts on the origins and development of coastal foraging, about how the transition from opportunistic to systematic coastal foraging may have occurred and the unexpected impact that the shift to a true coastal adaptation may have had on the development of social cooperation.

Key People

Curtis Marean

Key Places

Pinnacle Point

UNESCO

Marean, Curtis W. 2016, The transition to foraging for dense and predictable resources and its impact on the evolution of modern humansPhil. Trans. R. Soc. B37120150239http://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0239

Marean, Curtis W. 2014. "The origins and significance of coastal resource use in Africa and Western Eurasia." Journal of Human Evolution 77: 17-40.

Marean, C., Bar-Matthews, M., Bernatchez, J. et al. Early human use of marine resources and pigment in South Africa during the Middle Pleistocene. Nature 449, 905–908 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06204